By David R. Adler

Jack Bruce earned his greatest fame as the bassist and singer for Cream, the British Invasion power trio that launched Eric Clapton to stardom and made rock history with its thunderous, psychedelic blend of blues and proto-metal. Since the group’s break-up in late 1968, all three members have gone on to pursue solo careers. Clapton, of course, became an international superstar, while Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker pursued idiosyncratic musical paths that often brought them into the worlds of jazz and fusion. Bruce’s early musical training was an asset in this regard. He first formed a group with Hendrix drummer Mitch Mitchell and jazz guitar giant Larry Coryell. After putting out a couple of solo albums he became a member of the Tony Williams Lifetime, one of his truly formative experiences. Other musicians with whom Bruce has worked, either in his own bands or on sessions and special projects, include Frank Zappa, Lou Reed, Carla Bley, Michael Mantler, Kip Hanrahan, Leslie West, Robin Trower, Gary Moore, Mick Taylor, and David Sancious.

Bruce has made over a dozen solo records since 1969, and on July 10 of this year he’ll release Shadows in the Air (Sanctuary). Co-produced by Bruce and Kip Hanrahan, it’s a collection of songs with an ambitious, progressive-rock sweep and an emphasis on Latin percussion, one of Bruce’s great enthusiasms for many years. Bruce sings and plays bass, piano, and acoustic guitar. Some of his accomplices are guitarist Vernon Reid, drummers Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez and Robby Ameen, percussionists Milton Cardona and Richie Flores, altoist Miguel Zenon (of tenorist David Sanchez’s band), and on one track, son Malcolm Bruce on guitar and synth. Guesting on revamped Latin versions of the Cream classics "Sunshine of Your Love" and "White Room" is none other than Eric Clapton himself. In support of the record, Bruce plans to take a nine-piece band on a world tour beginning in late September. And on the horizon, plans are brewing for another power trio, with guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Dennis Chambers.

In 1993 Bruce and his fellow members of Cream were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We had a chance to catch up with the personable, 58-year-old Scotsman over lunch during his brief press junket to New York in late May.

AAJ: Do you come out this way often?

Jack Bruce: Oh yeah, I’m in New York a lot. Most recently last April. I was working with Warren Haynes, just some odds and ends, Government Mule.

AAJ: Where do you live now?

JB: I live in England, in Suffolk, about 70 miles northeast of London.

AAJ: Are you a country person?

JB: Yeah, well I was a city boy who always loved the country. When I was a kid I had a bike, and I used to love to get out into the country. In Glasgow it’s very easy — you can cycle about 20 miles and you’re actually in the mountains. It’s a wonderful city in that way, so I was lucky. Where I live now is very prim-and-proper England, but it has its own charm. I also have a house in Italy, a medieval house that I go to as much as possible.

AAJ: You’re planning to tour in the fall?

JB: Yeah, late September we’ll come back. I’ve got a couple of things in Europe first. Then fall in America, and on to South America, Japan, Australia.

AAJ: Will the live band be similar to the one heard on the new album?

JB: Yes, it’ll be a nine-piece band. We’ll be doing virtually all the material from this album plus a few other things.

AAJ: Who will be in the band, exactly?

JB: Vernon Reid on guitar, all four of the main drummers will be with me. I’ve got Bernie Worrell, who’ll be playing keyboards when I’m not, and a wonderful English bass player named Mick Hutton, who’ll be playing bass when I’m playing piano.

AAJ: How much bass will you play during a typical set?

JB: I’ll play a little bass at the beginning and switch to piano for the ballads. Then it’s gonna end up kind of rockin’ out, ya know? I haven’t quite planned the set yet, but I imagine it’s gonna take off toward the end, for a climax.

AAJ: There’s a lot of percussion on the album.

JB: Yeah, that’s something I’ve always explored. Rhythm has always been of great interest to me, having played with Ginger Baker, Tony Williams, Billy Cobham, people like that. I’ve always loved Indian and African rhythms. I think the main theme that runs through the album is the drummers, Robby Ameen and Horacio Hernandez on the traps, along with my voice. Those three elements are on all the tracks. Vernon is also in the core band, if you like, but the other guys are coming in and out. It’s gonna be a fun set, because I want it to segue, I don’t want it to stop, I want to keep the momentum going. I was very influenced by some of the late Miles Davis concerts that I saw in Europe. It’s kind of different if you’re playing in a straight rock band — you play a song, you finish. That’s nice, but I want to get this mood thing going. I’m really excited about the live performances. I think it’s gonna take it to another level.

AAJ: When you say "late" Miles, when do you mean exactly?

JB: In the 80s, when he came back. I saw him in Frankfurt, at one of his early resurgence concerts, the band with Mike Stern and so on. I always loved Miles, of course, I’m not alone. I got to know him a little bit when I was with Lifetime. He was very encouraging to me. But to see him come back and reinvent himself, it was just fantastic. A lot of people have problems with that period, but I have no problems with it.

AAJ: It was unlike anything that anyone had done before…

JB: Absolutely. Seeing him at those large European jazz festivals, it was pretty amazing — some of the best music I’ve ever heard. And a big influence on me, not necessarily musically, but in terms of the approach.

AAJ: It’s really about putting on a show…

JB: Yeah, that excites me. The fact that instead of playing a song, waiting for applause, and so on, the whole concert almost becomes a piece in itself, like a composition. So I’m gonna have a bash at that. [Laughs.]

AAJ: You dedicated the track "Directions Home" to Tony Williams and Larry Young. There’s a line that asks, "shouldn’t we be soaring by now?" What were you trying to express?

JB: I think it’s actually quite political. Maybe it’s similar to Marvin Gaye’s "What’s Goin’ On." It was very much an improvised track, and I did the vocal overdub — they’re Kip’s words. I think of them as quite political, saying that at this point in time, things should be a hell of a lot better for a hell of a lot more people.

AAJ: How did you hook up with the Tony Williams Lifetime?

JB: Like many people of my generation, I was aware of Tony when he was very young. [Eric Dolphy’s] Out to Lunch changed my life. Tony just seemed to reinvent percussion. But he was also within the tradition, he didn’t go outside of that. My own first band was playing the Fillmore East, and John McLaughlin brought Tony down to the concert. And Tony just said, "would you like to join the band?" I said, "sure." [Laughs.] I was thrilled to be asked. I think Tony was quite surprised, because he knew me as the bass player from Cream, but I was able to sight-read quite difficult pieces and so on, I had no problem with that. But when we went out and did what we did, it proved to be rather difficult to gain any acceptance, at least the kind I thought we deserved. We were being criticized from both sides: rock people said it was too complicated, too many notes, and the jazz people were saying that Tony had sold out, which was very, very far from the truth. Absolutely not true.

So the song "Directions Home" started out being called "Boston Ball Game 2000." There’s another track, "Boston Ball Game 1967," which is a basic African rhythm in a kind of 12 that goes like this [claps it out]: ta-ta-tata-ta-ta//ta-ta-tata-ta-ta. "Directions Home" is this one [claps again]: ta-ta-tata-ta-ta-ta//tata-tata-ta-ta. So it’s the first and kind of reversed, and to me it’s something I could imagine Tony Williams doing. You remember "Clap City" and all those things. Ya know, "Old Bum’s Rush" and all those records.

AAJ: What’s the significance of the "Ball Game"?

JB: When Cream took one of its early trips to the States for a very long tour, we were holed up in Boston in some hotel. And we couldn’t go out, because there was a World Series going on between the Red Sox and The Cardinals. The Cardinals won. There was a lot of ill feeling going on at that time, and it seemed to be kind of directed toward us. [Laughs.]

AAJ: Because you were Englishmen?

JB: Because we were freaks. The way that we looked. It was a very conservative country in those days.

AAJ: Were you rock stars at that point?

JB: No, we were struggling musicians. We were playing a place called the Psychedelic Supermarket, not really the place for rock stars. We couldn’t go out — there was a lot of antagonism. I wrote quite a lot of songs at the hotel, and this is one that I wrote back then. "Directions Home" was a development of that rhythmic approach, after the experience of playing with people like Tony.

AAJ: You also brought Eric Clapton in for the two Cream songs. Are the former Cream members all on good terms, then?

JB: Well, I haven’t spoken to Ginger for quite a while. He’s living in South Africa. He had some big problems with the government here and had to leave. It’s unfortunate because he was doing some really interesting stuff. Now I don’t know exactly what he’s doing, but it probably involves riding his polo ponies, because that’s his first love. I’ve remained on good terms with Eric since the old days. We don’t have a lot of communication all the time, but when we do get together, it’s quite nice. And it was certainly wonderful to have him in the studio [starts to chuckle] redoing "Sunshine of Your Love" after all those years.

AAJ: Was that the first time since way back when?

JB: No, we played it as a band in 1993 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing. But this was rather different, because I was very proud of the track I had for him to overdub on. He certainly played with a lot of fire. The most important thing for me was to have us singing the double-lead vocal together after all this time, after all we’ve both been through. It was a joy, very moving.

AAJ: And it seems another goal was to bring in this percussion concept and overlay it on these famous old songs.

JB: Yeah, it’s partly that. A lot is the influence of Kip Hanrahan, who I met some 17 years ago. He sent me a cassette — I was living in Germany. And this cassette arrived in the mail, and he’s asking, would you like to come sing on these tracks? And the tracks were absolutely stunning. It’s what became our first record together, Desire Develops an Edge. Of course I jumped at the chance to even try to sing this kind of music. Then I fell in love with the musicians and their approach to music. I’m still playing with Milton Cardona and Richie Flores all these years later. I felt it was timely for me to have them play my music, rather than me trying to play theirs. It seemed like a good idea, what with the success of Carlos Santana, and the Buena Vista Social Club, and things like that.

AAJ: How did you come to start working with Vernon Reid?

JB: Vernon is someone I’ve been aware of and admired for a long time. I can’t remember when I first met him, but we had done some things together over the years. We’re both very influenced by Ornette Coleman. We both grew up impressed by and in love with that freedom that Ornette brought. There’s a resonance there.

AAJ: And how about Horacio Hernandez?

JB: Horacio and I met through Kip, who suggested I play with him. Kip explained that he’s a Latin player who grew up with a great love of rock and especially of my music. When we did get to play together, it was great. Horacio and Robby together also have this affinity.

AAJ: There’s also a new trio in the works with Andy Summers and Dennis Chambers.

JB: We’ve been writing a lot together. But at the moment I’m so excited by the prospect of having my own band that we’ve agreed to put it on hold for a while. There’s time.

AAJ: Have you known Andy Summers for a while?

JB: Yeah, but strangely I didn’t know him in the old days. Because Andy used to play on the London scene when I was first around in the early 60s. But I only really became aware of him when he was with The Police. I had a band with Billy Cobham and David Sancious and Clem Clempson, and we played a concert in Germany with an early version of The Police. I also did a live thing with Mike Mantler and Andy was playing in another band that was there too. We were talking about doing something together, and it finally came together last year.

AAJ: One could almost say that The Police were the Cream of the 80s — both bands were trios, both bassists were lead singers, neither band stayed together very long, Sting and Clapton went on to become huge celebrities…

JB: That’s true. The Police would also do some improvising on their gigs, so that was similar too, but the music wasn’t that similar. When I spoke to Sting he told me that in his early, formative years he was very influenced by the fact that I did my solo records.

AAJ: You’ve also worked with Carla Bley.

JB: Oh yes. She’s really an important American composer. In the late 50s when I was a kid in Glasgow, we used to play in a club called The Cell. We used to get, somehow, printed Carla Bley tunes, I don’t know where they came from. There was a kind of magic in this name, and the tunes were pretty deep as well. She was in one of my bands, of course, with Mick Taylor from the Stones. We did Escalator over the Hill, and not long after we did Mike Mantler’s first record. I’ve worked more with Mike but I met him through Carla. He inherited me somehow. They like the fact that I can sight-read atonal music or whatever, and hit notes, and perfect pitch — it’s kind of useful, being a rock singer who can do that.

Then of course you know the story about how Steve Swallow switched to electric bass. He was playing with Gary Burton (with Larry Coryell). They were opening for Cream at the old Fillmore. Steve saw me play bass with Cream and he went out the next day and got an electric bass. So you can blame me for it. One of the early Kip bands in fact had three bass players — Steve Swallow, Andy Gonzalez, and myself.

AAJ: How did you come to sing on Allan Holdsworth’s Road Games?

JB: Allan is such a complicated person. I believe what happened was that Eddie Van Halen was a huge fan of his, and he got Allan a really amazing record deal. The album turned out to be just an EP. Anyway, Allan being Allan, he said, "I’ll do it, but Eddie Van Halen’s not allowed in the studio." [Laughs.] The record took so long to make, and by the time they brought me in for my vocal, the tape was worn thin. There wasn’t a lot left. It was kind of a difficult session. You could tell that so many things had been changed that the original concept was probably gone. I remember Jeff Berlin, who played bass on the record, came in and listened to one track, and his bass playing was out of time. So many things had been put on top of it and they had to go back and try to redo the original bass track.

AAJ: I remember reading a complaint from Jeff Berlin about his bass solo on "Water on the Brain" being too low in the mix.

JB: Well, he’s a bass player. [Laughs.]

AAJ: Tell me about working with your son, Malcolm.

JB: I had worked with him before — I had a band with him and Kofi Baker, so it was "sons of Cream," ya know. If they didn’t play well I sent them to bed early and stopped the pocket money. [Laughs.] It’s great working with kids because they’re so cheap. [Laughs harder.] No, seriously, Malcolm is a very talented musician. He’s out in Colorado producing two young bands, and has his own band. I’ve seen him play, he’s great. He was very useful on this album because he went to Guildhall School of Music and he’s a trained musician, like me. So he can arrange and write and he was able to help me transcribe some of the horn parts and things.

AAJ: What kind of basses are you playing?

JB: Warwick.

AAJ: Four-string fretless?

JB: Yeah, that’s the classic instrument for me. [Pondering what’s left of his food] By the way, how can you have a Caesar salad with no anchovies? Blasphemy! Caesar will be turning in his grave!