The heartbreaking reason David Bowie covered Cream’s hit song ‘I Feel Free’
When looking back upon the pages of rock history, there are two names which are seemingly unavoidable: David Bowie and Cream. The two names are linked by more than just fellow rock stardom, though, and Cream emerged as a significant influence on Bowie’s own creative vision.
Spending most of the 1960s playing with various groups before finding fame in the latter part of the decade with the hit song ‘Space Oddity’, Bowie is undoubtedly one of the most highly regarded artists and songwriters of the past 50 years. However, this was not always the case; the Brixton-born artist was unsuccessful and ignored for much of his early career in the ’60s. During this time, psychedelic music, spurred on by the hippie movement, was rising in popularity.
At the forefront of this new and exciting music scene were Cream. The group, formed in 1966 by Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, are often considered one of the world’s first supergroups, given that all three members had found success as members of other bands. It is fair to say, though, that the success of Cream somewhat eclipsed its respective member’s previous work.
Always open about his influences, Bowie paid tribute to Cream by featuring a cover of their song ‘I Feel Free’ on his 1993 album Black Tie White Noise. The cover was something that had seemingly been in the works for decades prior. An early demo of Bowie’s 1968 track ‘When I’m Five’, included on the 1969 film Love You Till Tuesday, featured a snippet from ‘I Feel Free’, and it is said that he had tried to record a version of the track for Scary Monsters…and Super Creeps that failed to materialise.
The story of the Thin White Duke’s attachment to this song, in particular, begins in 1967, a time when his half-brother Terry Burns accompanied him to see Cream perform in Bromley. Burns was a significant influence on Bowie’s early life, and speaking about that night he spent with him, the artist revealed, “About halfway through – and I’d like to think it was during ‘I Feel Free’ – he [Terry] started feeling very, very bad… He used to see visions a lot. And I remember I had to take him out of the club because it was really starting to affect him – he was swaying… He’d never heard anything so loud”.
Black Tie White Noise is said to be one of Bowie’s most personal, with the track ‘Jump They Say’ an attempt at writing about his brother Terry – who took his own life in 1985. Continuing to talk about his brother and Cream, he said, “Anyway, we got out into the street and he collapsed on the ground and he said the ground was opening up and there was fire and stuff pouring out the pavement, and I could almost see it for him, because he was explaining it so articulately”.
So, even though Bowie had wanted to rework ‘I Feel Fine’ for some time, it seemed that starting to write about the loss of his brother was the final catalyst for getting it done, “The two songs are close together on the album for very personal reasons”.
