Jon Landau: the writer who tore Cream apart
Ah, the music critic…both the cause of and solution to every problem in rock and roll. Even though a great review might be what keeps artists in the public eye and people anxiously awaiting what they’re going to do next, the power that’s put within the pen of any aspiring critic is also bound to doom many artists to an early grave if their albums spell disaster right out of the gate. The goal of every critic isn’t to punch down, but Jon Landau was the one man whose review struck down one of the greatest guitarists of the 1960s.
When the British Invasion kicked in, though, it felt like rock and roll had finally arrived. The Big Bang had happened with Chuck Berry, but it was time for the rest of the world to follow suit, and The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were more than happy to oblige. Around the same time, though, another movement was happening, and some novice guitar players stepped into the blues movement.
While Eric Clapton had earned his place in rock history thanks to his work with The Yardbirds, there came a point where playing blues 24/7 was bound to get annoying. Since the band were moving towards pop music anyway, the idea of working with veterans like Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker in Cream was too good for ‘Slowhand’ to pass up.
The entire band seemed to have high hopes for it, too. They may have had little patience with each other and the volatility of an active powder keg, but the band could still play their asses off every time they took to the stage. Even though the Summer of Love welcomed them with open arms, Landau was not impressed when he first saw the band perform.
When writing for Rolling Stone, Landau thought the entire blues gig was a rehash of what had come before. Rather than being treated like the ‘God’ everyone claimed him to be, Landau was not impressed, which was the equivalent of Clapton being told that everything he had ever put out was rubbish.
According to Ginger Baker, this began the band’s descent, recounting in Hellraiser, “There had been an article written in Rolling Stone. This piece had a terrible effect on Eric, because, up until then, he thought it was the hippest magazine in the world. The article slated Cream, pointing out Eric’s cliche-ridden guitar solos”.
You can’t always please everyone, but Clapton wasn’t one to take criticism lightly. The sight of reading the review alone was enough to get him to pass out, and for the rest of the tour, he was convinced that Cream had reached the end of the line and that it was time for everything to stop.
From Baker’s perspective, Cream had lost their drive in the weeks following this review, explaining, “After a gig, Eric came up to me and said, ‘I’ve had enough of this’, and I said, ‘So have I’. We decided then that it was to be the last tour”. So that means this Landau must have been severely out of touch, right? Wrong.
While this is the same man who savagely tore into the now-iconic Paul McCartney album RAM, Landau did get one thing right by becoming Bruce Springsteen’s manager, bringing the lyrical and bombastic side of rock and roll under one roof just a few years later. He called things as he saw them, though, and when you don’t choose your words carefully, you destroy one of the greatest power trios of all time.
