Jack Bruce

 

Background information
Birth name	John Symon Asher Bruce
Born	(1943-05-14)14 May 1943 Bishopbriggs, Lanarkshire, Scotland
Died	25 October 2014(2014-10-25) (aged 71) Suffolk, England
Genres	Rock, jazz-rock, blues-rock, Latin
Occupation(s)	Musician, composer
Instruments	Bass guitar vocals piano guitar harmonica cello
Years active	1962–2014
Labels	Polydor, Atco, RSO, Epic, CMP, Sanctuary, Esoteric
Associated acts	Blues Incorporated, The Graham Bond Organisation, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Manfred Mann, Cream, The Tony Williams Lifetime, West, Bruce and Laing, Rocket 88, Kip Hanrahan, BBM, Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band
Website	jackbruce.com
Notable instruments: Gibson EB-3 Warwick Thumb Signature

John Symon Asher “Jack” Bruce (14 May 1943 – 25 October 2014) was a Scottish musician, singer and songwriter known primarily for his contributions to the British supergroup Cream, which also included guitarist-singer Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker. In March 2011 Rolling Stone readers selected him as the eighth greatest bass guitarist of all time. “Most musicians would have a very hard time distinguishing themselves if they wound up in a band with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker,” the magazine said at the time, “but Jack Bruce was so gifted on the bass that he did it with ease.”

Bruce maintained a solo career that spanned several decades and also played in several musical groups. Although recognized first and foremost as a vocalist, bassist and songwriter, he also played double bass, harmonica, piano, cello and guitar. He was trained as a classical cellist and considered himself a jazz musician, although much of his catalogue of compositions and recordings tended toward rock and blues.

In July 1966 Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker founded the power trio Cream, which gained international recognition playing blues-rock and jazz-inflected rock music. Bruce sang most of the lead vocals, with Clapton backing him up and eventually assuming some leads himself.

With his Gibson EB-3 electric bass, Bruce became one of the most famous bassists in rock, winning musicians’ polls and influencing the next generation of bassists such as Sting, Geddy Lee and Jeff Berlin. Bruce co-wrote most of Cream’s single releases with lyricist Pete Brown, including the hits “Sunshine of Your Love”, “White Room” and “I Feel Free”. Cream broke up in 1968.

Collaborative efforts with musicians, in many genres – hard rock, jazz, blues, R&B, fusion, avant-garde, world music, third stream classical – continued as a theme of Bruce’s career. Alongside these he produced a long line of highly regarded solo albums. In contrast to his collaborative works, the solo albums usually maintain a common theme: melodic songs with a complex musical structure, songs with lyrics frequently penned by Pete Brown and a core band of world-class musicians. This structure was loosened on his live solo albums and DVDs, where extended improvisations similar to those employed by Cream in live performance were sometimes still used.

In August 1968, before Cream officially disbanded, Bruce recorded an acoustic free jazz album with John McLaughlin, Dick Heckstall-Smith and Jon Hiseman This was issued in 1970 as Bruce’s second solo album, Things We Like. The album was a precursor to the jazz fusion boom in the early 1970s, and more recently has been sampled by many hip hop artists, such as Artifacts and Smif-N-Wessun.

Bruce’s first solo release, Songs for a Tailor, was issued in September 1969; it too featured Heckstall-Smith and Hiseman. It was a worldwide hit, but after a brief supporting tour backed by Larry Coryell and Mitch Mitchell, Bruce joined the jazz fusion group Lifetime. With drummer Tony Williams, guitarist McLaughlin, and organist Larry Young, the group recorded two albums. Bruce joined on the second album, Turn It Over. However, Lifetime did not receive much critical or commercial acclaim at the time, and the band broke up in 1971. Bruce then recorded his third solo album Harmony Row, but this was not as commercially successful as Songs for a Tailor.^[2] The song “The Consul at Sunset” from Harmony Row, which was inspired by the Malcolm Lowry novel Under the Volcano, was released as a single in 1971 (Polydor 2058-153, b/w “A Letter of Thanks”), but did not chart.

In 1972 Bruce formed a blues rock power trio, West, Bruce & Laing. Besides Bruce, the group included singer/guitarist Leslie West and drummer Corky Laing, both formerly of the Cream-influenced American band Mountain. West, Bruce & Laing produced two studio albums, Why Dontcha and Whatever Turns You On, and one live album, Live ‘n’ Kickin’.

The band’s break-up was announced shortly before Live ‘n’ Kickin’s release in early 1974, and Bruce released his fourth solo album Out of the Storm later that year. Also in 1974 he featured on the title track of Frank Zappa’s album Apostrophe, recorded in November 1972. Bruce was credited with bass and co-authorship on the improvised track. When asked about Zappa in a 1992 interview, Bruce tried to change the subject and jokingly insisted that he had played only cello parts. Outtakes from the session were released on the archival release The Crux Of The Biscuit in 2016. In 1973 Bruce recorded bass guitar for Lou Reed’s Berlin album, playing on all but two tracks.

A 1975 tour was lined up to support the Out of the Storm album with a band featuring former Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor and jazz keyboard player Carla Bley, with whom he had collaborated in 1971 on Escalator over the Hill. The tour was belatedly documented on Live at Manchester Free Trade Hall ’75 (2003), but it ended with Taylor’s departure, and sessions for a studio album were abandoned. During the next year, Bruce only resurfaced to play on Charlie Mariano’s Helen 12 Trees album.

In 1976 Bruce formed a new band with drummer Simon Phillips and keyboardist Tony Hymas. The group recorded an album, called How’s Tricks. A world tour followed, but the album was a commercial failure. The follow-up album, Jet Set Jewel, was rejected at the time by Bruce’s record label RSO as not being marketable, and RSO ultimately dropped Bruce from their roster. In 1979 he toured with members from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, reuniting him with John McLaughlin, and introducing him to drummer Billy Cobham. A 3-CD collection of his 1970s BBC recordings, entitled Spirit, was released in 2008

In 1981, Bruce collaborated with guitarist Robin Trower and released two power trio albums, B.L.T. and Truce, the first of which was a minor hit in the US. By 1983, Bruce was no longer contracted to a major record company and released his next solo album, Automatic, on a minor German label, Intercord. A European tour followed to promote the album enlisting Bruce Gary from The Knack (who had also played in Bruce’s 1975 band) on drums and Sancious from his 1980 band (Jack Bruce & Friends) on guitar and keyboards. In 1982, Bruce played with a short-lived ensemble A Gathering of Minds, composed of Billy Cobham, Allan Holdsworth, Didier Lockwood and David Sancious at Montreux. In 1983, Bruce sang on tracks 5 and 6 of the Allan Holdsworth album Road Games.

In 1983 Bruce began working with the Latin/world music producer Kip Hanrahan, and released the collaborative albums Desire Develops an Edge, Vertical’s Currency, A Few Short Notes from the End Run, Exotica and All Roads Are Made of the Flesh. They were all critically successful, and in 2001 he went on to form his own band using Hanrahan’s famous Cuban rhythm section. Other than his partnership with lyricist Pete Brown, Bruce’s musical relationship with Hanrahan was the most consistent and long-lasting of his career.

In 1985 he sang lead and played blues harp on the song “Silver Bullet” with Anton Fier’s Golden Palominos. It appears on the album Visions of Excess. In 1986 he re-recorded the Cream song “I Feel Free” and released it as a single to support an advertising campaign for the Renault 21 motor car.

In 1989 Bruce secured his first major record deal in a decade, with Epic, and recorded A Question of Time. This included two tracks with Ginger Baker on drums, their first collaboration since Cream. Baker then joined Bruce’s live band and toured the United States at the turn of the decade.

Bruce played at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1990, and was invited by Irish blues rock performer, Rory Gallagher (who had a long-standing relationship with Bruce, having supported Cream’s farewell concert in the band Taste in 1968) to perform a couple of songs together on stage. In 1991 he was one of the supporting musicians for Vivian Stanshall’s solo show “Rawlinson Dog-ends”, but quit over a lack of adequate rehearsals. In 1993, a solo album, Somethin Els, reunited him with Eric Clapton and brought belated, but widespread, critical acclaim.

Later that year, Ginger Baker and a host of former Bruce band colleagues joined him for two special 50th birthdays concerts in Cologne, Germany, hosted by the TV show Rockpalast. Selections from these were released as the live double CD Cities of the Heart, and much later as the DVD set Rockpalast: The 50th Birthdays Concerts. One special guest was the Irish blues-rock guitarist Gary Moore, who joined Bruce and Baker for a set of Cream classics. Inspired by this performance, the three formed the power trio BBM and their subsequent (and only) album, Around the Next Dream, was a top ten hit in the UK. However, the old Bruce/Baker arguments arose again and the subsequent tour was cut short and the band broke up. A low-key solo album, Monkjack, followed in 1995, featuring Bruce on piano and vocals, accompanied only by Funkadelic organist Bernie Worrell.

Bruce then began work producing and arranging the soundtrack to the independently produced Scottish film The Slab Boys, with; Lulu, Edwyn Collins, Eddi Reader and the Proclaimers. The soundtrack album appeared in 1997. In 1997 he returned to touring as a member of Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band, which also featured Peter Frampton on guitar. At the gig in Denver, Colorado the band was joined onstage by Ginger Baker, and Bruce, Baker and Frampton played a short set of Cream classics. Bruce continued to tour with Starr through 2000.

Bruce had suffered a period of declining health, after many years of addictions which he finally beat with clinical treatment, and in 2003 was diagnosed with liver cancer. In September 2003, he underwent a liver transplant, which was almost fatal, as his body initially rejected the new organ. He recovered, and in 2004 re-appeared to perform “Sunshine of Your Love” at a Rock Legends concert in Germany organised by the singer Mandoki.

In May 2005, he reunited with former Cream bandmates Clapton and Baker for a series of well-received concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall, released as the album Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005, and New York’s Madison Square Garden.

In between the UK and US Cream dates, he also played live with Gary Moore and drummer Gary Husband at the Dick Heckstall-Smith tribute concert in London.

Subsequent concert appearances by Bruce were sparse because of recovery after the transplant, but in 2006 he returned to the live arena with a show of Cream and solo classics performed with the German HR (Hessischer Rundfunk) Big Band. This was released on CD in Germany in 2007. In 2007, he made a brief concert appearance, opening a new rehearsal hall named in his honour at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow with Clem Clempson, keyboard player Ronnie Leahy and Husband.

In 2008, Bruce collaborated again with guitarist Robin Trower on the album Seven Moons. It also featured Husband.

Bruce died of liver disease on 25 October 2014, in Suffolk, England, aged 71. His publicist Claire Singers said: “He died today at his home in Suffolk surrounded by his family.” He is survived by his wife, Margrit, as well as four children; Malcolm Bruce, Aruba Red, Kyla Simone Bruce, Corin Bruce and granddaughter Maya Sage.

His funeral was held in London on 5 November 2014 and was attended by Clapton, Baker and noted musicians Phil Manzanera, Gary Brooker, Vernon Reid and Nitin Sawhney among others. Dozens assembled at the Golders Green Crematorium paying a last tribute singing “Morning Has Broken”, “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Theme for an Imaginary Western”. Bruce’s remains were later cremated and then buried at a private family ceremony on 31 December 2014 at the crematorium.

Writing in The Sunday Times in 2008, Dan Cairns had suggested: “many consider him to be one of the greatest bass players of all time.” Steve Anderson, writing in The Independent said “.. he became one of the most famous and influential bass players in rock.”Roger Waters of Pink Floyd recently described Bruce as “probably the most musically gifted bass player who’s ever been.” Eric Clapton posted on Facebook about Bruce “He was a great musician and composer, and a tremendous inspiration to me” and composed an acoustic song in his honour and Ginger Baker wrote “I am very sad to learn of the loss of a fine man, Jack Bruce… My thoughts and wishes are with his family at this difficult time.” Guitarist Leslie West, of rock group Mountain, posted on Facebook, “It is with great sadness that one of the worlds greatest musicians and bass players, who I had the honor of playing with in West Bruce and Laing, Jack Bruce has died. I was hoping somehow that we might have gotten together one last time. Rest in Peace my friend.” Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi said on Twitter that Bruce had been his favourite bass player, saying “He was a hero to so many” and Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler regarded him as his “biggest influence and favourite bass player”. Guitarist John McLaughlin said on Twitter, “Very sad to have lost my old friend Jack Bruce.” Long-standing collaborator Robin Trower wrote on Facebook, “It has always been a great source of pride to me to have made music with Jack (one of the few musicians that can be truly called a force of nature) and Jack and I were proud of that music. He will be greatly missed”. Fellow bassist Billy Cox also posted a tribute to Bruce on Facebook. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick said, “There was a time when Jack Bruce was synonymous with the bass guitar in rock history, when he was widely revered as the best there was on four strings.” Rush bassist and singer Geddy Lee wrote: “The sudden passing of Jack Bruce is terribly sad news. One of the greatest rock bassists to ever live and a true and profound inspiration to countless musicians. He was one of my first bass heroes and was a major influence on my playing and my music. My heartfelt condolences to his family and fans. In March 2015, a tribute concert at London’s Roundhouse scheduled for October 2015 was announced. Guest artists confirmed were, Joss Stone, Phil Manzanera, Ginger Baker, Ian Anderson and Mark King and musical director Nitin Sawhney.