In this archive: Life after Cream; Ginger's son is born; How Blind Faith began; On tour with Blind Faith; Ginger causes a riot in New York; Pressure and alienation brings on Gingers heroin habit; Ginger recovers but Blind Faith is no more; Ginger gets the next big band together...
The New Year dawned with Cream fans still reeling from the band’s demise. The protagonists themselves took the time to reassess their lives after their sudden and meteoric success had turned into a nightmare from which they all felt the need to escape. But in truth there had been a bond forged, perhaps like no other and that can still be felt in music that undoubtedly has stood the test of time.
The Goodbye Cream album raced up the charts also going gold. Nick Logan writing in the NME of Friday March 1st 1969 describes ‘Goodbye’ as ‘both a farewell from, and an affirmation of, a great group and maybe the greatest – an album that will sell a million and deserves to.’ The final track was ‘What a Bring-down, from the enigmatic Mr Baker’.
Despite this success the ‘enigmatic Mr Baker says in his book Hellraiser, that he felt himself to be ‘in limbo’ and that ‘when Cream folded’ he ‘got back into’ his ‘drug habit big time.’ His friendship with Eric Clapton continued however, and they spent quite a lot of time together in London’s notorious Speakeasy Club. In March Ginger was also in a London studio cutting some tracks with friends George Harrison & Billy Preston & was just launching into ‘That’s the way God Planned it’, when former Cream Roadie Mick Turner popped his head round the door to inform Ginger that he now had a son! Ginger named him Kofi after his great friend Guy Warren, ‘the master drummer from Ghana.’
Not long after this, Ginger in his Jensen FF & Eric in his Ferrari raced each other along the winding English lanes to Steve Winwood’s (Traffic) country cottage, set so far back from the road that it could only be reached by piling into Steve’s Land Rover for a further jolting & in Ginger’s words ‘lunatic’ drive across a ploughed field. But it was here that with the later addition of bassist Rick Grech (of Family) that the first ‘big supergroup after Cream’, Blind Faith, was born.
The first day they went into Olympic Studios to record, Denny Laine (formerly Moody Blues, later Airforce & Wings & Ginger’s friend from the GBO days) also joined them for a phenomenal jam that unfortunately due to a ‘misunderstanding’ missed getting on tape, causing Ginger to get Jimmy Miller in to engineer the rest of the album. Ginger still feels that this album is ‘brilliant, one of the best.’ The band wanted something different for the cover that involved in Ginger’s words ‘a young chick holding a winged phallus’. So sleeve artist Bob Seiderman the younger sister of a girl he discovered on the London tube & fashionable jeweller Micko Milligan constructed a silvered wooden plane that he presented to Ginger after the shoot.
By May 24th, Nick Logan again in the NME, was talking about the planned free concert in Hyde Park to launch the group in June as one that was ‘shaping up to be pop’s answer to Cup Final day.’ ‘Are you ready for Clapton, Winwood & Baker?’ screamed one banner headline, Top Pops magazine ending that week had them on the front cover & said simply ‘Welcome Blind Faith’, whilst another advertised ‘Blind Faith, Free Concert, Hyde Park, June 7, 3 p.m’ Film of the event shows 150,000 people at this momentous occasion in a long vanished world of peace & love on a summer’s day, even if Eric by his own admission wasn’t that enthused! Nevertheless, as Johnny Black said in Mojo article of 1996, ‘they walked on stage to a 15 minute standing ovation before they’d even played a note!’ The iconic silver plane also made it to the stage & is here in sight at this very moment of writing; silent witness to a very glorious past!
A tour was booked by Stigwood’s sinister ‘office’ in true Cream style and they hurtled round the the UK, Europe (Helsinki by 12th June) & the US, wowing audiences in their musical wake.....with such great songs as ‘Can’t Find My Home’, ‘Do What You Like’, ‘Sea of Joy’, ‘Had to Cry Today’ & Ginger’s favourite song of Eric’s, ‘Presence of the Lord.’
The album cover caused some consternation amongst the more conservative elements in the States & in certain places was replaced by a simple cover shot of the band.
Posters advertising the concerts in the States advertise them playing Olympia Stadium, Grand River with Delaney & Bonnie & The Taste, & Bridgeport & The Oakland Coliseum with Free. The Mid-West Rock Festival at The State Fair Park, Milwaukee of July 25/6/7 1969, had (amongst others that in his book Hellraiser, Ginger refers to as ‘strange bands’!) Led Zeppelin on the bill Friday, Blind Faith on the Saturday & Jeff Beck, Jethro Tull, Johnny Winter & Joe Cocker on the Sunday! By the 8th August they were at the Seattle Centre Coliseum.....
However, in his book Ginger also recounts alarming happenings on this tour & hostility from the police in Phoenix, Detroit, ‘the Midwest somewhere’ & at Madison Square Garden (12th July), where Ginger ‘boshed a copper on the head’ for attacking a kid who ran for a broken drumstick, thus causing ‘a riot’ to break out!
The last date of the tour was in Honolulu & Ginger’s heroin habit had spiralled due to more pressure & the fact that he only ever seemed to see Eric on stage. Indeed when Eric returned to England & was asked about the band’s future he said, ‘I am inclined to say that was The Blind Faith tour’. The writing had in fact been on the wall from the beginning though it took a while for Ginger to realise that ‘Eric didn’t really want me in the band’ & in fact wanted to work with Winwood....whereas Ginger maintains that it was because of HIS relationship with Steve that he WAS in it!
Ginger spent the latter part of the year holidaying in Hawaii & then Jamaica where he had his Jensen FF car flown out to him, got into scuba diving & sorted his habit out by enjoying the grass! He returned to England with his family at a leisurely pace on a Dutch cruise liner & once home went over to visit Steve Winwood, which was when he ‘discovered that Blind Faith was no more.’ So Ginger asked Steve if he & Chris Wood (Traffic’s sax & flute player) fancied getting a big band together for a couple of gigs & they agreed.............