Jack Bruce

Jack Bruce

John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce (born May 14, 1943) is a Scottish-born musician, composer and singer. He is best-known as an electric bassist, harmonicist and pianist, and was most famous as a vocalist and the bassist for the 1960s rock band Cream. He lives in Essex, England.

Biography

Jack Bruce was born in May 1943 in Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire, Scotland to musical parents who moved around a lot, resulting in the young Bruce attending 14 different schools, ending up at Bellahouston Academy. He won a scholarship studying cello and composition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama; however, he left at the age of 17 claiming he knew more than the teachers.

Early career

While still at college Jack Bruce played with orchestras in Glasgow music halls. After leaving college he toured Italy playing double bass with the Murray Campbell Big Band. In 1962, Jack Bruce became a member of the London-based band Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, in which he played the double bass. The band also included organist Graham Bond, saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith and drummer Ginger Baker. In 1963, the group broke up and these musicians, including Bruce, went on to form the Graham Bond Organisation, which played a wide range of music genres, including, bebop, blues and rhythm and blues. At this time, Bruce switched from double bass to electric bass. The group released two studio albums and several singles, but were not commercially successful. They did, however, influence a number of other musicians, such as Keith Emerson, Jon Lord, Bill Bruford and John Bonham.

During the time Bruce and Baker played with the Graham Bond Organisation, they were known for their hostility towards each other. There were numerous stories of the two sabotaging each other's equipment and fighting on stage. Eventually Baker fired Bruce from the group in 1965.

With Cream

After he left the Graham Bond Organisation, Bruce then joined the John Mayall Bluesbreakers group, which featured Eric Clapton, but later had his first commercial success with Manfred Mann in 1966. In July 1966 he moved on to his most famous role as bass player, main songwriter and lead vocalist with Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton in the power trio Cream, considered the first supergroup. While with Cream, Bruce changed his electric bass for a Gibson EB-3. He wrote most of Cream's original material, with lyricist Pete Brown, including, "Sunshine of Your Love", which they co-wrote with Clapton, "White Room", "Politician", and "I Feel Free". Bruce also wrote a number of compositions by himself, including "N.S.U." and "We're Going Wrong".

By 1968, Cream were successful; they grossed more than the next top six live acts of the day added together (including Jimi Hendrix and The Doors). They topped album charts all over the world, and received the first platinum discs for record sales, but the old enmity of Bruce and Baker resurfaced in 1968, and after a final tour, Cream broke up.

Cream backstage at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction

Post-Cream

Before Cream split, Bruce recorded an acoustic free jazz album with Dick Heckstall-Smith and Jon Hiseman, and released it in 1971 as Things We Like. This album was a precursor to the jazz fusion boom in the early 1970s, and more recently, it has been sampled by many hip hop artists.

Bruce continued to work on many other collaborations with other musicians. The first of these, Songs for a Tailor, was released in 1969, featuring both Heckstall-Smith and Hiseman. It was a worldwide hit, but, after a brief supporting tour with Larry Coryell and Mitch Mitchell in his band, he left to join the jazz fusion band Lifetime. With drummer Tony Williams, guitarist John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young, the group recorded two albums. However, they did not get much critical and commercial acclaim, and Lifetime broke up in 1970. Bruce then recorded another solo album Harmony Row, but this was not commercially successful.

In 1972, Bruce formed a blues rock power trio, West, Bruce and Laing. Besides Bruce, the group consisted of Leslie West and Corky Laing, formerly of the hard rock band Mountain. They produced two studio albums, Why Don't'cha and Whatever Turns You On, and one live album, Live 'N' Kickin. The band soon broke up, and, not long after, Bruce released another solo album, Out Of The Storm. A tour was lined up with former Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor and jazz keyboard player Carla Bley, with whom he had collaborated with in 1971 on Escalator Over the Hill. The tour, documented on Live at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, ended with Taylor leaving, and no studio recordings were made.

In 1974, Bruce is credited with bass guitar in the title song on Frank Zappa's successful "Apostrophe" album.

In 1977, Bruce formed a new band with drummer Simon Phillips and keyboardist Tony Hymas. The group recorded an album, called How's Tricks. A world tour followed, but the album was a commercial failure. The follow-up album Jet Set Jewel was put on hold when as Bruce was dropped by his record label. In 1978, Bruce toured with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, reuniting him with John McLaughlin.

By 1979, Bruce's drug habit had reached such a level that he had lost a lot of his money; in that year he married his second wife, Margrit Seyffer. She organised his career from a business standpoint, and Bruce played a lot of sessions with Cozy Powell, Gary Moore and Jon Anderson to get some money. By 1980 his career was back on track with his new band, consisting of drummer Billy Cobham, guitarist Clem Clemson, and keyboardist David Sancious. They toured widely to support their album, I've Always Wanted to do This, but it was not commercial success and the band split. During the early 80s, he also joined up to play with mates from the old days in Rocket 88, the back-to-the-roots fun band that Ian "Stu" Stewart had put together, and appears on their only album, recorded live in Germany in 1981.

In 1982, Bruce collaborated with guitarist Robin Trower and released two albums, BLT and Truth, the first of which was a minor hit in the United States. In 1983, Bruce released another solo album, Automatic, which was only released in Germany. In the mid-1980s, Bruce began working with the music producer Kip Hanrahan, and released the albums Desire Develops an Edge, Vertical's Currency and Exotica, all of which were critically successful. In 1987, Bruce recorded his solo album Somethin' Els in Germany, but this was delayed until 1992 and received belated widespread critical acclaim. His German TV concerts of his 1980s period have been collected on a two-DVD set, Live at Rock Palast.

In 1989, Bruce began recording material with Ginger Baker and released another solo album, A Question of Time. Baker and Bruce toured the US at this time. In 1993, Bruce was again reunited with Baker for his 50th birthday concert, along with guitarist Gary Moore. These recordings were released on the live double album Cities of the Heart. In 1994 this lineup became the band BBM, and their subsequent album was a top ten hit in the UK. However, the band broke up shortly afterwards.

A low-key solo piano album, Monkjack, followed in 1995, featuring Bruce and organist Bernie Worrel. Bruce then began work producing and arranging the soundtrack to the independently produced Scottish film The Slab Boys with Lulu, Edwyn Collins, Eddie Reader and The Proclaimers. The soundtrack album appeared in 1997. In 2000 he returned to touring as a member of Ringo Starr All Starr Band which also featured Peter Frampton on guitar. At the gig in Denver, Colorado the band was joined on stage by Ginger Baker, and Bruce, Baker and Frampton played a short set of Cream classics.

File:Cream2005.jpg

Cream in 2005

In 2001 Bruce reappeared with his most successful band of recent times featuring Bernie Worrel, Vernon Reid of Living Colour on guitar and Kip Hanrahan's three-piece Latin rhythm section. Hanrahan also produced the accompanying album Shadows in the Air, which included a reunion with Eric Clapton on a new version of Sunshine of Your Love. The band released another studio album, More Jack than God, in 2003, and a live DVD, Live at Canterbury Fayre.

Bruce had suffered a period of declining health, and in the summer of 2003 was diagnosed with liver cancer. In September 2003, he underwent a liver transplant, which was almost fatal, as his body initially rejected the new organ. He has since recovered, and in May, 2005, he reunited with former Cream bandmates Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker for a series of well-received concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall, released as the album Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6 2005, and New York's Madison Square Garden. A biography of Bruce, entitled Jack — The Biography of Jack Bruce was written by Steven Myatt and published in 2005.

In 2006, Bruce returned to the live arena with a concert of Cream and solo classics performed with the German HR Big Band.

Solo discography

• Songs For A Tailor (September 1969)
• Things We Like (Recorded August 1968, released January 1971)
• Harmony Row (September 1971)
• Out of the Storm (November 1974)
• Live at Manchester Free Trade Hall 75 (released 2003)
• How's Tricks (March 1977)
• Jet Set Jewel (recorded 1978, released 2003)
• I've Always Wanted To Do This (December 1980)
• Automatic (January 1983)
• A Question of Time (December 1989)
• Something Els (Recorded 1987 released March 1993)
• Cities Of The Heart (1993)
• Monkjack (September 1995)
• Shadows In The Air (July 2001)
• More Jack Than God (September 2003)

Trivia

• He and Cream bandmates Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton have all played with each other in different groups. Bruce and Baker played together in the Graham Bond Organisation, BBM and Blues Incorporated, Clapton and Bruce played together near the end of Clapton's tenure with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and Baker and Clapton played together in the short-lived supergroup Blind Faith shortly after Cream's breakup.
• Bruce plays harmonica on the Cream songs "Rollin' & Tumblin'," "Traintime," "Take It Back," "Four Until Late," and the studio version of "Spoonful" and "Sitting on top of the world" of 2005 concert.
• He once owned Sanda Island in Scotland.
• When deciding on the set list for the Cream reunion in London, Bruce wanted to include I Feel Free, but was considered too complex. It was not included in the Royal Albert Hall shows, and it wasn't played at the Madison Square Garden shows.
• His first Cream composition was N.S.U. According to the Clapton biography Crossroads: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton, the initials stand for Non-Specific Urethritis, a sexually transmitted infection in men.
• Bruce says in Chris Welch's book, Cream: The Legendary Sixties Supergroup, that he "has no regrets that [he] didn't join Led Zeppelin when they asked [him]". While this may suggest that Bruce was the original choice of Zeppelin founder and guitarist Jimmy Page's for bassist/lead singer, in fact (as mentioned in Stephen Myatt's Book Jack), Page asked him to join as a second bass player, in the mid seventies. (John Paul Jones would eventually join Page's band as bassist and Robert Plant joined as lead vocalist.)
• Bruce wrote the Cream song "We're Going Wrong" after having a fight with his wife, Janet Godfrey.
• Bruce played bass on and co-wrote the song "Apostrophe" on the 1974 Frank Zappa album of the same name.
• He uses a custom Warwick fretless thumb bass.
• Bruce guested with his old friend Dick Morrissey on the last Soft Machine album Land of Cockayne (1981).
• After the death of John Entwistle in the summer of 2002, Bruce replaced Entwistle in the Todd Rundgren-organised all-star band tribute to the Beatles in the A Walk Down Abbey Road tour.
• He is currently ranked #5 on DigitalDreamDoor's (digitaldreamdoor.com) “Greatest Rock Bassists” list.

Literature

• Brigitte Tast, Hans-Jürgen Tast „be bop - Die Wilhelmshöhe rockt. Disco und Konzerte in der Hölle" Verlag Gebrüder Gerstenberg GmbH & Co. KG, Hildesheim, ISBN 978-3-8067-8589-0.

External links

• Official website
• Original Smiles & Grins Jack Bruce Club
• Jack Bruce at the Internet Movie Database