Cream - Disraeli Gears

Artist: Cream

Album: Disraeli Gears, 1967

The first "superband" in rock music (born from Graham Bond Organization and Bluesbreakers) and first-classic trio "guitar, bass, drums” was born in the summer of 1966 and includes Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce; great passion for the blues and considerable technical instrumental characterize the lives of Cream: they have left us great songs like White Room, Sunshine Of Your Love, Politician, Tales Of Brave Ulysses and exceptional interpretations of blues classics like Spoonful and Crossroads.

Their second album, Disraeli Gears, released in 1967, takes its title from a curiously particular technology applied to bicycles: the "derailleur gears."

The title of the album, Disraeli Gears, was actually a bit of an inside joke. Eric Clapton had been thinking of getting a racing bicycle, and was discussing it with Ginger Baker, when Mick Turner, one of the roadies, commented on the performance of “those Disraeli Gears” meaning to say “derailleur gears”. The band thought this was hilarious—Benjamin Disraeli was a prominent 19th Century British politician—and decided that it should be the title of their next album. Had it not been for Mick, the album would simply have been entitled Cream.

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