The specter of Cream’s mercurial and complicated drummer Ginger Baker hovers like a menacing thundercloud over the entire musical career of bassist Jack Bruce. The surly and smirking dark cloud presents a real threat while simultaneously promising the necessary H2O for growth and change. Great friends since their youthful days on the London club scene, Jack & Ginger have sparred off and on (mostly on) for their entire career in the music business. In the first few pages of Harry Shapiro’s incisive and illuminating Jack Bruce biography, our protagonist clarifies once and for all the question of whether or not the decades of feuding with Ginger have been exaggerated with a single, terse syllable: “No.”
Born in Scotland in 1943, Jack Bruce moved to Canada with his family for a brief time when he was still a young child. The family was forced to return home to Scotland when his father’s employment opportunities dried up but the experience gave young Jack his first inkling of other cultures and an emboldening taste of international travel at a very early age. From a decidedly political family, the boy was never short on independence and a steely strength of character. The Bruce clan was also a very musical family and Jack was something of a prodigy, even singing for Paul Robeson at a political rally when he was still a child. He wanted to play bass but because his hands were too small he started on cello. Even as a child his piano improvisations caught the attention of his instructors. Jack discovered jazz as a teenager, just as he was tiring of classical music’s strict rules that forbade improvisation. Finding regular work as a musician when he was still in school, Jack drove his own car to school at a time when many of his teachers could not afford an automobile. An accomplished bassist by the age of 18, Jack went to London in 1961.
One of the busiest working musicians on the London club scene in the early 60s, it was inevitable that Jack would eventually cross paths with Ginger Baker. Both players passed repeatedly through the ranks of Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and the Graham Bond Organization among numerous other groups. Though the mutual respect was instant, sparks were flying between the two men before Jack had turned 20 years old. On one occasion Ginger kicked Jack out of a band at knifepoint.
Ironically the headstrong Scotsman struggled with insecurities. These were all but dispelled after an afternoon session backing Marvin Gaye for some British TV appearances. Hanging out after the taping, Gaye asked Jack to come to the States to join his band. Though the offer was a tremendous confidence boost, Jack turned it down and stayed on in London where he soon found himself playing bass with Manfred Mann just as that band’s fortunes were rapidly ascending.
In the early chapters of this fascinating biography I began to realize that, like many people, I knew almost nothing about Jack Bruce’s illustrious career. Even before the formation of Bruce’s most famous affiliation, he’d already had more experience in the music business than most musicians three times his age.
In 1966, Bruce, Baker and Clapton were getting bored with their respective bands. Where these three men saw the blues as a loose language, a beginning point, all their previous groups saw it as a rigid form, as an end. All this in spite of the obvious charm and immense talent encapsulated in bands like the Bluesbreakers and the Yardbirds. In perhaps one of the most fortuitous coincidences in the history of rock music, the stars aligned and Cream was born.
Though the timing was perfect, the birth of Cream was fraught with tension and difficulty from the beginning. For one thing, Ginger was already a full-blown junkie before the band was formed and it was a stipulation to starting the band that he quit using. He didn’t and he nearly overdosed backstage at one of Cream’s earliest TV appearances.
Much of the aforementioned is common knowledge. But the diversity and sheer volume of Jack Bruce’s relatively unknown post-Cream musical activities is almost shocking. Indeed, it is the chapters of this book that relate Bruce’s post-Cream output that this writer found most illuminating. Readers may find it hard to believe how much stuff he’s done since Cream’s break up in 1968 and the list of players he has worked with is a mile long. As the trio’s most accomplished singer and songwriter, many believed it was Jack who would go on to greater fame as a solo artist after Cream disbanded. While Ginger disappeared into obscurity, only occasionally resurfacing for a gig here and there, it was Clapton of course who ascended to superstardom after a long battle with heroin and alcohol.
In the late 60s and early 70s very few musicians other than Miles Davis were blending jazz improv with the fire and fury of rock. Alongside Miles’s seminal Bitches Brew, the music Jack Bruce was making at that time with John McLaughlin and Tony Williams is considered one of the progenitors of fusion. This after Jack turned down an offer from John Paul Jones to join Led Zeppelin. Stephen Stills invited to Jack to join CSNY, but only as a bass player and not as a contributing songwriter. Another polite pass from Jack.
One of the most driven and fiercely independent musicians of the rock era, Jack Bruce followed his muse at every turn. This frequently meant starting over from scratch with a whole new band and playing small clubs for little or no money. In spite of these personal frustrations and financial limitations, Bruce shows no sign of regret for the path he chose was uniquely his. Over the years Jack was called upon to write and sing and play with an incredibly diverse array of players, including Carla Bley, Bernie Worrell, Gary Moore, Larry Coryell, Ringo Starr, and the Golden Palominos to name but a few.
There were huge successes along the way. Jack’s first two solo records were greeted with a rapturous reception and the announcement of his plans to launch a new group with Leslie West sparked one of the greatest bidding wars the industry has ever seen. Though that band would collapse in haze of drugs and corruption, Jack would rise again just a few years later with a new Jack Bruce Band featuring Mick Taylor on guitar. After the completion of a sold-out six week tour, Taylor’s recurring and career-paralyzing fear of success on someone else’s terms led him to quit the band on the eve of a recording session for the band’s first record. Not for the first or last time, Jack was forced to start all over again. In spite of disheartening episodes like this one, Jack never failed to rise again like a phoenix.
With his natural born skills, compositional prowess paired with uncanny improvisational instincts, and unparalleled standard of quality woven into and throughout the entirety of his massive output, Jack Bruce is like a great secret ghost whose legacy haunts and courses throughout the classic rock era. To a man, every individual who played with Jack over the years will say that the experience of working with him expanded their knowledge and understanding of music. This incredible testament is repeated numerous times throughout Jack’s bio, the end result being a sense of his overarching influence holding sway over the development of rock music over the past four decades. Co-written with long-time songwriting partner Pete Brown, Cream’s most famous number “Sunshine Of Your Love” seems now almost like a metaphor for the man himself. The rays of his loving sunshine have warmed and nurtured the music and memories of many of his contemporaries, all of whom consider him an unrecognized giant in his field.
Although I was largely ignorant of Bruce’s post-Cream activities and his tremendous influence before reading this great book, I have to agree with what Ginger Baker said in the wake of Cream’s very successful reunion concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in 2005: “I rather like wee Jack now!”
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[A slightly edited version of this article originally appeared on Crawdaddy.com in September of 2010. –rh]
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