Jack Bruce believed Pink Floyd was “for people who don’t like music”
By the late 1960s, the ‘Summer of Love’ had finally started kicking into high gear. After The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix started to explore psychedelic textures with their music, bands on both sides of the Atlantic were making music that catered to the hippy movement, either through the lens of pop or hard rock. While Cream had its unique identity of combining blues, R&B, and jazz under one roof, Jack Bruce could be cutthroat when talking about the other artists making waves around the same time.
Coming from the world of improvisation, Bruce was known to play circles around nearly every other bass player in the rock scene. As opposed to holding down the low end throughout a song, Bruce practically used his instrument as the lead on almost every song, which worked brilliantly when offsetting the chaotic drum fills of Ginger Baker.
After bringing in Eric Clapton fresh out of The Yardbirds, Cream had become one of the accomplished musical acts making noise around the blues clubs. Compared to the bands that were used to playing blues standards, the band would stretch out their songs into elongated exercises, complimenting each other while turning the sounds of rock and roll inside out on songs like ‘Crossroads’.
On the other end of the psychedelic scene, another band was trying to expand their audience’s musical palette with space rock. Formed in the mind of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd began playing rock and roll reminiscent of acts like The Kinks, albeit with attention to strange sounds and atmospheric textures across their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Even though Bruce may have been operating in the same clubs that Floyd played around England, he didn’t think that the progressive rock giants came close to what he could do. While Bruce had a healthy respect for the audiences that came to see Cream tear up their instruments, he thought Floyd was making music for the wrong reasons.
When talking about their impact on the rock world, Bruce had mixed feelings about being told that the members of Floyd were inspired when seeing Cream for the first time, telling Louder, “The guys that became Pink Floyd were in the audience, and seeing that event made them become Pink Floyd. I knew they were there, but I didn’t know that we were responsible for them getting together. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I leave that for you to decide. I always thought that Pink Floyd were a band for people who don’t like music or rock’n’roll.”
Nevertheless, Roger Waters always held the group in high esteem, talking about how bold their music was and even singling out Bruce as one of the most stunning bass players he had ever seen. By the time that the 1960s movement had ended, though, Waters was already looking to find his voice in rock and roll.
After Barrett had been ousted from the group due to mental issues, Waters would go beyond traditional rock and roll, crafting pieces of brilliance across albums like The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. Although Bruce may have been able to play some of the most stunning basslines of the modern age, he may have had a direct influence on his least favourite acts without even knowing it.
