CREAM

Goodbye Tour – Live 1968 UMC

IN many ways, it was unlikely that Cream would last as long as they did. By the time they split in November 1968, the group had been going for just over two years and recorded four albums. Before then Eric Clapton had cycled rapidly through the Yardbirds and the Bluesbreakers, racking up a few months in each as well spending time in shorter one-off projects like The Immediate All-Stars and The Powerhouse, while Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were famed for their incendiary relationship in the Graham Bond Organisation.

In that context, Cream were stayers. When they inevitably decided to split, their autumn US shows were renamed the Goodbye Tour and the band signed off with two, including the band’s last show at the Royal Albert Hall, where an unemotional departure is concluded by compere John Peel’s matter-of-fact last words: “That really has to be it.”