Cream - Crossroads (Wheels of Fire)

Was the version on Wheels of Fire edited from more than one performance? Wiki says it was from one show but I thought I had read somewhere that it was edited together.

 

What Steve says. For a long time those involved said it was edited (Tom Dowd?) but eventually the actual master tapes proved otherwise.

 

The other rumor that has been around for years is that it was edited down from a 20 minute performance. If this were true I think the uncut version would have been released - officially or unofficially by now.

 

Thanks, I figured someone on here would know the answer, but I didn't expect a reply from the man himself.

Probably my favorite "guitar song". Clapton's guitar tone and phrasing are perfect, IMO.

 

I remember reading a Rolling Stone interview with Clapton about 40 years ago, where he said he didn't like his solo in "Crossroads", he thought it was too sloppy!

 

He's always pretty hard on himself in terms of his Cream tenure. I remember reading he made his break with Cream after reading a Rolling Stone review of a band performance, or maybe the live half of Wheels Of Fire, as being self-indulgent, which he decided was on target enough for him to reconsider his musical direction. It's hard to understand, because he was certainly not lacking for positive reinforcement in those days, i. e. "Clapton is God".

 

I don't think "Crossroads" was ever one of their extended improvisatory numbers anyway.

 

I hadn't listened to it in years, but when I first heard it as a teenager when the Crossroads box set came out, I was convinced that there was was an edit coming out of the second solo because the vocals seemingly came back in so abruptly and the song then simply ended. I love how at the end, after such a searing guitar exercise, Jack Bruce (I assume) says, "Eric Clapton on vocal."

 

I'm a big Cream fan but never did care for Crossroads.

 

I used to think there was an edit there as well...it sure sounds like it

But after discussing it here a while back, and Steve confirming there was no edit on the master, I believe it sounds like that because the band goes from pounding-thunder loud, to much quieter after the solo

and the mics/recording gear they were using reacts to the decrease in volume, giving that effect

ie: if you scream into a mic for a few seconds, and then stop, the ambient room sound pops back up in the recording because you are not blasting the mic & it can now pick up the rest of the room

That's my theory anyway

 

"Crossroads" is great. Eric doesn't know what he's talking about. I love to crank it LOUD!!!

 

Not to pick on you, but I find it very strange a "Cream fan" doesn't like Crossroads!
I can understand being tired of it, but that shouldn't distract from the fact it's a virtuoso classic performance.

 

It always sounded to me like Jack says "Eric Clapton: Lead- and vocal".

 

That's interesting and I would love to hear that alternate recording, because as many times as I've heard Eric play "Crossroads", in and out of Cream, I've never heard him come close to the Wheels of Fire version.
It's one of those songs that I thought that it all came together once, so it was lucky that show was recorded.
Now from what you are saying, it sounds like lightning was caught twice in a bottle, or whatever that expression is.

I take it that version is still unreleased?

 

I hear Ginger Baker (not Jack Bruce) saying "Eric Clapton, lead -- and vocal" as well:

 

Whoa, whoa, whoa... do you know what you've done?!!! The interminable searching, the return of all those sleepless nights - LET THE HUNT BEGIN!

 

It would be great if the alternate live Wheels of Fire material could be released.

 

They used the intro as the theme to a music programme when I was 11 or 12 and I remember it really caught my ear and thinking what is that, what is it......took me ages to find out and ages to find it on record........no internet then!

 

One of the best rock guitar solos ever captured on record, and what makes it even greater is that virtuoso bass and drum awesomeness accompanying it. A fire-breathing three-headed monster, if there ever was one.

 

This rendition was my entry point into blues music. I still think it's great.

 

One of the great blues=rock songs ever. Interesting to note the "going down to Rosedale" verse was cannibalized from Traveling Riverside Blues, also by Robert Johnson of course.

I always heard Bruce at the end saying "Eric Clapton lead . . . and vocal."

 

That comes at the end of Toad

I just might spin Wheels Of Fire today