Sunshine Of Your Love White Room Strange Brew Cream

The bible reference at the end does not exist in reality.
Sunshine Of Your Love Album: Disraeli Gears (1967)
White Room Album: Wheels Of Fire (1968)
Strange Brew Album: Disraeli Gears (1967)
by Cream

Sunshine Of Your Love has a lyric written by Pete Brown, a beat poet who was friends with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of Cream. He also wrote lyrics for the band's songs "I Feel Free" and "White Room." Eric Clapton - the guitarist and most famous member of Cream - wrote the music along with Jack Bruce.

Pete Brown wrote the opening line after being up all night working with Bruce and watching the sun come up. He told the tale: "We had been working all night and had gotten some stuff done. We had very little time to write for Cream, but we happened to have some spare time and Jack came up with the riff. He was playing a stand-up - he still had his stand-up bass, because he'd been a jazz musician. He was playing stand-up bass, and he said, 'What about this then?' and played the famous riff. I looked out the window and wrote down, 'It's getting near dawn.' That's how it happened. It's actually all true, really, all real stuff."

Jack Bruce's bass line carries Sunshine Of Your Love. He got the idea for it after going to a Jimi Hendrix concert. When Kees van Wee interviewed Bruce in 2003 for the Dutch magazine Heaven, Kees asked him which of his many songs epitomizes Jack Bruce the most. At first he was in doubt whether he should answer "Pieces Of Mind" or "Keep On Wondering," but then he changed his mind and opted for "Sunshine Of Your Love." Because, said Bruce, "It's based on a bass riff. And when you enter a music shop this is the song that kids always play to try out a guitar."

Tom Dowd, who worked with most of the artists for Atlantic Records at the time, engineered the Disreali Gears album. Dowd was renowned for his technical genius, but also for his ability to relate to musicians and put them at ease.

When Cream recorded Sunshine Of Your Love, it wasn't working. In the documentary Tom Dowd And The Language Of Music, he explained: "There just wasn't this common ground that they had on so many of the other songs. I said, 'Have you ever seen an American Western where the Indian beat - the downbeat - is the beat? Why don't you play that one. Ginger went inside and they started to run the song again. When they started playing that way, all of the parts came together and they were elated."

According to Rolling Stone magazine's Top 500 songs issue, Jack Bruce knew Sunshine Of Your Love would do well. "Both Booker T. Jones and Otis Redding heard it at Atlantic Studios and told me it was going to be a smash," he recalled.

One man who was not impressed was Ahmet Ertegun, who was head of the group's label. When Bruce revealed Sunshine Of Your Love at the sessions, Ertegun declared it "psychedelic hogwash." Ertegun constantly tried to promote Eric Clapton as the band's leader, and also didn't believe the bassist should be a lead singer. He only relented and agreed to champion this song after Booker T. Jones came by and expressed his approval.

"Sunshine Of Your Love" is one of Eric Clapton's favorites from this days with Cream; he played it at most of his solo shows throughout his career. When Cream played some reunion concerts in 2005, they played the song as their encore.

Jimi Hendrix covered Sunshine Of Your Love at some of his concerts, unaware that he was the inspiration for the bass line.

Hendrix did an impromptu performance of Sunshine Of Your Love when he appeared on Happening for Lulu, BBC TV show in England hosted by the prim and proper "To Sir With Love" singer. After playing part of his scheduled song "Hey Joe," Hendrix stopped the performance and said, "We'd like to stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to the Cream, regardless of what kind of group they may be in. We dedicate this to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce."

This version appears on the Experience Hendrix 2CD/3LP The BBC Sessions towards the end of Disc 2/Side 6 on the LP. An instrumental version appears on the 2010 Valleys of Neptune album, which was recorded by Hendrix at London's Olympic Studios on February 16, 1969.

Hendrix engineer and producer Eddie Kramer recalled to Toronto's The Globe and Mail: "Jimi loved Cream, he loved Eric Clapton. It was a fabulous song, he loved to play it, and he would just rip into it whenever the mood hit him."

"Sunshine Of Your Love" was Cream's biggest hit. It was their first to do better in the US than in the UK, as they started to catch on in America. In the US, this first charted in February 1968 at #36. In August, after the album came out, it re-entered the chart and went to #5.

Clapton's guitar solo is based on the '50s song "Blue Moon."

Excepting "Strange Brew," the Disraeli Gears album was recorded in just three days, as the band had to return to England because their work visas were expiring. Engineer Tom Dowd recalls the sessions coming to an abrupt end when a limo driver showed up to take the musicians to the airport. Dowd was tasked with mixing the album in their absence.
Cream played this at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 12, 1993 when they reunited for their induction. To that point, the only other time the band got back together was at Eric Clapton's wedding in 1979.

Pete Brown, Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton are the credited songwriters on "Sunshine Of Your Love," omitting Cream drummer Ginger Baker, who resented the way the band handled songwriting credits. Despite being regarded as one of the greatest drummers of his era, he suffered from financial hardships in part because he got the smallest slice of royalties from the Cream years. Bassist Jack Bruce and lyricist Pete Brown got the biggest cuts because they were most often credited as songwriters ("White Room," for instance, is credited to Bruce and Brown). But Baker and Bruce legitimately hated each other on a personal level, and there was a very real possibility Bruce had some malice in his heart as well.

Baker had specific issues with the way things played out with "Sunshine Of Your Love" and "White Room." In Ken McNab's book You Started It, Baker is quoted, "The whole way 'Sunshine' turned out was totally my input, and I've never even received a thank you for it."

In The Breakfast Club (1985), John Bender (Judd Nelson) tries to liven up Saturday detention by mimicking the riff on air guitar.
Sunshine Of Your Love was used in these TV shows:

Endeavor ("Passenger" - 2018)
Lilyhammer ("Millwall Brick" - 2013)
Futurama ("30% Iron Chef" - 2002)
Family Guy ("Mr. Saturday Knight" - 2001)
7th Heaven ("No Sex, Some Drugs and a Little Rock 'n' Roll" - 1998)
Freaks and Geeks ("I'm With The Band" - 1999)
The Simpsons ("Mother Simpson" - 1995)
Perfect Strangers ("This Old House" - 1990)
The Wonder Years ("Heart of Darkness" - 1988)

And in these movies:

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Blood Ties (2013)
The Matchmaker (2010)
School of Rock (2003)
The In-Laws (2003)
True Lies (1994)
Backdraft (1991)
Goodfellas (1990)

Jack Bruce released a new version of Sunshine Of Your Love on his 2001 album Shadows In The Air. Clapton played on it along with Latin percussionists from New York City, which gave it a salsa sound.

White Room is about depression and hopelessness, but the setting is an empty apartment. The lyrics were written by a poet named Pete Brown, who was a friend of Cream bass player Jack Bruce, the lead vocalist on the track. Brown also wrote the words for "Sunshine Of Your Love," "I Feel Free" and "SWLABR."

The music was written first. Pete Brown's first attempt at a lyric was something about a "doomed hippie girl" - the song was called "Cinderella's Last Goodnight." Jack Bruce wasn't buying it, so he scrapped that idea and pulled up an eight-page poem he had written earlier, which he reworked into "White Room."

Pete Brown told the story: "It was a meandering thing about a relationship that I was in and how I was at the time. It was a kind of watershed period really. It was a time before I stopped being a relative barman and became a songwriter, because I was a professional poet, you know. I was doing poetry readings and making a living from that. It wasn't a very good living, and then I got asked to work by Ginger and Jack with them and then started to make a kind of living.

And there was this kind of transitional period where I lived in this actual white room and was trying to come to terms with various things that were going on. It's a place where I stopped, I gave up all drugs and alcohol at that time in 1967 as a result of being in the white room, so it was a kind of watershed period. That song's like a kind of weird little movie: it changes perspectives all the time. That's why it's probably lasted - it's got a kind of mystery to it."

Jack Bruce wrote the music to White Room. He was inspired by a cycling tour that he took in France.

The "white room" was a literal place: a room in an apartment where Pete Brown was living. It was not, as some suspected, an institution.
Upon its release, Wheels Of Fire was given a terrible review by Rolling Stone magazine. They claim that "White Room" has "The exact same lines for guitar, bass and drums" as "Tales Of Brave Ulysses." If you listen to both songs, they are somewhat similar, but nowhere near the level they claim. >>
Eric Clapton used a wah-wah pedal on his guitar. He got the idea from Jimi Hendrix.

Clapton's solo earned the #2 spot on Guitar World's greatest wah solos of all time in 2015. The #1 spot? Hendrix' "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)."

Why are the starlings tired? Because the pollution in London was killing them. Pete Brown said: "The 'tired starlings' is also a little bit of a metaphor for the feminine in a way, as well. It was women having to put up with rather a lot - too much pressure on them at the time."

More lyric interpretation courtesy of Pete Brown:

"Goodbye Windows" - "Just people waving goodbye from train windows."

"Black-roof Country" - "That was the kind of area that I lived in. There were still steam trains at one point around that area, so the roofs were black. It was black and sooty. It's got that kind of a feel to it."

On their last tour before the band broke up, Cream opened most of their shows with White Room. When Cream did a reunion tour in 2005, they played it near the end of the sets.
Clapton refused to play this after leaving Cream until 1985, when Paul Shaffer urged him to play it while he was sitting in with the band on Late Night With David Letterman. That same year, Clapton played it at Live Aid.

White Room was released as a single after Cream had broken up. It did better in the US than in England, since Cream had caught on in the States.
In 2000, Apple Computer used this in commercials for their white iMacs. While the song does have the word "white" in the title, the subject matter is not good for selling computers.

Drummer Ginger Baker came up with the iconic 5/4 Bolero introduction but received no songwriting credit for his efforts. This troubled his pride and his bank account. With no songwriting credits, he earned the least amount of royalties. That was the case not only with "White Room" but also the hit "Sunshine Of Your Love" and every other Cream song. Baker suffered financially for the rest of his life and resented Cream for it - particularly bassist Jack Bruce. Their rivalry started the day they met but was greatly exasperated by the royalties issue.

Clapton performed White Room in 1999 for the album Sheryl Crow and Friends: Live From Central Park. Clapton and Crow were an item for a time in the '90s.

Pete Brown said: "It was a miracle it worked, considering it was me writing a monologue about a new flat."

White Room plays during a scene in the 2019 movie The Joker where the title character is sitting in the back of a cop car. The Joker has a smile on his face, as he observes the destruction he has caused in Gotham.

Jack Bruce recorded a new, Latin-influenced version on his 2001 album Shadows In The Air. Clapton played on this as well as his new recording of "Sunshine Of Your Love."

Strange Brew is based on a blues song Cream used to play called "Lawdy Mama." Felix Pappalardi, who produced the album, wrote new lyrics to the song with his wife, Gail Collins, and Eric Clapton worked out the arrangement and also sang lead. Pappalardi, Collins and Clapton are the credited writers on the song.

As for Pappalardi, he went on to form Mountain, a band he also produced. In 1983, he was shot and killed by Collins in a domestic dispute; Collins was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide.

When Cream performed the early version of Strange Brew as "Lawdy Mama," Clapton and bass player Jack Bruce would share lead vocals. The band recorded both "Lawdy Mama" and "Strange Brew" at Atlantic Studios in New York on April 3, 1967. The band had spent the previous week in the city, performing daily at the "Music In The Fifth Dimension" show at the RKO Theater. These shows were organized by the influential disc jockey Murray the K, and provided great exposure for Cream in America. Other acts on the bill for some of these shows: The Who, Wilson Pickett and the Lovin' Spoonful. Cream would complete the Disraeli Gears album when they returned to the United States the next month.
The lyrics refer to a female, which could mean drugs or be a more literal reference to a woman. Either way, she is "killing what's inside of you."

Cream had a very psychedelic sound, Strange Brew song was released in the Summer of Love, where it fit in quite well.

To craft "Strange Brew," producer Felix Pappalardi added Eric Clapton's vocal to a take of the band's recording of "Lawdy Mama," which appears as a bonus track on the 2004 re-release of Disraeli Gears, but didn't make the original album. Jack Bruce wasn't happy about this, especially since he wasn't able to re-record his bassline. To keep the tenuous peace in the band during Cream's reunion concerts in 2005, "Strange Brew" was omitted from their 19-song playlist, despite being one of their best known and loved songs.

Clapton got the idea for the album title after a roadie named Mick Turner told him about the derailleur gears on his bicycle. Derailleur, pronounced "Di-rail-yer," are the kind of gears commonly found on 10-speed bikes. The roadie pronounced it "Disraeli," which led to the title.

On Eric Clapton's Crossroads boxed set, Strange Brew is placed next to "Lawdy Mama," the Blues song it is based on.

There is a movie called Strange Brew, but it has nothing to with the song. Made in 1983, it stars Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as Canadian brothers who love beer.

The album didn't appear until November 1967, but this song was issued as the first single in June of that year, reaching its UK peak of #17 on July 15. Disraeli Gears was Cream's second album; they would release two more before calling it quits.