DOUBLE CREAM
How two sons (and a nephew) of rock legends are on a mission to bring back supergroup’s music for a new audience
HE was a rock legend, famous as a founder of 60s supergroup Cream and notorious for the excesses of his rock and roll lifestyle. Now, three years after the death of bassist and vocalist Jack Bruce, his music will be played again in his native Scotland – by his son.
More than half a century after Bruce and his Cream bandmates Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton had a string of hits such as Sunshine of Your Love, Strange Brew and I Feel Free, Malcolm Bruce has landed a lucrative deal to perform his father’s songs.
He is about to hit the road with The Music of Cream, a group he has formed with Baker’s son Kofi and Clapton’s nephew Will Johns.
The original Cream were active for a relatively short period, from 1966 to 1968, yet the group sold more than 40 million albums, toured the world and partied with stars such as Mick Jagger, Ringo Starr and Jimi Hendrix.
Now the next generation will be reinterpreting Cream hits at a string of gigs in the US and the UK, including Scotland.
But as the ink dries on 46-yearold Bruce’s deal with billion-dollar concert promotions company Live Nation, he admits he is still coming to terms with the highs and lows of being the son of one of the most famous Scottish musicians of the 20th century. In an exclusive interview with The Scottish Mail on Sunday, Malcolm Bruce speaks openly for the first time about the dark side of his father, who died of liver cancer in 2014.
He tells how he once confronted the legendary musician regarding his heroin and alcohol addiction, only to be told that it was because he was ‘f***ing Glaswegian’.
But he also reveals the tender side to his father, who on his death bed summed up his life modestly with the words: ‘I got to play some notes.’
Yet his life was rather more complicated, as Bruce relates: ‘My dad’s shadow side was quite dark. He could be difficult and challenging with the drugs. He would say to me: “You’ve got to understand I was a product of my generation.” We had a difficult relationship.’
At the height of his fame, Jack Bruce owned an island – Sanda, off the tip of the Kintyre peninsula – and collected a fleet of sports cars including a Ferrari, as well as a Rolls-Royce and a Daimler.
His son is living a more modest lifestyle, helping to load and unload his band’s gear from a Toyota van at various Scottish bars, hotels and nightclubs during a string of live dates under his own name – The Music of Cream will come later.
‘It’s very rock ’n’ roll to own an island,’ Bruce reflects. ‘But my dad recalled the shipyards, and would tell me all about the poverty in Glasgow. My dad was a working-class guy, removed from that life to having a Ferrari and doing what he wanted.
‘He loved being a rock star, but he was very strong about his roots and where he came from. He also loved cars, and all the things stars like.
‘He had a Rolls-Royce and I remember the smell of leather from the sports cars he had in the garage. By contrast, I am driving a rental van.’
Of the planned Music of Cream concerts, Malcolm Bruce says: ‘Live Nation are getting involved and we have 20-plus shows in the US.’
There will be Scottish dates on the UK leg of what is likely to become a world tour, celebrating the legacy of Clapton, Baker and Bruce.
JACK Bruce, born in Bishopbriggs on the outskirts of Glasgow, married US songwriter Janet Godfrey in 1964. Malcolm was born at their London home in 1970, a year before the family moved to Suffolk. He recalls: ‘Home life was challenging. My dad would go off on tour and come back and spend time recuperating, then go off again, which meant he wasn’t always emotionally available.
‘I have memories of the drugs. It was the early and mid-Seventies, and it is what people were doing in the music business.’
Jack’s marriage to Janet ended in 1980. Their son recalls: ‘Towards the end of my mum’s marriage to dad, I remember arguments and shouting matches.
‘He was a loving and caring person, but he did have his demons. He would go through phases with drink and drugs, then clean up, and then go into it again. That’s the nature of addiction.
‘I don’t think I fully understood it, unless specific things happened and people were shouting at each other. Then I’d realise that he was drinking.
‘Also, he was very driven and, like a lot of artists, narcissistic by default. In order to be successful, he had to be quite ruthless in terms of putting his career first.’
In 1982, Jack married his second wife, Margrit Seyffer, and moved briefly to Stuttgart in Germany. Malcolm recalls: ‘That was fine at first, but she had three kids with my dad and at that point the focus was on the second family.
‘Things wouldn’t have been like that if he had been with my mum. There were traumas and frustrations that I have had to work through over time, if I am perfectly honest. That’s just life. You either deal with it or buy 16 crates of whisky.’
Now following in his father’s footsteps, Malcolm Bruce is determined to avoid the same pitfalls. He says: ‘We were intensely close through our shared passion for music, and I worked a lot with him in the studio, but I didn’t get into hard drugs. I got into transcendental meditation. I would talk to him about it when he was getting a bit drunk. I’d ask: “Why don’t you do seven hours of yoga like me?” He’d reply: “You’ve got to understand, Malcolm, I’m f***ing Glaswegian.” Maybe his way of self-realisation was through drugs.’
Touring Scotland last week brought back happy childhood memories of family holidays in Gairloch, and he says: ‘It feels like coming home, even though I’m not Scottish. I have always had that affinity with the country because of my dad.
‘We’d spend time at the cottage in Gairloch, Wester Ross, in the summer. It was a beautiful spot. We’d go fishing and go to the pub in the evening and
have a meal… I would also visit my nana in East Kilbride.’
Having graduated from the Guildhall School of Music, Malcolm Bruce has performed with a raft of top names, including guitarists such as Clapton and Joe Satriani.
He recently worked in the studio with Little Richard and played on a track with Elton John for a Frankie Miller tribute album.
‘I’m also on about three or four of my dad’s records,’ Bruce says. ‘I’d sit in my dad’s home studio and demo songs. I wrote out charts for the songs and I played guitar.
‘He never said: “Get a real job, son. What are you doing, you madman?” He was emotionally supportive and encouraging. He recognised that I had talent in the making but also that I had to find my own way.
‘We would jam at home and we did a lot of improvising. There was a lot of interaction, and he loved that.’
His father was diagnosed with cancer in 2003 and placed on the waiting list for a liver transplant at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.
‘The specialist told him there was nothing he could do, but they came back to him to say he could have a transplant,’ Bruce recalls.
‘He was on the waiting list and thought he had a good chance with a transplant. I was against it. I had an argument with him. I asked him: “Have you not thought of trying some alternative therapies first, like Reiki, man?” He looked at me like I was an idiot.
ON the night he went in for the transplant, I drove up from London to be with him. He was very positive, but the transplant went wrong. He went into a coma and the doctor said he didn’t think he would come out of it, but he did. He went back into a coma a second time. He almost died twice.’
Yet Jack was a survivor, and in 2005 he was back playing with Clapton and Baker in the longawaited reunion of Cream at four sell-out concerts.
Bruce recalls: ‘Virtually a year to the day after the transplant, he was back on stage – at the Albert Hall. But he struggled with his health the last ten years.
‘The final year was a real struggle. The doctors tried a new treatment that just didn’t work, and I think he gave up hope a few weeks before the end.’
Jack died from liver disease in October 2014, at his home in Suffolk, surrounded by his extended family. Now his son is making sure his music lives on.
‘I spent the last hours with him,’ he says. ‘It was an intimate, quiet time with him at the end. He said kind things for us and before he died he said: “I got to play some notes.”
‘As much as he had his demons, there was a gregarious side to him and a positive energy.
‘I’m glad that my dad stuck to his way of doing things, because he created a great body of work and I am very proud of what he achieved.
‘He was totally unique.’