Disraeli Gears is the second studio album by the British rock band Cream. It was produced by Felix Pappalardi and released on Reaction Records in 1967. The album features the singles "Strange Brew" and "Sunshine of Your Love".
The original 11-track album was remastered in 1998, and then subsequently released as a two-disc Deluxe Edition in 2004.
Production
Early demo sessions for the album were held on March 15, 1967, at London's Ryemuse Studios which yielded rough renditions of "SWLABR", "Blue Condition" and "We're Going Wrong" as well as three other Bruce/Brown compositions: "Hey Now Princess", "The Weird Of Hermiston" and "The Clearout", the latter two of which would be re-recorded for Bruce's 1969 solo effort Songs for a Tailor. On April 3, following the band's nine shows as part of Murray the K's "Music in the 5th Dimension" concert series which comprised their first tour of America, Cream checked into Atlantic Studios in New York City with label owner Ahmet Ertegun to record a cover of "Lawdy Mama". Cream's American label, ATCO, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlantic Records. Encouraged by the results, Ertegun booked more time at the studio for a return visit to the US the following month.
The bulk of the album was recorded at Atlantic between 11 and 15 May 1967. The sessions were produced by Ertegun protege and future Mountain bassist Felix Pappalardi and engineered by Tom Dowd, who would later work with Clapton on projects such as Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs and 461 Ocean Boulevard. According to Dowd, the recording sessions took only three-and-a-half days, as the band's visas expired on the very last day of recording. Pappalardi soon proved his worth to the group when he took the tape of "Lawdy Mama" recorded in April and added new lyrics he co-wrote with his wife Gail Collins, transforming the song into "Strange Brew", the first track completed at the sessions (the Pappalardi songwriting team would also contribute "World of Pain"). Believing the band to be led by Clapton, and that the star of a band should sing, he also baulked at the idea of Bruce or Baker taking any vocal leads but again relented after resistance from the group. The sessions reportedly concluded just hours before their visas expired and the band was due to fly back to the UK.
Musical style
Disraeli Gears features the group veering away, quite heavily, from their blues roots and indulging in more psychedelic sounds, in particular on tracks such as "Tales of Brave Ulysses", "SWLABR", "World of Pain" and "Dance the Night Away". "Tales of Brave Ulysses" had been inspired by a trip to Ibiza that artist Martin Sharp had recently taken, where the sirens were alleged to have sung to Ulysses. "Dance the Night Away" was penned by Pete Brown as a tribute to the freedom dancing gave him after he quit drugs, while the words to "We're Going Wrong" had been written by Bruce after a fight he'd had with his wife. The most blues-like tunes on the album are Clapton's arrangement of "Outside Woman Blues", the Bruce-Brown composition "Take It Back" which had been inspired by the contemporary media images of American students burning their draft cards and featured harmonica work by Jack Bruce, plus the opening track "Strange Brew", which was based on the 12-bar blues "Lawdy Mama" and featured a guitar solo copied from Albert King's solo on "Oh Pretty Woman".
Unlike the previous Fresh Cream, which was vocally dominated by Bruce, the vocals on Disraeli Gears were a more democratic affair. Clapton sings lead on "Strange Brew" and "Outside Woman Blues", plus co-lead on "World of Pain", "Dance the Night Away" and "Sunshine of Your Love". Baker, meanwhile, performs lead vocals on his composition "Blue Condition" which the others encouraged him to write (an outtake features Clapton on vocal). He also divulged that the full title of "SWLABR" is "She Walks Like A Bearded Rainbow" (which lyricist Brown admitted was about a man who defaces a painting of his girlfriend by adding facial hair)
The cover art was later used for the compilation Those Were the Days.
Drummer Ginger Baker recalled how the album's title was based on a malapropism which alluded to 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli:
Release
The album was released in November 1967 by Reaction Records and was a big commercial success, reaching No. 5 on the UK Albums Chart, No. 4 in the US and No. 1 on the Swedish and Finnish charts. The album was also No. 1 for two weeks on the Australian album chart and was listed as the No. 1 album of 1968 by Cash Box in its year-end album chart.
Deluxe Edition
The original 11-track album was remastered by Joseph M. Palmaccio at PolyGram Studios
| rev3 = Chicago Tribune
| rev3Score =
| rev4 = The Encyclopedia of Popular Music
| rev4score =
| rev5 = The Great Rock Discography
| rev5Score = 9/10
| rev6 = Music Story
| rev6Score =
|rev7 = MusicHound Rock
|rev7score =
| rev8 = Sputnikmusic
| rev8score =
The album was highly praised on release. Melody Maker stated that it was "a quality-heavy, propelling package of incredible Cream superpower. Clapton's guitar menacing almost like a machine gun, sometimes eerily and overpoweringly persuasive as it reaches serpent-like deep into the Cream's varied and hypnotic musical journeys." Disc & Music Echo raved it "shows the completely individual way the group is developing from their early blues days", pointing out that all the songs are "more or less perfect and it's merely a matter of personal bias which you think is best." In the United States, Rolling Stone gave a largely positive review, noting it displayed a more original direction than the debut album with "miles of listening pleasure" in tracks like "Strange Brew", "Sunshine Of Your Love", "SWLABR" and "Take It Back" but also critiquing that the album "does not totally hang together" where "in some tracks the material is too pale to support the heavy instrumental work which makes Cream such an overwhelming trio".
Retrospectively, writing for the BBC, Chris Jones described the album as "a perfect encapsulation of the point where the blues got psychedelic and in turn got heavy". Classic Rocks Louder notes "it captured epic studio performances by Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker at the peak of their powers as a group" and "became a touchstone recording of the '60s counterculture." Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic describes the album as "a quintessential heavy rock album of the '60s"
In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
It was voted number 182 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). In 2003 the album was ranked number 112 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, then was re-ranked at number 114 in a 2012 revised list, and at number 170 in a 2020 revised list. VH1 named it 87th-greatest album of all time in 2001.
In 2008, the album won a Classic Rock Roll of Honours Award for Classic Album.
Track listing
Original album
Disraeli Gears – deluxe edition (2004)
{|
|-
| valign=top |
Disc one (stereo)
;Original album
:Tracks 1–11
;Out-takes
- <li value=12> "Lawdy Mama" – version 1 (Traditional, arr. Clapton) – 2:00
::Recorded 3 April 1967 at Atlantic Studios
::Recorded by Ahmet Ertegun
- <li value=13> "Blue Condition" – alternate version (Baker) – 3:13
::Eric Clapton vocal, previously unreleased
;Demos
- <li value=14> "We're Going Wrong" (Bruce) – 3:49
- "Hey Now, Princess" (Bruce, Brown) – 3:31
- "SWLABR" (Bruce, Brown) – 4:30
- "Weird of Hermiston" (Bruce, Brown) – 3:12
- "The Clearout" (Bruce, Brown) – 3:58
::Recorded 15 March 1967 at Ryemuse Studios, London
| valign=bottom |
Disc two (mono)
;Original album and out-takes
:Tracks 1–13
;BBC recordings
- <li value=14>"Strange Brew" (Clapton, Pappalardi, Collins) – 3:00
- "Tales of Brave Ulysses" (Clapton, Sharp) – 2:55
- "We're Going Wrong" (Bruce) – 3:25
::Recorded 30 May 1967, broadcast 3 June on BBC Light Programme
- <li value=17> "Born Under a Bad Sign" (Booker T. Jones, William Bell) – 3:03
- "Outside Woman Blues" (Reynolds) – 3:18
- "Take It Back" (Bruce, Brown) – 2:17
::Recorded 24 October 1967, broadcast 29 October on BBC Radio 1
- <li value=20> "Politician" (Bruce, Brown) – 3:59
- "SWLABR" (Bruce, Brown) – 2:32
- "Steppin' Out" (James Bracken) – 3:37
::Recorded 9 January 1968, broadcast 14 January on BBC Radio 1
|}
- Tracks previously released on the Those Were the Days box set.
- Tracks previously released on the BBC Sessions compilation album.
Personnel
A. Side One, B. Side Two
Cream
- Jack Bruce – vocals (all tracks except A.1, A.5, B.4); bass guitar (all tracks except B.6); piano (A.5, B.6); harmonica (B.5)
- Eric Clapton – vocals (A.1–4, B.4, B.6); electric guitar (all tracks except A.4, B.6); twelve-string guitar (A.4)
- Ginger Baker – drums (all tracks except B.6); percussion (all tracks except B.6); vocals (A.5, B.6)
Production
- Felix Pappalardi – producer
- Tom Dowd – recording engineer
- Bob Whitaker – cover photography
- Martin Sharp – cover art
- Jim Marshall – additional photography
Charts
Weekly charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|-
!Chart (1967–1969)
!Peak<br/>position
|-
!scope="row"|Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)
|1
|-
|-
!scope="row"|Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)
|1
|-
!scope="row"|French Albums (SNEP)
|2
|-
!scope="row"|New Zealand Albums (Recorded Music NZ)
|4
|-
|-
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|-
!Chart (2019–2021)
!Peak<br/>position
|-
|-
|-
!scope="row"|Swedish Physical Albums (Sverigetopplistan)
|16
|-
!scope="row"|Swedish Vinyl Albums (Sverigetopplistan)
|1
|-
!scope="row"|UK Vinyl Albums (OCC)
|18
|}
Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|-
!Chart (1968)
!Position
|-
!scope="row"|Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)
|1
|}
Certifications
Release history
{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Region
! Date
! Label
! Format
! Catalogue
|-
|rowspan="2"| United Kingdom
|rowspan="2"| November 1967
|rowspan="2"| Reaction Records
| mono LP
| 593 003
|-
| stereo LP
| 594 003
|-
|rowspan="2"| United States
|rowspan="2"| November 1967
|rowspan="2"| Atco Records
| mono LP
| 33-232
|-
| stereo LP
| SD 33-232
|-
| Germany
| November 1967
| Polydor Records
| stereo LP
| 184 105
|-
| Japan
| May 1968
| Polydor Records
| stereo LP
| MP-1390
|-
| United States
| 1977
| RSO Records
| LP
| RS 1–3010
|-
| United States
| 1986
| Polydor Records
| CD
| 823 636-2
|-
| United States
| 2004
| Polydor Records/Chronciles
| Deluxe Edition CD
| B0003331-02
|-
| United Kingdom
| 2004
| Polydor Records
| Deluxe Edition CD
| 0602498193129
|-
| Japan
| 2013
| USM Japan
| SACD
| UIGY 15002
|}
See also
- Album era
Notes
References
Sources
- Cream, Disraeli Gears (1967)
- Cream, Disraeli Gears – Deluxe Edition (2004)
Further reading
External links
- Disraeli Gears. Those Were the Days.
- Disraeli Gears. JackBruce.com.
- Disraeli Gears – Deluxe Edition JackBruce.com.
- Disraeli Gears – GB Signed Edition Gingerbaker.com.