Stimulating sounds: "Wheels of Fire" by Cream

Year released: 1968
Personnel: Jack Bruce (bass, cello, harmonica, calliope, acoustic guitar, recorder, lead and background vocals); Eric Clapton (guitar, vocals); Ginger Baker (drums, percussion, bells, glockenspiel, typanie, lead and background vocals); Felix Pappalardi (viola, bells, organ, trumpet, tonette, also produced).

Not as masterly as "Disraeli Gears" or as urgent as "Fresh Cream," "Wheels of Fire" still rocks. More experimental and split into live and studio sides, it hints at what direction the band might have gone in had it not imploded months later. And while I'm sure not everyone would disagree, I quite like "Pressed Rat and Warthog." Reviews are from the BBC and allmusic.

Recorded between July 1967 and April 1968 at Atlantic Studios in New York and live at Winterland and Fillmore West, Wheels Of Fire is the apotheosis of Cream. With one disc live and the other in the studio, you gain unparalleled insight to their strengths--the ornate studio productions of Felix Pappalardi, which kept the band lean and focused; alongside the unedited grandstanding of their live performance.

On the studio set, although with their roots very strongly in the blues (their playing and sensibilities were steeped in it), this really was rock music. The power trio format is heard at its greatest on lead track, Jack Bruce and Pete Brown's "White Room". Never were the three players so perfectly harnessed--Eric Clapton's scorching lead over Bruce and Ginger Baker's watertight rhythm section. The arrangements are stunning throughout – from folk to metal with instrumentation such as cello and recorder. However, Ginger Baker's contributions range from the great--"Passing The Time" to the not so great--the Ian Dury presaging "Pressed Rat and Warthog."

There is no such focus on the live side--aside from the extraordinary, defining reading of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads", the lengthy cuts-- including Baker's 16 minute drum solo, "Toad"--show just how excessive the group could be in demonstrating the players' very obvious virtuosity.

The album topped the charts in America and reached No.3 in the UK. Although 1967's Disraeli Gears may be more succinct appraisal of the group, Rolling Stone described the album as "the most representative slice of the Cream legacy," which is absolutely true.

If "Disraeli Gears" was the album where Cream came into their own, its successor, "Wheels of Fire", finds the trio in full fight, capturing every side of their multi-faceted personality, even hinting at the internal pressures that soon would tear the band asunder.

A dense, unwieldy double album split into an LP of new studio material and an LP of live material, it's sprawling and scattered, at once awesome in its achievement and maddening in how it falls just short of greatness. It misses its goal not because one LP works and the other doesn't, but because both the live and studio sets suffer from strikingly similar flaws, deriving from the constant power struggle between the trio.

Of the three, Ginger Baker comes up short, contributing the passable "Passing the Time" and "Those Were the Days," which are overshadowed by how he extends his solo drum showcase "Toad" to a numbing quarter of an hour and trips upon the Wind & the Willows whimsy of "Pressed Rat and Warthog," whose studied eccentricity pales next to Eric Clapton's nimble, eerily cheerful "Anyone for Tennis."

In almost every regard, "Wheels of Fire" is a terrific showcase for Clapton as a guitarist, especially on the first side of the live album with "Crossroads," a mighty encapsulation of all of his strengths. Some of that is studio trickery, as producer Felix Pappalardi cut together the best bits of a winding improvisation to a tight four minutes, giving this track a relentless momentum that's exceptionally exciting, but there's no denying that Clapton is at a peak here, whether he's tearing off solos on a 17-minute "Spoonful" or goosing "White Room" toward the heights of madness.

But it's the architect of "White Room," bassist Jack Bruce, who, along with his collaborator Peter Brown, reaches a peak as a songwriter. Aside from the monumental "White Room," he has the lovely, wistful "As You Said," the cinematic "Deserted Cities of the Heart," and the slow, cynical blues "Politician," all among Cream's very best work.

And in many ways "Wheels of Fire" is indeed filled with Cream's very best work, since it also captures the fury and invention (and indulgence) of the band at its peak on the stage and in the studio, but as it tries to find a delicate balance between these three titanic egos, it doesn't quite add up to something greater than the sum of its parts. But taken alone, those individual parts are often quite tremendous.