‘We’re Going Wrong’: Ginger Baker on the song that ended Cream
There’s no contract in the tour rider that says every single band member needs to be friendly with each other. Things might go smoothly if you’re at least cordial towards one another, but there’s also a good chance that some artist would rather give their bandmates a clubbing sometimes rather than a pat on the back. While Ginger Baker had never been known as the easiest man to get along with during any part of his career, he had the last straw with Jack Bruce when playing the Cream song ‘We’re Going Wrong’.
If they were to have given out prizes for the longest-lasting rivalries in music, though, Bruce and Baker may honestly take the cake. Before Cream had even started, the pair had become known for getting into vicious battles in The Graham Bond Organisation, one of which included Bruce hurling his bass at Baker onstage.
Any sane person would have tried to keep those two as far away from each other as possible, but there was just one problem…they were absolute monsters when they played together. If they had already gelled together as a rhythm section, everything went nuclear when they got Eric Clapton to form Cream.
Two of the best rhythm players in the world combined with a guitarist that people had started to call God…what could possibly go wrong? At first, nothing, really, with everyone being on their best behaviour when making albums like Fresh Cream. There were tensions, sure, but it didn’t start coming to a head until Wheels of Fire when Clapton and Baker decided they would begin carrying on in Blind Faith without Bruce, ultimately putting together the album Goodbye as their swan song.
That distance makes the heart grow fonder, and when the 2000s rolled around, rock fans were more than happy to prop up the living legends still standing. As much as The Beatles may have been getting a resurgence at the time, Cream would come together for some of their final shows at The Royal Albert Hall, including the two sparring partners sharing the stage again.
While everyone waited for the drama-fuelled bomb to go off, nothing came of it…until the band set up shop at Madison Square Garden. Once the band kicked into ‘We’re Going Wrong’, Baker and Bruce got into a scrap midway through the performance when Bruce accused Baker of playing the song wrong.
As Baker recalls, this was one of the last straws, saying in his book Hellraiser, “It was immediately different to the Albert Hall. We played ‘We’re Going Wrong’, and all of a sudden, Jack turned around and shouted, ‘You’re playing it too loud’…I thought I was being humiliated in front of 20,000 people, and it was not a pleasant experience…It was all caught on film this time, and the tapes at Madison Square Garden haven’t been used for that very reason”.
Although the band made it through the gig, this would be the last time they ever shared the stage together, with Clapton later saying that the band should have left it at the Albert Hall rather than trying their hand in the US. And since both Bruce and Baker have since passed on, ‘We’re Going Wrong’ remains one of the final blow-ups the band had before retreating to their own solo ventures.
