ATCO 700
Producer: Felix Pappalardi
Track listing: White Room / Sitting on Top of the World / Passing the Time / As You Said / Pressed Rat and Warthog / Politician / Those Were the Days / Born Under a Bad Sign / Deserted Cities of the Heart / Crossroads / Spoonful / Traintime / Toad
August 10, 1968
4 weeks
“Sitting on Top of the World” was the name of the old Mississippi Sheiks blues standard (popularized by Howlin’ Wolf) Cream covered on its third album, but it also summed up the band’s position at the time. “We were sort of flying already,” recalls Ginger Baker, who played drums in the power trio. “Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears were still on the charts when we recorded Wheels of Fire. We had this sort of confidence of giants.”
Cream was formed in July 1966 after guitarist Eric Clapton left John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, bassist Jack Bruce departed Manfred Mann, and Baker exited the Graham Bond Organisation. The trio was named by Clapton because it was considered “the cream of the crop” of British blues musicians. Despite tremendous commercial success first in England and subsequently in America, all was not well with the supergroup.
“By the time of Wheels of Fire, really, the band probably was dead already, but it didn’t know it,” Baker admits. “There were things going down through those sessions that probably led to the demise of Cream as it turned out. If you notice, Eric didn’t do very much writing, and I didn’t do much more.”
While Clayton’s contribution did not include songwriting, his stamp is all over the two-disc set, particularly on “White Room,” which would become a rock classic, and the live version of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads,” which became so synonymous with Clapton that his 1988 boxed-set career retrospective and its 1996 sequel were titled after the track.
The first disc of Wheels of Fire was recorded during February 1968 at Atlantic Records studios in New York. Cream had recorded its previous album, Disraeli Gears, which climbed to number four, at the same studio. In fact, the band even stayed at the same hotel during the sessions. In the studio, Cream and producer Felix Pappalardi continued to experiment with varied instrumentation, including tympani, strings, brass, tubular bells, and glockenspiel. Says Baker, “We were just trying to go forward, so we tried some pretty far-out things. Wheels of Fire was probably most experimental thing we ever did. We broke a lot of new ground.’
The second disc, recorded live during the band’s two-week stand at the famed Fillmore West in San Francisco, offered the first taste of live Cream on record. By that time, the band had become known for its wildly improvisational performances, which were often incredibly powerful, but sometimes excessive. “We had this E.S.P going where we could change arrangements onstage and everybody knew where everybody was going,” Baker explains. “It was a continuing adventure. “
Three months after the release of Wheels of Fire, Cream player farewell concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall. After Cream disbanded, Clapton and Baker joined another supergroup, Blind Faith.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of August 10, 1968
1. Wheels of Fire, Cream
2. The Graduate, Soundtrack
3. Time Peace/The Rascals’ Greatest Hits, The Rascals
4. The Beat of the Brass, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
5. Aretha Now, Aretha Franklin