This was the concert that was never going to happen. Never. Not ‘never’ as in when hell freezes over: Who knows, as the earth gets warmer maybe the underworld will become more temperate; maybe the devil will one day go skating on the permafrost. No, this was ‘never’ as in never, ever.
No matter how many music-lovers might want so much to see it, these three men were never again going to share a stage – let alone play through their back catalogue. Separate hotels, separate limousines, separate dressing rooms wouldn’t be enough. They would have had to have been in separate auditoria in separate cities. The theory was that they had moved on, they weren’t interested in looking back, and anyway, the theory was, these three men hated each other with poisonous venom and would go a long way to avoid each other’s company.
Hated isn’t quite right; the perception was that it was more complex than that. Jack and Eric were wary of each other, just as Ginger made Eric very uncomfortable at best. Ginger resented Eric while Jack resented Eric, and Jack and Ginger utterly loathed each other. There was some truth in all that, but the feelings were less intense, or at least, they wavered, and the reality was far more subtle.
On the other hand, all three had matured as they had got older, and had moved away from each other, both as personalities and in terms of their musical fulfilment. They had revisited the forms that had most inspired them forty years ago; Eric had been able to exercise his passion for the blues, Jack had produced a long line of creative and individual albums, and Ginger had immersed himself in world rhythms (and polo ponies). In becoming more independent, musically, they moved three different ways round the same sphere and perhaps a reunion was inevitable rather than impossible. Now they could revisit their old music without revisiting their old selves.
The passage of time was another factor. The now-traditional rock ‘n roll curses of drink and drugs had exacted a price on their contemporaries; the majority of other musicians they had played with in the Sixties were dead. It was astonishing that these three men, given the extent of their individual indulgences, should still be alive and able to play.
And, they had all passed the terrible, unforgiving landmark of sixty. Ginger was sixty-five, Jack was a few days away from his sixty-second birthday, and Eric had seen his sixtieth just a few weeks before. Time was not on their side. They weren’t young any more, they weren’t middle-aged any more, they were not far off being old men; when they were first Cream they would have thought anyone of that age to be truly ancient.
There are many rock ‘n roll stars who haven’t aged well. There have been some band reunions which simply shouldn’t have happened. Jack, Eric and Ginger had one great psychological advantage though; they didn’t identify with Elvis, overweight, drug-addled, dying constipated on the toilet, but with their jazz and blues heroes. These were men for who to be elderly meant to be venerable; the majority improved with age, played to larger and more sophisticated audiences, and never stopped recruiting new fans. Critics might suggest cruelly – but often accurately – that it was time for certain Sixties rock stars to retire and spend more time with their money, but no-one said that of the great jazz and blues men. Rock ‘n roll is the music of the young – and those who are happy to temporarily suspend the ageing process, and can get away with it with dignity – but jazz and blues are ageless and timeless. Teenagers might mock a pop record that is forty years old, but a Robert Johnson track that’s thirty years older than that is something else entirely. Nobody suggests that it’s time for B B King to trade in his guitar, move to Florida and start playing bridge.
At nine minutes past eight on Monday May 2, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton walked on stage at The Royal Albert Hall, and without any introduction – what introduction could there have been? – launched into I’m So Glad. One expensive box, curiously, was unoccupied, but otherwise there wasn’t an empty seat in the house – except that at that moment every last member of the audience was on their feet, roaring with utter delight.
Behind them on a panel which stretched right across the stage was a delightfully old-fashioned light show; computer-generated now, but exactly replicating the coloured oil-in-glass slide projections of the Sixties. It was a nice touch. Otherwise, the stage was empty except for their amps and speakers (which, to the horror of the purists, weren’t Marshalls). And the volume was never what it would have been four decades ago; nowhere near an eleven, seven at the most.
Eric, recently a father again, looked relaxed, slim and fit. Jack was slightly hunched, and of the three, the most obviously nervous. Ginger was all smiles and grins, and looked the most delighted to be there.