The Cream Box Set That Made Me Fall in Love With This Album All Over Again
I first encountered this album when I was very young, borrowing it from the school music library. That in itself seems almost unbelievable now — a school music library with a Cream double album in it! But that was where this music found me, and it became incredibly important. It was one of those albums that helped get me into guitars, into extended improvisation, into the idea that rock music could stretch, breathe and go somewhere completely unexpected.
Now we have the new Wheels of Fire Super Deluxe Edition 5CD set, released by Polydor/UMR, and I bought my copy from HMV. This is also available on vinyl, and I will admit straight away that the vinyl version has been making me twitch. I do not need it, of course. I have the CD set. But when something is put together this well, the collector part of the brain starts whispering, doesn’t it?
This 5CD edition comes in that now familiar box format used for several Thin Lizzy, Def Leppard and Hawkwind-style sets. I really like this size. It feels substantial without being ridiculous, and it sits nicely on the shelf. Inside, the discs are housed in a fold-out card sleeve which mirrors the gatefold feel of the original vinyl. It looks attractive and it immediately connects the set back to the original album experience.
The big plus for me is the hardback book. It may not be enormous, but it gives the whole thing a proper deluxe feel. The paper stock is good, the layout is clean, and the notes tell the story of the album, where the band were at the time, and what makes these different versions and mixes important. There are also images of different pressings from around the world and some very useful detail on the audio sources.
I know hardback books probably push the price up, but they do make a difference. I miss them when they are not there. A softback booklet can still be good, of course, but a hardback book makes a box feel like something you want to keep, revisit and handle.
The Album Itself
Wheels of Fire was originally released in 1968 and remains one of the great rock double albums. Cream were Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker: three extraordinary musicians, each with a distinct musical personality, and sometimes those personalities collided as much as they blended.
That tension is part of the magic.
The studio material includes White Room, Sitting on Top of the World, Passing the Time, Pressed Rat and Warthog, Politician, Born Under a Bad Sign and Deserted Cities of the Heart. It moves between blues, psychedelia, hard rock, whimsy and something far stranger. Then there is the live material, where Cream become something else entirely — not just a band playing songs, but three musicians stretching time, riffs and themes in front of an audience.
I have always felt that Cream albums were not necessarily the best recordings in purely audiophile terms. That might be controversial, but it is how I have often heard them. Some of the early stereo mixes, particularly on Disraeli Gears, can feel very odd now, almost as if nobody was quite sure what to do with stereo yet. Ginger Baker might be in one speaker while the rest of the band seem to be somewhere else entirely.
With Wheels of Fire, there is also the issue of the original CSG processing, which was designed to help stereo records sound more compatible when played in mono. The problem is that it could affect the stereo image. This new set gives us the original remastered version, a phase-corrected de-CSG version, and then the reference reels. That is where things get very interesting.
The Sound
I think this set sounds bloody marvellous.
I did compare it with the version I already had, because I know this album very well. At first, when I played the remaster, I thought, yes, this sounds good. Then I moved to the phase-corrected version and I could hear something was different, although I could not immediately put my finger on it. After a few listens, it started to open up. There was more space, more breath, and a stronger sense of the music sitting properly in the stereo image.
But Disc Two, the studio reference reels, became my favourite disc in the whole set.
This is where I felt I was hearing Wheels of Fire in a new way. The positioning of the guitar, the texture of the instruments, the small details around the performances — it all felt fresh. Not modernised, not artificially cleaned up, but revealed. That is the key word. Revealed.
The long version of Passing the Time is wonderful. I have always loved that track, but here it seems to float and expand in a way that really suits the album. Pressed Rat and Warthog with the spoken intro is another joy. It is eccentric, strange, very British, and completely part of what makes Cream so fascinating. You get blues, power, psychedelia and oddness all living in the same house.
I know some people will debate the mono material and how it has been presented. I am not going to get overly precious about that. What matters to me is how often I want to listen to the music, and this set made me keep returning to it. I had Wheels of Fire playing on a loop.
That tells me everything I need to know.
The Live Material
Then we come to the live discs.
Disc Three gives us Crossroads, Spoonful, Traintime and Toad from the Fillmore Auditorium and Winterland Ballroom recordings. This is the stuff that changed everything for me when I was younger.
Everyone should hear Spoonful from Wheels of Fire.
Anyone who only knows Eric Clapton from the later ballads, or from the more polished dinner-party image some people attach to him, needs to hear this. This is Clapton stretching out, building motifs, pushing phrases, almost talking through the guitar. It is not just fast playing. It is not just blues-rock noodling. It has architecture, fire and emotion.
There are moments in there where you can hear ideas that would echo through so much heavy rock guitar afterwards. For me, this remains one of the finest live guitar performances in rock history.
And it sounds better here than I have ever heard it.
Toad is, of course, a drum solo that lasts longer than some people’s holidays, but it also has that fantastic riff before Ginger Baker heads off into the wilderness. It is a heavy piece of music before it becomes a showcase. You can argue about drum solos all day, but in the context of 1968 this was part of the language of musicians pushing rock music beyond three-minute singles.
Disc Four brings in more live Cream: N.S.U., Sleepy Time Time, Rollin’ and Tumblin’, Sweet Wine, Tales of Brave Ulysses, We’re Going Wrong, Sunshine of Your Love and Steppin’ Out. These performances also draw from the material later heard across Live Cream and Live Cream Volume II, although those albums are not included in full here.
That is worth knowing. This set does not simply replace everything, but it brings a huge amount of that live Cream experience together in one place, and it does so with real power.
Steppin’ Out is 13 minutes of guitar-driven electricity. N.S.U. stretches past 10 minutes. This is Cream as a live force: dangerous, explosive, sometimes untidy, but always alive.
The Rarities
Disc Five gathers the rarities, and there is a lot here to enjoy: single edits, alternate mixes, Anyone for Tennis, a mono single version of Crossroads, alternate versions of Sitting on Top of the World, Passing the Time, Politician, Pressed Rat and Warthog, and more live material including N.S.U. and Sunshine of Your Love.
This is the kind of disc that makes sense in a Super Deluxe Edition. It is not just padding. It gives you another way into the album and the sessions around it. You hear choices being made. You hear songs from different angles. If you already love the album, this material deepens the connection.
Value and Presentation
At around the £50 to £59 mark, I think this is very sensibly priced. In the hands of some other labels, this could easily have been closer to £90. The packaging is attractive, the book gives it that deluxe feel, the audio choices are meaningful, and the music itself is magnificent.
I also like that this sits nicely alongside previous Cream-related deluxe sets. I have the Fresh Cream set, which included the Blu-ray, and I also bought the Eric Clapton set in the same sort of format. I missed out on the Goodbye / live Cream set because I thought I had more time — and then it vanished. That is the thing with these releases. They appear, you think you can wait, and then suddenly they are gone.
So yes, if you are a Cream fan, I would not hang about for too long.
This set did exactly what a great reissue should do. It made me reconnect with the album emotionally, not just intellectually.
I did not simply admire the mastering choices or look through the book and file it away. I played the album again and again. I went back to Spoonful. I went back to Passing the Time. I went back to Pressed Rat and Warthog. I found myself thinking about being that young kid borrowing Wheels of Fire from the school music library and being pulled into a world of guitar, bass, drums, improvisation and danger.
Wheels of Fire is still a remarkable album. It captures Cream at a point where the band were both incredibly powerful and already close to coming apart. The studio material is rich, strange and adventurous. The live material is volcanic. The guitar playing on Spoonful alone is enough to justify its place in rock history.
Phil Aston | Now Spinning Magazine
