When Cream’s debut album, Fresh Cream, hit record store shelves in late 1966, it marked a major turning point in the history of rock music. The band’s fusion of eardrum-crushing blues riffage, raw psychedelia, and sonic experimentation would be labelled as hard rock, paving the way for what would come to be known as heavy metal just a few short years later. Of course, Cream didn’t adhere to any labels or musical boxes, whether they be “hard rock”, “blues rock”, “psychedelic rock”, or beyond. They played what their hearts pleased, which is why their albums sound so fresh to this day. When they sang, “I Feel Free”, it wasn’t just another brainless chorus; it was a declaration! Paying homage to the band’s pioneering sound and spirit is none other than Malcolm Bruce: Son of Cream bassist/vocalist, Jack Bruce. We sat down with Malcolm to discuss his outfit, the aptly branded Sons of Cream, growing up surrounded by rock’s all-time greats, and Cream’s role in the evolution of heavy metal.
Greetings Malcolm and welcome to Defenders of the Faith. How are you doing today?
Malcolm Bruce: I’m doing really well. How are you doing?
I’m doing fantastic, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to do this interview, and it sounds like you’re having quite a time right now as you’re snowed in on the east coast.
MB: Yes, we’re in a hotel in Greenwich, Rhode Island. We’ve got this nor’easter. I had to look it up a couple of days ago, what a nor’easter is. Apparently, it comes from the old English for “northeast”. We’ve got 2 or 3 feet of snow. The snow is still coming down. Apparently, it’s going to stop soon. We had a show yesterday at the Odeum in Greenwich, but luckily, it worked from both sides, ours and the venue’s, to move it to tomorrow night. *laughs* Fingers crossed that we don’t have to cancel it. We’ve got quite a lot of people that would love to come. We’d love to play, but hey, this is a force of nature, or an act of God, or whatever you’d call it in a contract *laughs*. I don’t know what you’d call it.
Well the snow better lay off, because in a little under 2 weeks, you’re set to play our neck of the woods at the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles. It’s sunnier and less snowy, but still cold.
MB: OK! It’s an amazing theater. I’ve played there a bunch of times over the years. It’s always a joy to come to that theater. It’s one of the great theaters in this country, so I’m looking forward to it. We’ll get there, even if it takes us a little bit longer than anticipated, we will certainly be there. We’re looking forward to it.
I’d like to start from the beginning. How old were you when you started showing interest in music, and at what point did it occur to you that dad wasn’t just “dad”, but Jack Bruce?
MB: *laughs* I was playing music from before I could even remember. I certainly was having classical piano lessons from around the age of 5. I did that for a little while. Then, I stopped. Then, I started again, picking up instruments around the house. I started notating and writing actual music quite early on. I think it’s just that thing. By osmosis, I was around it. My father was making music and the people that would come to the house were also making music. My mom co-wrote some of the Cream songs as a lyricist, but also plays piano on an amateur level. Music was just flowing all the time around me, so I’m very grateful for that. I can’t really remember when I first started having an interest in it. It was always just there. As far as knowing that my dad was my dad, I don’t know. I have lots of very early memories of going to see him perform shows and things like that. I suppose fairly early on, I realized, that’s my dad singing in front of a thousand people *laughs*. I don’t know. Certainly by the age of 8, 9, 10, I was fully aware of what was going on.
And that has to be a unique perspective. To millions around the globe, people like your father and his associates, whether they be Ginger Baker, Leslie West, or so forth, were rock gods. To you, growing up, these were just guys around the house.
MB: Yeah, there’s a lot to explore and unpack there in a sense. Do we idolize people for their great talent or ability, but also just treat them as normal people as well? That’s the thing. People are just people. Right now, in the world, it’s interesting. It’s all breaking down. I’m sure you guys are following what’s happening in the UK with this whole Jeffrey Epstein thing and the royal family: People that we would hold in that sense. People that were in positions where we would look up to them. Suddenly, maybe they’re not quite what we thought they were *laughs*. I think we have to be careful about all that stuff.
Perhaps I was lucky to be around “famous people” from really early on, so it didn’t impact me in the same way. Having said that, I admire my dad immensely, and I admire many of the people he worked with from a creative point of view. I would always show respect. I show no less respect to the girl at the checkout in the supermarket, you know what I mean? I think it’s really important to stay humble, especially if you’re aspiring to be a greater person. Never get too arrogant about the whole thing. We can’t take it with us. I find that the more I don’t fall into those kinds of pitfalls of fame, the more clear I am to be a creative person.
Besides your father and the music he made, which bands and artists were you listening to growing up?
MB: Certainly, I do remember listening to Cream and my dad’s solo stuff as I was growing up, but he gave me a couple of early records that I would listen to. He gave me a Jimi Hendrix compilation called Stone Free, which had that song “Stone Free” on it, obviously. It’s the title track. Great song. He gave me a bunch of classical things like Ravel, Debussy. Again, I was very lucky to have a father that, even though he’s best known as a rockstar, he had a very wide interest in music and creativity, not just limited to one genre. I think that’s what makes his output so unique, because he has all these influences himself.
If we go back and listen to Cream, who formed in 1966, if you hear that debut album, Fresh Cream, just all these influences, whether it’s Scottish folk music, the blues, jazz, classical elements. Ginger himself was bringing African polyrhythms. It was just unheard of. It was this big melting pot of styles. I think, somehow, we’ve lost our way with that. That band showed a particular kind of potential in creativity. Then, it got a bit stiff and predictable along the way. Not everything, of course. There’s amazing music everywhere, but I think that particular band showed a certain potency in that sense, that we don’t have to be limited in terms of the influences that come in.
That was a big lesson I learned with my dad. I’ve just been wide open. I go through phases. Sometimes I listen to a lot of music. Sometimes I completely shut off and listen to my internal voice in terms of being creative. I think we can be too influenced by the external stuff by other people. Sometimes in the creative process, you want to just listen to your inner voice and find that as a guide more than, “I’m gonna sound a bit like this guy or that guy.”
Currently, you’re touring with Sons of Cream: A tribute to the music of Cream and Blind Faith featuring yourself, Ginger Baker’s son, Kofi, on drums, and Ginger’s grandnephew, Rob Johnson, on guitar. When did this band come together and what has it been like touring with them?
MB: It’s been about 2 years now. I’ve worked with Kofi on a number of projects in the past, but we put this together in the beginning of 2024. We did a UK/European tour and then we agreed, “This is great. Let’s take this further.” Then, we did some more dates in the summer of ’24 in the UK, and then we came over here to the US and did a short run of 10 shows. We’ve done a couple more tours since. This is our third of the US, I think.
A couple of years in the making, we signed a deal with Marshall Records, which is really exciting. We’re just putting the finishing touches to that record. That should be out later this year. Marshall Records is part of the Marshall amplification family. It’s interesting. Marshall amps go back to the beginning of this whole British music boom that happened from the early ’60s, predominantly in London. Obviously, there was the Liverpool scene and all that, but Jim Marshall had a drum shop in West London. His son, Terry Marshall, who is still running Marshall, wonderful guy, they had this little drum shop, but they sold amplifiers like Fender amps.
Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton, before they were famous, would go in that store. I think maybe Pete bought an amp or used an amp and took it back. “It’s not really loud enough. Can you soup it up for me?” That’s how Marshall was born. The rest is history. Now, Marshall are, along with Fender, the two greatest amplification companies in history. We’re part of that story. Terry and Jim Marshall, they knew my dad and Eric and Ginger, that same generation. They came up together. The Ealing Club was a little club in West London not far from Marshall’s original store. The Ealing Club is where everybody played.
My dad was in a band called Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated with Charlie Watts on drums. When Charlie left to join The Stones, Ginger Baker became the drummer. They have all this shared history. I hung out with Charlie Watts with my dad for a few days once. They were all just friends. They were nobodies. They were musicians because they loved being musicians. They weren’t rockstars. Suddenly, a couple years later, they were world famous people. I think, all of them, as much as all the trappings of fame for that generation happened, they came from very humble beginnings and never really lost sight of that. That was their roots: The roots of being working class musicians, travelling around in a little van, playing gigs.
Suddenly, the whole thing exploded, principally because they came over here to the US. It was a bigger market. They’d “stolen” American music, black African American music, predominantly. They fell in love with that music and stole it, and then sold it back to the US through the British perspective *laughs*. It’s a shared history. We all share this history. Cream themselves, when they started, were covering songs like “Spoonful” by Willie Dixon or Albert King’s “Born Under a Bad Sign”. They were covering the songs from the previous generation of black American artists. Then, they sold it back with some flairs of psychedelia, so there you go *laughs*.
As you just mentioned, Sons of Cream have an album on the way entitled Half and Half. As the title humorously suggests, the album features half Cream covers and half original songs. At what point did the idea arise to make original music, or was this the intention from the beginning?
MB: I’ve got a number of different projects. So have Kofi and Robert. This is a lovely way for us to get together and honor our legacy, where we came from. When this opportunity presented itself to do a record, I was talking to the A&R people and said, “Hey, I’ve always bandied this idea around of doing a jokey title, Half and Half.” Then, it just came into focus. Wait a minute, rather than just doing Cream songs, which obviously are amazing songs, here’s an opportunity to look backwards as well as look forwards. We then started the process. All 3 of us write our own music, so we chose 6 Cream songs and then started bringing our own ideas.
I brought 2 or 3 songs. Rob brought 2 or 3 songs. Kofi brought 2 or 3 songs. Then, we just started working on them and helping each other arrange them. It was very organic. We’re not trying to sound like Cream. The original stuff, we’re not writing in the style of Cream. It’s really just what emerged over a period of time. I think it will sound cohesive because it’s the 3 of us performing together. We’re trying to keep it as stripped down as possible, guitar, bass, and drums essentially with vocals and some harmonies. It will gel. The album seems to gel together nicely. As I say, we didn’t contrive to sound like Cream.
Even when we play the songs of Cream in our live set, we’re not a tribute act in the traditional sense that we are trying to sound exactly like them. We grew up with them. They were our parents. We made music with them. We ate dinner with them. We argued with them. All of the things that kids and their parents do. We’re not trying to put on the same clothes and play the solos note for note. We’re taking the spirit of the music and bringing it forward. Because it’s so much based on improvisation, this music lends itself to that. Cream themselves, the original band, never really played the songs the same way twice *laughs*. That’s the beauty of it. It keeps it very organic and alive and unpredictable. That keeps it fresh. For us, that’s how we approach the live shows. We’re not doing the original stuff yet, but once the record is out, we’ll be doing that as well. I guess it’s for other people to make any kind of judgements. We’re just in the process of wanting to and trying to be creative *laughs*.
It’s one thing for a band of legendary rockstar offspring to play together. People have been clamoring for a “Beatles Jr.” for years. It’s another thing for them to gel as a unit, which is the impression I get from the footage I’ve seen of Sons of Cream thus far. Musically speaking, what do Kofi and Rob bring to the table that motivates you?
MB: Kofi is a unique animal. He’s very unique as a person. A little bit different, kind of in his own universe. That actually, in many ways, helps him as a drummer. He doesn’t really sound like anyone else. He’s developed his own style, very unique, in the same way that his dad had that, but his dad was a very different kind of musician and a different kind of person. With Kofi, he’s just wonderful. He is so unique. He has this whole polyrhythmic thing going on, but he’s spent his whole life developing it. He’s not really a session musician in the sense that he could jump into…of course, he could play anything, but he’s not really built like that. He is very unique. You wouldn’t necessarily have him in a band playing a different style of music, but for his own thing and for Cream, it’s just amazing what he sounds like. It really lifts up everything to have a drummer like that.
I’ve worked with many of the great drummers of our time, lots of different kinds of drummers. They’re all amazing, but they can’t do what Kofi does. That gives the band a particular kind of sound at the root of it. He hits the drums in a certain way. He’s not a rock drummer in the same way that his dad had a background in jazz. Kofi’s touch, his technique, is a very different thing to a rock drummer. He plays much lighter, much more articulate in a certain way. He’s not slamming it, which is also a really cool thing, depending on the music. Sometimes, you just want a drummer to just be hitting those drums really hard, and then you get this emotive response. With Kofi, it’s a very different thing. That’s worth checking out.
Rob Johnson is of the younger generation. As you mentioned before, he’s Ginger Baker’s sister’s grandson, so he’s the great nephew of Ginger. He has a bit of a different path. He lives in Liverpool. His other projects are not really blues rock music. They’re more acoustic. I don’t want to make him sound limited, because he’s not at all. He’s doing all different kinds of things, but it’s nice. It’s fresh because he’s not a straight ahead blues guitarist in the sense that much of Cream’s music has been interpreted since the original band. It tends to be a bit predictable. “This is how “Sunshine of Your Love” or “Crossroads” should sound.”, or whatever. He’s growing through the process, which is really lovely to see. He’s growing and developing those kinds of stylistic elements within his playing, whereas he’s a very fine singer and songwriter in his own right. It’s nice. It’s fresh. We’re all different and have different elements we’re bringing to the table. When it gels, it’s really special. People are loving the shows, so it’s encouraging.
What’s your favorite Cream album and why?
MB: Oh my goodness! *laughs* That’s a difficult one. Probably, at the moment, today, Fresh Cream, their debut album from 1966, partly because my mom co-wrote 2 of the songs on the record. She wrote “Sleepy Time Time”, which is actually the first Cream song ever written. She wrote the lyrics. She wrote “Sleepy Time Time” with my dad and co-wrote “Sweet Wine” with Ginger Baker. Ginger had brought in the lyricist, Pete Brown, to write with Cream with the understanding that Ginger and Pete would be songwriting partners. It didn’t really work between them, so Pete went onto work with my dad and ended up being songwriting partners for the rest of my dad’s life, all of my dad’s solo stuff and all kinds of things. We lost Pete a couple years ago, sadly. He was a very good friend of mine and a mentor.
When Pete moved across to work with my dad, Ginger asked my mom if she’d help him finish one of his songs, so she wrote the lyrics of “Sweet Wine”. Those are two elements, but I think it’s the young bucks records. It’s 3 guys just firing, just incredible, raw energy. Obviously, Disraeli Gears is probably the album that people cite as the great Cream album for many good reasons, but that was a little further on. There’s something about Fresh Cream that’s just raw, especially the mono version. If anyone hasn’t listened to this record, don’t even listen to the stereo version.
It’s one of those stereo things where they’re, “Let’s pan the drums all the way to the left and the bass over there and that there.” Nah. If you listen to the original mono version, it’s mind-blowing. It’s a great record. Really great energy. It’s just wonderful. Eric’s playing is superlative. He’s a great guitar player. Again, it’s a melting pot of all these disparate influences, disparate styles. It’s a beautiful thing. So yes, today, Fresh Cream *laughs*.
I should’ve prefaced that question by pointing out there’s no wrong answer.
MB: *laughs* Yeah, I know. Because if you ask me next week, I’ll probably say Wheels of Fire. I don’t know *laughs*.
You’ve had quite the career over the years, playing in various bands and projects. One album in particular you played on, alongside your father, was Bill Ward’s solo debut, Ward One: Along the Way. Do you have any memories that come to mind from those sessions?
MB: Yeah, what an amazing unsung hero Bill is. Obviously, he’s known as the drummer in Black Sabbath, rightly so, an incredibly iconic band, but as a songwriter, he’s made many records and they’re all wonderful. I was 16. My dad said, “Hey, I got you a session.” I’m like, “Really? Cool! That sounds good.” We flew over to L.A. from the UK and we played on this record. It was at the Village Recorder, which is an amazing recording studio. I believe it’s still there. Robbie Robertson had his own studio on the floor above the Village Recorder, so I remember meeting him briefly. I remember meeting Whoopi Goldberg’s manager.
There’s probably loads of memories in my brain somewhere, but it was my first real professional gig. I’d done lots of gigs before, starting from the age of 15, on the London circuit, just little gigs in clubs and stuff like that, but that was my first official professional recording session, as it were. Look, it’s a little bit of nepotism in the sense that I definitely would not have got it had my dad not got me the gig, but hey! What am I gonna do about that? *laughs* We got the plane from Heathrow Airport. We flew over and went into LAX and spent a week or 10 days there. Maybe a week. It was a very special moment.
One of the guys on that record that was doing a lot of the writing with Bill was a guy called Rue Phillips. He was part of the NWOBHM. He had a band called Smokin’ Roadie from Wolverhampton. It was that whole scene of Brummie musicians. Obviously, Sabbath came from that area, the Black Country. Birmingham and Wolverhampton had this particular scene, so Rue Phillips had this band, Smokin’ Roadie. They were getting a little bit of leverage in the UK. I’m still in touch with Rue. He’s a wonderful person who left the music business and became very successful in another industry, but Rue and his wife, Tracy, they flew over and were living on the beach in a tent, trying to find out how to break the L.A. scene. He met somebody that was working for Bill and suddenly, he was working with Bill.
Rue’s an amazing songwriter, a great, great singer. He probably wisely decided to get out of the business at a certain point and do other things, but he’s still making music. I met him and we ended up doing a project together with Kofi. It was the first project I did with Kofi called Lost City. There’s a record out there that we did. It never really amounted to much, but we did do a tour and made a really nice record in Santa Monica.
It’s a real honor to be on that (Bill Ward) record. I’m on a track with Ozzy playing piano. Ozzy’s on that record. It was during one of his hiatuses. I think, unfortunately, that Bill’s record, because Ozzy’s on it and then he was making a comeback, there was some pressure not to confuse the market too much and Bill’s record was not really promoted in the way it could’ve been. It is a very good record. It’s a great record with a lot of great musicians on it, some of the best of that time around the L.A. scene. It’s definitely worth checking out, Bill Ward’s Ward One: Along the Way. It’s great, man. It’s really great.
At that particular time, it was still analog tape. There’s a particular quality to how those records were made. It took him a long time to make that record. It was done over the course of a year off and on in that studio. Bill was coming out of addiction and the craziness of Sabbath. He’d left Sabbath. I believe he’d been very sick and he was getting well again. Kudos to him for seeing that through and staying with us, making great music since then. Just an honor to be part of that!
You also had the honor of filling your father’s shoes alongside Leslie West and Corky Laing for a series of concerts in 2010. What was that experience like?
MB: We ended up working together off and on for about a year. We did maybe 10 shows. It was great. I love those guys. I’m still in touch with Corky. I’m hoping to see him in a few days here if I can get out of the snow *laughs*. Again, having those kinds of experiences, these are people from a different time. The energy of the universe, the frequency, the vibration is different. There’s a primal elemental aspect to musicians of that time that we can’t seem to recapture. We’re living in a different world. It’s great to be around those people that have this energetic thing about them.
They weren’t necessarily the most sorted out people. There were a lot of addiction elements and all of that kind of stuff going on, but the soul of them is big. Big, big beautiful people. I miss Leslie. He hasn’t been gone that long, but I did have the opportunity to talk to him on the phone not long before he passed. I’m still in touch with Corky. Corky’s still out there hustling, doing his thing, making music. He’s a great, great person. We had really good fun.
We played a couple of nights at B.B. King’s in midtown Manhattan when that was still open. We did Westbury. We did a few different things. We did the Orange County Choppers Show *laughs* which was funny because I’m this little white English man, suddenly thrust into doing that *throws horns* all the time. It’s not really my thing. I’m much more in my own path, but just the opportunity to hang with those guys and make music, one can learn a lot. I certainly learned a lot just by being around them. Good people.
Cream are widely regarded as forebearers of heavy metal. Clapton said something to the extent that Cream “accidentally invented metal”. Meanwhile, Baker said, “If I’m the father of metal, it should’ve been aborted.” Do you know where your father stood on this matter, of if he had a position one way or the other?
MB: I think they certainly influenced the progression of rock music in that sense. If you listen to the West, Bruce and Laing stuff, there’s elements of that which are really heavy. It’s a heavier version of Cream, in a way. If Leslie was still around, he’d be the first person to say, “I love Eric Clapton. He is the guy I aspire to be.” Leslie wasn’t really a technical musician in that way. He was just all feel. Great singer, but his guitar playing was all feel. Eric, it’s a similar thing. There’s a lot of technique going on with Eric, but it’s not necessarily an intellectual process.
There are these elements of the groundwork of what became metal and what became hard rock, but it’s maybe a little more complicated. It’s hard to completely know how these things emerge. My dad was a classically trained musician, so there’s classical elements that perhaps you can hear in hard rock and metal as people began to bring more of a technical approach to instrumental playing and singing. It’s that thing, isn’t it? Popular music emerged through certain channels that were not academic. They weren’t intellectual.
You had the same thing with Sabbath. It’s not intellectual music in the sense that it’s not academic. It’s not coming from what you guys call a rote place, a deep understanding of the technical aspects of music. Having said that, there are amazingly technical things about them. Ozzy’s voice, he was a natural. I don’t know a lot about Ozzy’s early formative experiences. I can talk about my dad being a boy soprano in choirs and learning the cello and learning the piano very early on. He had a deep understanding of music, which I’ve inherited. That can be a blessing and a curse, but people do come along that are intuitively driven.
Whether Ozzy even knew about vocal technique or not, I don’t know, but he had a great voice. He had a very natural voice in terms of range, in terms of negotiating passaggio, parts of the voice, which if you’re studying bel canto in a musical institution, it can take you 10 or 15 years to study that. He just had it. You’ve got all of these different elements. It’s funny what Ginger said, and it’s probably partly true *laughs*, not the aborting it bit! I think yes: Cream were taking the blues and heavying it up. Of course, that’s gotta influence. Even just the timing of it.
If you talk to the guys in Sabbath, they would say, “We love Cream.” I talked to them through their management when I was putting together a tribute to my dad in 2016, a couple years after he passed away. I was reaching out to everyone to see who I could get to come along to be a part of this concert. We ended up having a wonderful time with a lot of amazing people, but I was reaching out to people. The guys from Sabbath were busy. They couldn’t come for whatever reason, but they were very, very respectful and complimentary about it. I think they’re the slightly younger generation to my dad, Eric, and Ginger. They’re the next wave, so the guys that were emerging in the ’60s.
If you ask Brian May, he would say Cream were a huge influence on Queen, who 6 or 8 years later or whatever it was were emerging and became this huge, iconic band. I think it’s a generational thing, whether it’s music or…the possibilities presented itself. “You can play guitar like that, so now I’m gonna find my own way.” It’s inspirational rather than exactly why or how. I think it would’ve influenced it more simply by, “OK, it opens up peoples’ minds. You don’t have to play straight or be like this. You can experiment with sound, and through that experimentation, what if I get an amp that goes to 11?”
I think they did influence everything that was to come, but I think that there’s a lot that still hasn’t really been capitalized on and explored through Cream’s music, things like improvisation. Like my dad did say a number of times, they were a jazz band; they just didn’t tell Eric. In a way, that’s what it is: The interaction of what jazz musicians do, but in a blues rock context. It’s all interconnected, but I wouldn’t necessarily say you could definitively say they invented it, but they were certainly a part of the evolution of music that was key to successive generations, thinking about things.
I hope we continue to because sometimes I think music has become a bit predictable. Not bad. There are genius level musicians out there, but in terms of the writing, the exploratory nature of the music and the potential, I think we sometimes aren’t pushing far enough. We’re not taking enough risks. Maybe you can argue that’s about money and the marketplace, but I think as artists that’s part of our duty: To stay open and keep things moving forward.
What is the greatest lesson you learned from your father?
MB: *laughs* On that note, his open spirit. His open creative spirit. He would listen to all different kinds of music, all different cultures. He was a very accepting person on that level. A complicated person, but I certainly learned that from him, just to be wide open. He never stopped growing. Obviously, people associate him with Cream because that was the most successful band of his career, but he did so many different things, so many different collaborations and many different records. All kinds of stuff. When we were at home, we were listening to a diverse range of different artists and kinds of music. That’s definitely one of the big lessons I learned from him: Just stay open and humble within the creative process. Don’t ever think you know anything *laughs*.
Because you learn something new everyday!
MB: Absolutely!
Sons of Cream will be playing the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles, Illinois on Sunday, March 8th. For tickets, click here. For more information on Sons of Cream, click here.
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