Wheels of Fire

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Wheels of Fire
Cream studio album

Publication
(s)

1968

admission

July-October 1967 (studio) and March 1968 (live)

Label (s) Polydor

Format (s)

DLP

Genre (s)

Blues rock / psychedelic rock

Title (number)

13

running time

80:24

occupation

production

Felix Pappalardi

Studio (s)

IBC Studios , London Atlantic Studios , New York City

chronology
Disraeli Gears Wheels of Fire Goodbye Cream

Wheels of Fire is the third music album by the British blues rock group Cream . It was released as a double album in 1968. The first record contains studio recordings, the second live recordings from the Fillmore West and Winterland .

The album reached # 1 on the charts in the United States and # 3 in the UK. In 2003 Rolling Stone magazine listed it at number 203 on their list of the 500 best albums of all time .

Emergence

Even before the previous album Disraeli Gears was released, Ginger Baker , Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton recorded the first Wheels of Fire record together with Felix Pappalardi in London and New York . It features one of the band's most famous songs, the psychedelic White Room . For the live record, Cream gave several concerts in the Fillmore and in Winterland. The producer Felix Pappalardi had selected the pieces according to the musical abilities of the individual musicians. The blues classics Crossroads by Robert Johnson and Spoonful by Willie Dixon feature Clapton on guitar, the new track Traintime Bruce on harmonica, and Toad from the Fresh Cream album , a long drum solo by Baker. Pieces not used on this album later appeared on Live Cream and Live Cream Volume II . The psychedelic graphics of the fold-out cover were created by Martin Sharp like those of the previous album.

Track list

LP 1: In the Studio

page 1

  1. " White Room " (Jack Bruce, Pete Brown ) - 4:56
  2. "Sitting on Top of the World" ( Walter Vinson , Lonnie Chatmon; arr. Chester Burnett ) - 4:56
  3. "Passing the Time" (Ginger Baker, Mike Taylor ) - 4:31
  4. "As You Said" (Bruce, Brown) - 4:19

Page 2

  1. "Pressed Rat and Warthog" (Baker, Taylor) - 3:13
  2. "Politician" (Bruce, Brown) - 4:11
  3. "Those Were the Days" (Baker, Taylor) - 2:53
  4. "Born Under a Bad Sign" ( Booker T. Jones , William Bell) - 3:08
  5. "Deserted Cities of the Heart" (Bruce, Brown) - 4:36

In addition to Baker, Bruce and Clapton, Felix Pappalardi played various instruments such as viola and trumpet.

LP 2: Live at the Fillmore

The second LP is so titled, even if three of the four pieces were recorded in Winterland

Page 3

  1. " Crossroads " ( Robert Johnson , arranged by Eric Clapton) - 4:13 (March 10, 1968, Winterland, San Francisco)
  2. " Spoonful " ( Willie Dixon ) - 16:44 (March 10, 1968 Winterland, San Francisco)

page 4

  1. "Traintime" (Bruce) - 6:52 (March 8, 1968, Winterland, San Francisco)
  2. "Toad" (Baker) - 3:53 pm (March 7, 1968, The Fillmore, San Francisco)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wheels of Fire in the Billboard 200 ( Memento from May 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Database query of the British charts
  3. ↑ Rolling Stone: 500 Best Albums
  4. ↑ About Wheels of Fire ( Memento of the original from October 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - from the official Ginger Baker archive. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gingerbaker.com

Web links