Nettie Baker Preps ‘Cream Chronicled’ Book
The book, written by the daughter of Cream drummer Ginger Baker, arrives in September.
An upcoming book from author Nettie Baker aims to chronicle every gig from iconic 1960s rockers Cream. Cream Chronicled documents their band’s roughly two-year history, along with reunion gigs in 1993 and 2005, and to hear the author tell it, it was anything but a straightforward journey. The book will officially be released on September 26, and is available for pre-order now. Fans who order before July 31 can get their name in the signed, limited edition hard copy.
“You might suppose that documenting every show by a band that only lasted just over two short years (officially from July 1966 until November 1968), would be a fairly straight forward task to accomplish,” Baker, daughter of Cream drummer Ginger Bakers, says in a press release. “Notwithstanding the press furore around their brief get together for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1993, and their exciting and well-documented 2005 reunion, it has been like wading into a morass of confusion. A whirlwind so tiring to contemplate that to actually have lived it, must at times have seemed unbelievable.”
Cream formed in London in 1966 when Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, and Eric Clapton joined forces. Between 1966 and 1968, the band recorded four albums—Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears, Wheels Of Fire, and Goodbye—landed major singles like “Sunshine Of Your Love” and “White Room,” and performed near constantly. It was the rate of performance that led to eventual burnout and partially accounted for the band’s relatively short career. As Clapton said in 2004, “[T]he workload was pretty severe. We were playing six nights a week.”
This also means that Baker’s work was cut out for her when she went to put Cream Chronicled together. Lucky for her, she not only had first-hand access, but the skills to piece together the events from newspaper clippings and diary entries. The book also includes never-before-seen photos and insights from the people who were there. “Crucially, these were very young men who found themselves living in interesting times,” Baker says.
