Atlantic City Weekly

Other names may be more instantly recognizable, like a former colleague from the British band that begat the expression “power trio,” but few musicians command the respect or possess credentials as impressive as those of Jack Bruce. The music luminary and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer played a pivotal role in the seminal stages of rock history.

On Saturday, Aug. 7, Bruce will headline the fifth annual Hippiefest at Resorts with fellow rock veterans War, Rare Earth, Mitch Ryder, and Badfinger. The show starts 8pm and tickets are $35 and $50.

Born in working-class Scotland and classically trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Bruce would become the lead vocalist, bassist and primary songwriter of the 1960s supergroup Cream. The trio included two of Bruce’s former bandmates, drummer Ginger Baker (with the Graham Bond Organisation) and guitarist Eric Clapton (John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers). Bruce penned Cream’s mega-hits “Sunshine of Your Love,” “White Room” and “I Feel Free,” and in its two-year history Cream sold a staggering 35 million albums. Cream’s Wheels of Fire was the world’s first platinum-selling double album. The trio was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and reunited for the first time in 37 years in 2005.

Atlantic City Weekly recently spoke with Bruce by phone.

I saw that you will soon be releasing a live CD and an autobiography.

The CD is coming out very soon [entitled Jack Bruce and the Cuicoland Express, Live at the Milky Way]. Somebody approached me and said we’ve got a new way of getting the money together through pledges (see pledgemusic.com/projects/jackbruce). I was told it’s a new way of bringing out albums, etc., and was asked would you be interested in trying it? I’m always interested in trying new things. Because I had this live performance, which I think turned out rather good, I thought I’d go for that. The people don’t pay anything, they just pledge that they’ll buy it once it’s out, and they also get some input into the cover design and different things like that, so it’s more of an interactive way of releasing material. Also some of the money that’s pledged goes towards charities. And after the pledgers have had their first bite of the cherry, as it were, then it will be released on EMI later on, probably in September. The biography [entitled Jack Bruce Composing Himself: The Authorized Biography, written by Harry Shapiro with a forward by Eric Clapton] came out in England already and has done really well. I was quite taken aback by the reaction to it. I think it’s just now coming out in the States.

How active do you still remain as a touring musician?

As active as possible. One of the interesting things in the book is that, in the back, there’s the usual discography and such, but there’s information from this really avid fan from Toronto who’s put together every single concert or gig that I did since the mid-1960s. And it’s quite fascinating to see how hard we actually worked in the ’60s! I mean quite an incredible amounts of performances.

It was different in those days. When I was with [Graham Bond], and we used to do over 300 shows a year. I think our record was 318 in one year, and that was only in Britain — we never even got to the States. We used to work very hard. If you go even further back, to the years of the big bands and the rhythm-and-blues bands, they would just tour nonstop and more or less just live on the road. We did that for a few years, but they would do it for their whole lives. I don’t work like that anymore. I might do 50 or 60 gigs per year.

Do you still enjoy touring, and specifically how do you like touring with Hippiefest?

Oh, I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t like it. I’m not really doing it for the money, although it’s always nice to have some money. I’ve got kids who are always demanding [he is the father of five children including son Malcolm, age 17, with whom he has recorded and, like Bruce, is a multi-instrumentalist]. My one daughter is doing her M.A. in film studies at London Film School, and that doesn’t come cheap. [Tuition’s] not quite as bad as the United States, but it’s up there. That school’s one of the most expensive in Britain, but a very good school. So I always like a few pennies. I’ve done [Hippiefest] before, two years ago, and I enjoyed it. We’ll be doing songs that I wrote for Cream — I tend to stick with those and maybe a couple of the blues things we did — and some songs from my solo albums that people grew to like.

Do you ever see another Cream reunion taking place?

It’s never a good thing to say never. [The 2005 reunion] was something that was being built up to for some time. It’s difficult because everyone has their own lives and interests and careers or whatever. When we have gotten together [at other events] we always used to say, ‘We must do something’ and then we’d end up going our separate ways and nothing became of it. But finally something did, and I’m glad it did. There’s always the possibility we’ll do it again, and I’d be up for it.