A Vital Late-Career Chapter From One of Music’s True Originals
Hi, Phil Aston here from Now Spinning Magazine, and this is a look at another important release in the ongoing reappraisal of Jack Bruce’s extraordinary career: Halfway To The Stars – The Recordings 2001–2003, a new 4CD/Blu-ray box set from Esoteric Recordings.
Esoteric have been doing a wonderful job in keeping Jack Bruce’s music alive and in circulation. We have already seen sets covering areas such as Songs For A Tailor, Harmony Row and the BBC sessions, and this latest collection moves the story forward into the early 2000s — a period that may not be as familiar to every Jack Bruce fan, but which shows just how restless, creative and musically open he remained.
This is not Jack Bruce simply revisiting his past. Yes, there are Cream songs here. Yes, there are nods to West, Bruce and Laing and other areas of his history. But what makes this set so compelling is the way Jack Bruce takes that material and reframes it through the musical language he was exploring at the time: Latin rhythms, jazz phrasing, blues, rock, world music textures and that unmistakable voice and bass playing at the centre of it all.
What’s In The Box?
Halfway To The Stars is presented as a clamshell box set and contains:
CD1: Shadows In The Air
Originally released in 2001, this album finds Jack Bruce reconnecting with parts of his past while pushing the music into a very different rhythmic setting.
CD2: More Jack Than God
Released in 2003, and for me, this is the album in the set that connected the most emotionally. It feels deeper, more personal and perhaps more fully realised.
CD3 & CD4: Live At The Milky Way
A live recording by Jack Bruce & The Cuicoland Express, recorded at The Melkweg in Amsterdam in October 2001. The sound quality here is excellent and the performance is stunning.
Blu-ray: Live At The Canterbury Fayre
Recorded in 2002, this concert film captures the band in superb form. The picture quality is very good, the performance is full of fire, and there are also short interview moments with Jack where he reflects on playing Cream material again and how his attitude to that changed over time.
The booklet includes an essay by Paul Sexton, recording details, credits, photographs and context around this particular period in Jack Bruce’s career. It is the kind of booklet that helps you place the music historically, rather than just presenting the discs as a simple reissue.
Jack Bruce In The Early 2000s
Jack Bruce occupies a unique place in contemporary music. People often start with Cream, and understandably so, because his work with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker changed the role of the bass guitar in rock music. But Jack Bruce was never just “the bass player in Cream”. He was a singer, composer, pianist, improviser, jazz musician, bluesman and songwriter. He moved between rock, jazz, fusion, blues, avant-garde and world music with a freedom that very few artists could genuinely claim.
By the time of these recordings, Jack was around 60 years old, but the music does not sound like an artist settling into a safe late-career comfort zone. There is still risk here. There is still searching. There is still the sense that Jack Bruce is interested in what can happen when very different musical worlds collide.
That is one of the reasons this box set works so well. It captures a period where he was looking back, but not nostalgically. He was taking familiar songs and placing them in a new environment.
Shadows In The Air
The first album in the set, Shadows In The Air, is a long CD-era album — around an hour of music — and it very much reflects the early 2000s, when albums often stretched to the maximum length of the format.
This album includes a remarkable list of guests, including Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Gary Moore and Vernon Reid. Eric Clapton appears on new versions of Sunshine Of Your Love and White Room, which immediately gives the album a direct connection back to Cream. Gary Moore contributes some wonderful guitar work, particularly on tracks such as Heart Quake and Dark Heart, while Vernon Reid brings his own extraordinary energy and angular fire to the music.
What really defines the album, though, is its Latin and Afro-Cuban feel. There is a lot of percussion, a strong rhythmic pulse and a sense that these songs are being opened up from a completely different direction.
The opening track, Out Into The Fields, originally from the West, Bruce and Laing era, is transformed by this approach. It becomes less of a straight rock song and more of a travelling, rhythmically charged piece of music. The same is true of the Cream material. Sunshine Of Your Love and White Room are not presented as museum pieces; they are reshaped, pulled into this new musical landscape and given a different atmosphere.
This may not be what every Cream fan expects, but that is also the point. Jack Bruce was never an artist who simply stood still and gave people the obvious version of his own history.
More Jack Than God
For me, More Jack Than God is the emotional centre of this set.
While Shadows In The Air has the more immediately recognisable guest list and the obvious Cream connection, More Jack Than God feels more personal. It has a sparse quality in places, and the arrangements allow Jack’s voice, bass and songwriting to come through very strongly.
The album includes new interpretations of I Feel Free, We’re Going Wrong and Politician, but again these are not just retreads. They are filtered through the sound world Jack was inhabiting at the time — more reflective, more rhythmically open, and in places more intimate.
One of the key tracks is Milonga Too, which connects beautifully with Milonga from Shadows In The Air. On the Blu-ray interview material, Jack talks about how emotional this piece was for him, and you can feel that in the performance. There is a vulnerability here which cuts through the complexity of the music.
This is what I found so moving about this set. You are hearing a musician who had done so much, influenced so many people, and yet was still digging deeper into himself.
There is also a version of Cold Island, dedicated to Cozy Powell, and the album’s mix of blues, Latin rhythm, jazz phrasing and reflective songwriting makes it feel like one of the most rewarding discoveries in the box.
Live At The Milky Way
The two live CDs, recorded at The Melkweg in Amsterdam in 2001, are superb.
This is where the music really stretches out. Jack Bruce & The Cuicoland Express were a remarkable band, featuring musicians who could handle the complexity, the groove and the improvisational demands of the material. Vernon Reid’s guitar playing is especially impressive. He can explode into the kind of note-heavy, almost volcanic playing you might expect, but he also knows when to pull back, create texture and leave space.
The live versions of Out Into The Fields, 52nd Street, Milonga, Dark Heart, White Room and We’re Going Wrong / Politician show just how strong this band was. The sound quality is excellent, and it gives the studio material an added dimension.
There is something wonderful about hearing Jack Bruce in a live context like this. His bass playing is still so authoritative, but it is not just about technique. It is about feel, movement and musical intelligence. He plays as if the bass is both a lead instrument and part of the engine room at the same time.
Live At The Canterbury Fayre Blu-ray
The Blu-ray, Live At The Canterbury Fayre, is a real bonus and one of the highlights of the set.
The visual quality is very good, and the band performance is excellent throughout. The track listing includes Surge, Sunshine Of Your Love, 52nd Street, This Anger’s A Liar, Theme For An Imaginary Western, Milonga, Windowless Rooms, Dark Heart, White Room and Politician.
The inclusion of Theme For An Imaginary Western is particularly welcome, as it remains one of Jack Bruce’s great compositions. It is a reminder that his catalogue extends far beyond the obvious Cream songs. His songwriting with Pete Brown created music that could be poetic, strange, emotional and deeply powerful.
There are also short interview moments with Jack on the Blu-ray, including a reflection on how he once resisted playing Cream material but later understood that, as an entertainer, you sometimes need to play songs that people know. What matters is how you play them. In this case, he plays them as Jack Bruce — not as nostalgia, but as living music.
The Musicians
Across these recordings, the list of musicians is extraordinary. Alongside Jack Bruce on vocals, bass, piano and other instruments, the set features or draws from performances involving:
Eric Clapton
Gary Moore
Dr. John
Vernon Reid
Bernie Worrell
Robby Ameen
Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez
Richie Flores
Malcolm Bruce
Godfrey Townsend
Kip Hanrahan
Pete Brown
Kip Hanrahan’s role is particularly important. His production partnership with Jack Bruce helped shape the rhythmic and Latin-influenced character of these albums. The percussion, the layering and the sense of musical conversation all feel connected to that collaboration.
Halfway To The Stars is a very worthwhile addition to the Jack Bruce catalogue and another strong release from Esoteric Recordings.
This may not be the first place I would send someone who is completely new to Jack Bruce. For that, you might begin with Songs For A Tailor, Harmony Row, Cream, or one of the broader career anthologies. But for those who already love Jack’s music, or for anyone interested in hearing how a major artist continues to evolve later in life, this set is fascinating.
What comes through most strongly is that Jack Bruce never stopped being curious. He never became just a heritage artist. He was still composing, still reworking, still collaborating, still challenging himself and his audience.
The studio albums are long, as many albums from the CD era were, but there is so much to absorb. The live discs are excellent, and the Blu-ray is a genuine reason to pick up the box, not just an added extra.
