Label: Polydor
Original Release: 1969
(From Wikipedia)
Blind Faith were an English blues supergroup which consisted of Eric Clapton (The Yardbirds, Cream), Ginger Baker (Graham Bond Organisation, Cream), Steve Winwood (Spencer Davis Group, Traffic) and Ric Grech (Family). The group only released one album, Blind Faith, in August 1969 and were often seen as stylistically similar to the bands which Winwood, Baker, and Clapton had most recently participated in (Traffic and Cream). The band helped to pioneer a fusion of rock and roll with the blues.
Blind Faith's beginnings date to mid-1968, with the breakup of Cream. Rock's original supergroup had become a financial powerhouse, selling millions of records within a few years and raising the group's (and each member's) repertoire to international popularity. Despite that success, the band was crumbling from within due to frequent animosity between Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, with Eric Clapton doing his best to mediate. In addition, Clapton had tired of being coerced into playing commercially-driven blues, and hoped to move forward with a new, experimental, less straight-jacketed approach to the genre.
Steve Winwood was facing similar problems in The Spencer Davis Group, where he had been the lead singer for three years while they produced straight-laced blues. Winwood wanted to experiment with the band's sound by infusing jazz elements, but left due to his musical differences, instead forming a new band -- Traffic -- in 1967. That band split temporarily in 1969, and Winwood, a good friend of Clapton (they had previously collaborated on a record as "Powerhouse"), started to jam with Clapton in his basement in Surrey, England.
Clapton was pleased with the jam sessions and looked seriously towards starting a trio with Winwood -- but they were in need of a drummer. Ginger Baker turned up to sit in with them in 1969, and the band took near-final form. But Clapton questioned letting Baker in the band, because he had promised Jack Bruce that, if they were to work with one another again, they would all three play. Moreover, Clapton didn't want to reunite with Cream barely nine weeks after the breakup, and also didn't want to deal with another "Cream-like" superstardom situation. Winwood ultimately persuaded Clapton to finalize Baker's inclusion in the lineup, arguing that he strengthened their musicianship and that it would be hard to find an equally talented drummer.
By May 1969, Ric Grech, bassist with Family, was invited to join them (leaving Family, mid-tour). They laid down most of their album at Olympic Studios under the supervision of producer Jimmy Miller. Miller provided focus to the band, who often preferred jamming, over the standard commercial 3-5 minute track. By then the group was known collectively as Blind Faith, a slyly cynical reference by Clapton to his outlook on the new group.
News of the group's formation created a buzz of excitement among the public and press, which even heralded the band as "super Cream". The group debuted at a free concert at London's Hyde Park on June 7, 1969. The performance was well received by fans there but troubled Clapton, who thought that the band's playing was sub-par and that the adulation was undeserved and reminiscent of his Cream days when the crowds would applaud for nearly everything. Clapton, knowing the band had not rehearsed enough and was unprepared, was reluctant to tour and feared that the band would develop into a Cream repeat.
The recording of their album continued, followed by a short tour of Scandinavia, where the band played smaller gigs and were able to rehearse their sound and prepare it for bigger audiences in America and England. After Scandinavia, the band toured the United States, making their debut at Madison Square Garden on July 12th for more than 20,000. During the performance a 30-minute-long riot occurred on stage. Involving police and concert goers, it led to Baker accidentally getting clubbed on the head by a police officer and Winwood's piano being destroyed. The band would tour for seven more weeks in America, finishing their tour in Hawaii on August 24, 1969.
A major problem with the tour was that the band had only a few songs in their catalog — barely enough to fill an hour. They were forced to play old Cream and Traffic songs, to the delight of a crowd which usually preferred their older, popular material to their new Blind Faith material. Clapton was now exactly where he didn't want to be — stuck in a "super Cream" that was causing riots during their live shows (Cream hadn't even reached the status to create riots). They were playing the same material from his Cream days, to appease the audience and to fill the void left by the lack of adequate new material.
Opening acts for the band included the band Free and a blues-based rock act called Delaney & Bonnie. Clapton particularly liked the soulful, folksy-sounding blues of Delaney & Bonnie; he began spending most of his time with them instead of Blind Faith, letting Winwood take a more prominent role in the band.
Upon its release, Blind Faith topped Billboard's charts at the No. #1 spot for Pop Album in both America and the United Kingdom, and peaked at #40 on the Black Albums chart — an impressive feat for a British rock quartet. The album sold more than half a million copies within the first month of its release and was a huge profit-making device for both Atlantic Records and Eric Clapton (Blind Faith sales were helping to stimulate demand for Cream albums as well).
The release of the album provoked controversy because the cover featured a topless pubescent girl, holding in her hands a silver space ship designed by Mick Milligan, a jeweler at the Royal College of Art. Some perceived the ship as phallic. The U.S. record company issued it with an alternative cover which showed a photograph of the band on the front.
The cover art was created by photographer Bob Seidemann, a personal friend and former flatmate of Clapton who is known primarily for his photos of Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. Bizarre rumors both fueled and were fueled by the controversy, among them that the girl was Baker's illegitimate daughter or, alternatively, was a groupie kept as a slave by the band.
One other interesting note about the cover is that it was nameless — only the wrapping paper told the buyer who the artist was and the name of the album. Though initially banned, the original artwork became available later in the 1970's in the USA as a "JEM" import.
After the tour finished in August, the band returned to England surrounded by rumours of breakup or a possible UK tour. By October, the band had effectively dissolved within a year of its creation, and it did not produce another studio or live album — though several live tracks from the band can be found on Steve Winwood's 1995 retrospective album The Finer Things.
Thereafter, Clapton stepped out of the spotlight, first to sit in with the Plastic Ono Band and then to tour as a sideman for Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, with whom he had become good friends since the U.S. tour. This freed him of the limelight that he had considered a plague to both Cream and Blind Faith. After his sideman stint, he took several members from Delaney & etc. to form a new supergroup, Derek and the Dominos.
Unlike Clapton, Ginger Baker had enjoyed his Blind Faith experience and looked to carry on an offshoot of the band in the form of Ginger Baker's Air Force with both Grech and Winwood. After a few shows together, Winwood left with Grech and went to Island Records to reunite and reform Traffic, producing the hit album John Barleycorn Must Die.
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