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The best version of the Cream´s Classic ´´Crossroads´´ from the 1968 Album ´´Wheels of Fire´´ even though the video is from the live concert at Winterland. Listen free to Cream – Wheels of Fire (White Room, Sitting on Top of the World and more). 13 tracks (82:55). Wheels of Fire is the name of a double album recorded by Cream. The release was largely successful, scoring the band a #3 peak in the UK and a #1 in the US, and became the world's first platinum-selling double album. If Disraeli Gears was the album where Cream came into their own, its. 'Wheels Of Fire,' the Cream album that introduced White Room and other classic performances, was new in UK record shops on August 9, 1968. Wheels of Fire 1968 / Cream, August 1968, double album with gatefold cover, 2 x 33 1/3 12' LPs. Sharp's art features on the front and rear covers and within the inner gatefold section of the American release on ATCO. The cover image was printed in black ink on silver foil-coated board for the US release. It is pure psychedelia.

*Well, as promised before, we’re going to talk about Wheelsof Fire today and what a long strange trip it’s been. I started this project hoping to get to hearsome of the worst music ever and, out of my first three reviews, only one is atruly bad album, that being Days of Future Passed.

*But imagine my absolute consternation when I realized thathere was Wheels of Fire popping up on my randomizer as one of the worst albumsever, when almost everyone recognizes it as an absolute masterpiece. What to make of this? Well, we’ll find out.

*The first thing to get out of the way seems to be “How didthis end up on your list in the first place, dude?” Well, as previously stated, I scoured the internetfor various lists of the worst albums and then compiled them all, deleted therepetitions and came up with a list of nearly two hundred albums.

*So, this one comes from a book published back during theearly nineties, compiled by Dave Marsh. Wheels of Fire shows up on a list in the book titled “Worst LiveAlbums.”

*So, one mystery solved right away. It is the second disc, Live at the Fillmore, thatcomes in for the real hatred by the list makers. Anyway, no breaking albums up; either it’s a goodalbum or it’s not. I’ll be looking atthe entire album.

*So, let’s get started, shall we? And for once I actually look forward toit.

*First song, White Room.

*Oh, yeah, this album sucks.

*So, obviously, White Room is a great song. Surely no one will dispute that. Surely.

*Next up, it’s Sitting On Top of the World and while thisisn’t one I had particularly remembered, it’s pretty great. It’s a slow, bluesy number and, of course,Clapton could play slow, bluesy lines in his sleep and still be brilliant. His guitar lines are really great in thisone.

*Third song on disc one is Passing the Time which I admit Iam not in love with. It has a weirdstructure whereby it opens with a sort of grinding guitar/pounding drum figureand then it slowly fades out and we get a celesta or organ or somethingmournfully chording and then it happens again three or four times over thecourse of the rest of the song.

*The lyrics are the kind of cheap poetry you really only getfrom Brit psychedelica at this point in time. Like I say, this is a weak song; not particularly a bad one and not atall annoying.

*As You Said, the fourth song, is, I think, just a littleannoying. I mean, for all the wonderfulthings about Cream, Jack Bruce was not exactly a voice one would listen to allday, if you know what I mean, and when he’s expected to actually sell a mellowballad, there was generally trouble.

*It is with the fifth track that the album goes rather offthe deep end into legitimately horrible territory.

*Name of the song? Pressed Rat & Warthog.

*Lyrical content? Thetitular characters are forced to close down a shop where they sold dog legs andfeet; they walk away wearing red jodhpurs, carrying a three legged sack. There’s more, but I’ll stop there.

*Musical style? Awinking Sgt. Pepper orchestra tootles over a pounding drum beat while GingerBaker recites the lyrics in a flat monotone.

*You need more than that? I thought not. I mean, yes, thisis part of the problem with this period of Britpop. We talked about it plenty last time with Daysof Future Passed, but around this period it seemed that a tremendous amount ofBritish groups suddenly decided they wanted to create ‘art,’ and thus theyspoiled the music they’d been creating which was, whether they knew it or not,already ‘art.’

*So, this shows up a lot, this weird pretension to makingsomething obtuse and artistic. I don’tknow, maybe Dylan had a little to do with it too, but, as we talked about backduring my review of American Pie, there is an entire universe between the kindof poetic absurdity and brilliance of Dylan and the stupid, purposefulobscurity of these kind of songs.

*So, we have here two pretty annoying songs in a row. And you think, “Is this album going downslow?”

*And then Pressed Rat & Warthog fades out slowly and outof nowhere, it’s that frigging riff from Politician blasting out. And you forgive Cream for every wrong thingthey’ve ever done.

*Seriously, this is not just one of Cream’s absolute bestsongs, it’s one of the best songs of the sixties. That riff, borrowed I’m sure from somewhere,remains one of the most indelible of all time and Clapton’s solos at the endare brilliant. Great bass playing fromBruce too, lest we forget.

*Next up is Those Were the Days, which waxes nostalgic for,of all things, the days when Atlantis was above the sea and the Gods intervenedon a fairly regular basis. Not one ofCream’s masterpieces, but I dig it. Baker’s drum performance is great, especially during Clapton’sabsolutely storming solo, when he goes completely nuts back there.

*I mean, we just keep going back to the thing that elevatedCream. Not their songwriting, at leastnot usually; not their great studio trickery; not their incredible out of thebox thinking. No, it’s always been andalways will be the fact that these three guys were frigging masters of their choseninstruments. I mean, they owned thoseinstruments.

*Next up is, I think, my very favorite Cream song. Yup, it’s their fantastic cover of AlbertKing’s doom-laden Born Under a Bad Sign.

*It does not need to be said that Clapton and Bruce lay downa fantastic riff, nor that Clapton’s soaring electric lines areperfection.

*Of course, one of the reasons this is true is that Claptonessentially lifted Albert King’s original guitar lines note for note and lickfor lick.

*King’s original album, Born Under a Bad Sign, is still, forme, the absolute pinnacle of electric blues albums. It is the one you simply have to hear; it isthe ne plus ultra of electric blues. King’s guitar tone is something like my absolute favorite tone. Somewhere recently I mentioned that Santana’sAbraxas used to be my favorite guitar album; Born Under a Bad Sign was the onethat displaced it.

*And, truly, as great as Cream’s version is, it isn’t apatch on King’s storming original. Imean that is The Blues. I mean, yeah, B.B. King rocks still, but noone can touch Albert King in the realm of electric blues. Recording with one of those Stax bands, generallythe best bands in the entire business, he does it all; hard edged blues, slowballads, charging funk.

*Looking back at Born Under a Bad Sign, you’ve got the titletrack, the storming Crosscut Saw, the traditional, hilarious Laundromat Blues,the nearly pop Kansas City Women, the aching ballad The Very Thought of You andthe astonishing funk of Personal Manager. I mean, that’s an album. Go hearthat one. Go hear it now.

*Meanwhile, allow me to also tout Cream’s BBC Sessions.

*Now the BBC Sessions series is generally great. The Who, Jimi Hendrix, The Zep, etc., live inthe BBC Studio at their respective peaks, playing album tracks, forthcomingsingles, obscure covers. I mean, youneed to check that stuff out.

*But on Cream’s BBC Sessions, which is one of the best ofthe series, they do a blistering version of Born Under a Bad Sign that, in myopinion, surpasses the version they do here. Clapton talks briefly, in the preceding interview clip, about whatAlbert King meant to the band, so there’s also that, if you enjoy those kind ofsnippets.

*So, while Wheels of Fire is a great album, I recommend twoabove it: Albert King’s Born Under a Bad Sign and Cream’s BBC Sessions.

*Ninth and final track on disc one is Deserted Cities of theHeart. It ain’t much, especially notafter Politician and Born Under a Bad Sign. But it ain’t bad. It passes justfine and is in no way a bad song or a bad recording.

*So, that was Disc One, In the Studio. Let’s move on to Disc Two, Live at theFillmore. We’ll see if it reallyqualifies as one of the worst live albums ever.

*First song, Crossroads.

*Yeah, this album reallysucks.

*I suppose I don’t need to recommend Robert Johnson’s CompleteRecordings, do I? At this latedate? Surely not. Surely, everyone already owns this.

*In a world where everyone has covered Johnson, this is oneof the best, though my favorite may actually be the totally forgotten CowboyJunkies version of Me and the Devil Blues.

*This song, of course, ended up on Rolling Stone’s list ofthe 500 Best Songs Ever. Goofy list, asthey always are, but one can hardly quibble with the energy of this song, stillone of Clapton’s signature songs and probably the first song anyone wouldmention when you bring up Cream.

*I wonder if this is considered a ‘bad’ album because of thestudio trickery involved in the making of Live at the Fillmore. This version of Crossroads originated as twodifferent versions on two different nights and both were apparently incrediblylong (which is easy to believe).

*In the studio, the producer edited the two versionstogether and cut the resulting version down to just over four minutes, whichprobably wasn’t even a third of even one of the original two versions, givenCream’s propensities for hard jamming. Butit gives the cut a propulsive energy and drive that was probably missing fromthe other versions. And, bottom line,it’s a great song, who cares?

*Of course, indicative of this kind of trickery is the factthat of the four tracks on the Live at the Fillmore disc, only one was recordedat the Fillmore. This kind of stuff maypass for offensive in Dave Marsh’s world, I don’t know, but it doesn’t in mine.

*Here’s another reason to get the BBC Sessions album Italked about above. It’s got a totallyraw, ultra fast version of Crossroads recorded live in the studio in 1966, twoyears before Wheels of Fire came out. It’s not even two minutes long, that’s how raw and fast it is. It’s amazing. You gotta hear it. Seriously.

*Second track on the album is an epic, a nearly seventeenminute cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s Spoonful. Does it get lost in the weeds? Itdoes frigging not. Believe it ornot. It’s one of the few live jam tracksover fifteen minutes that justifies every second of its length. Believe it or not. The last half is better than the first half,which I have maybe never heard happenbefore on a similar track.

*Now, allow me to recommend yet another album, namely HisBest, a collection of Howlin’ Wolf. Nowwhen I heard Wheels of Fire, I had already heard Robert Johnson’s CompleteRecordings, Albert King’s Born Under a Bad Sign, and Howlin’ Wolf’s HisBest.

*So, part of the charm for the real blues lover in an albumlike Wheels of Fire is just simply in realizing that these incredibly talentedartists love the same kind of music you do, love the same people you do.

*But for me, it went even deeper than that. Because really, Born Under a Bad Sign isKing’s best song, I think, and Spoonful is far and away my favorite Howlin’ Wolfsong. So, not only does Cream love themusic I love, they love the exact songsthat I love.

*Now, allow me to really tell you why you need to get HisBest. This is incredible music. But, far and away, the best song on the albumis Spoonful and the reason is that incredible, insistent riff that just grindslike the mills of God. I mean, it isastounding.

*daDAAAAAAda daDAAAAAAda daDAAAAAAA DAAAAAA

*Now this live version by Cream throws that riff out prettyquickly, so they can jam in a lot of different ways.

*But then . . .

*But then . . . at 13:30 . . .

*Just for a second, the bass outlines just the verybeginning of that riff. Just those firsttwo notes, just the short and then the long . . . and then, just like that, theband has slipped back into it.

*That moment, at thirteen and a half minutes in, when Creamworks back around the root and just slips back into that groove . . . that isnot just a great moment on this album, it is one of the great moments ofmusic.

*Next up, it’s Traintime and I suppose some people probablydislike this song. It’s just Bruce’sfrantic harmonica and a shuffle pattern on the drums by Baker with theoccasional shouted lyric from Bruce for over seven minutes.

*Me? I love it. It’s just incredibly frenetic and violent,just music at its most blistering. Bythe end of the song, well, actually by the middle, Bruce is audibly exhausted,gasping for breath, gulping like he’s coming up out of the ocean, in between frenziedharmonica riffs.

*Actually, I just checked. Just two minutes in, you can already start to hear him.

*Again, this is no great lyric or exactly a great song. But it’s a marathon of endurance by Bruce andit’s just incredible to hear him keep going and going and going.

*Again, let’s go to BBC Sessions as it features an evenfaster and more frenetic version of Traintime from 1966, again, two yearsbefore the version on Wheels of Fire. Like Crossroads, it’s not even half as long as the final version on thisalbum. On BBC Sessions, Traintime clocksin at a frenzied two and a half minutes and by the time they’re in that lastthirty seconds, you really begin to fear Bruce is going to just have a coronaryright there on mike.

*And then, after three incredibly brilliant live numbers,it’s the fourth and final track on Live at the Fillmore. And guess what? It was this track and this track only thatgot the album on the list.

*Now, I grant you, it is a sixteen minute drum solo, butreally, how bad could it be?

*That’s right, I said a sixteen minute drum solo.

*The name of the song is Toad, which I suppose is what we’resupposed to imagine hopping maniacally all over the drum set.

*Actually, Bruce and Clapton play for nearly the first twoand a half minutes. And then they comein again for the last forty-five seconds. So, it’s actually a thirteen minute drum solo. Which is way more awesome.

*Now, I do not discount Ginger Baker’s talent. I do not discount that he does do someincredible riffs here. I do however saytwo things with absolute certainty.

*1. This song is toolong.

*2. This song is notenough to make this a bad album.

*Nick Hornby wrote about Wheels of Fire briefly in 31 Songs,(released in some markets as Songbook), which, by the by, is the best book ofmusic criticism ever authored and a book I go back to on a regular basis tokeep me honest in my own critical writing, musical or not. Anyway, he had an incredibly funny sectionabout instrumental solos in which he backhanded Wheels of Fire for introducingthe drum solo.

*Now, of course, they didn’t, as any fan of jazz knows. The drum solo traveled to rock from jazz,where it had long been a standby by 1968. And of course, Ginger Baker was every bit as much a jazz drummer as hewas a rock one. So, it is not entirelyoff the beam that he would want a track like this on the album.

*But, as I said, too long by half. Not that it’s a bad listen the firsttime. But by the third time you listenthrough the album, you are sort of ready to move on.

*Which brings us back to Nick Hornby’s writing onsolos. He pinpoints a moment at a LedZep concert where the keyboard player had launched into an interminable solo asone of the most important moments in his musical life. It was, he said, the moment he realized that he could WALK OUT, that he couldLEAVE and then COME BACK!

*He says, in a much funnier way than I am now saying, thathe nipped round the corner to a pub, had a pint and then walked back, arrivingjust in time for Page to rip into the next song.

*So, yes, I understand that a thirteen minute drum solo issomewhat annoying on repeated listens, even to a drummer. But it is one song and I have yet to see a CDplayer come without a skip button. Or,since it’s the last song, just Eject, you know?

*In short, there are missteps, like the idiotic Pressed Rat& Warthog and Toad that probably ascend to the level of really bad and evenannoying. But that is not enough to keepthis album from being what it is, which is a masterpiece and an essentialalbum.

*I disagree strongly with anyone placing this album on aworst albums of any kind list. Okay,that’s said. And with that, I suppose,we end Wheels of Fire, an epic by any standard, a great album by any reasonablestandard.

*Next time, it’s Journey with the album that catapulted themto stardom, Escape. But there’s noescape for us; we’ll be going through the album track by track. You may be tempted to think my endurance willflag . . . but . . . don’t . . . stop . . . believin’!! Next time, Journey!

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