JACK BRUCE & FRIENDS: LIVE AT THE BOTTOM LINE (March 19, 1980 – Late Show)
JACK BRUCE’S BOTTOM LINE ONSLAUGHT
John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce (14 May 1943 – 25 October 2014) grew up in Bishopbriggs, Lanarkshire, Scotland. He is widely regarded as one of the most important artists in the history of rock music.
This is the first official release since Jack Bruce’s passing, and for those who only know Jack as the bassist and vocalist for Cream, it’s well worth filling in some blanks. Jack’s work as a solo artist spans over 45 years, and includes 14 albums as a leader, as well as over 50 appearances as a session man/collaborator. While it is perhaps the Cream material that he is best known for, those songs make up only a small portion of Jack Bruce’s total musical output.
And what an incredibly rich and varied output it is. As a young man, Jack was a serious student of music who honed his skills in London jazz and blues situations like Graham Bond Organization, Dick Heckstall-Smith’s bands, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Alexis Korner, and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. As with Gentle Giant’s Kerry Minnear, ELP’s Keith Emerson, and Morris Pert of Brand X (a fellow Scot), Jack Bruce was one of only a handful of guys to emerge on the 1960-70s British music scene possessing serious classical training. One of the most over-qualified rock stars of all time, Jack’s level of musicianship was truly stellar. He attended The Royal Scottish Academy of Music on scholarship, as a teen. He quickly became known as a multi-instrumentalist – performing on bass, cello, piano, guitar, harmonica, and of course, voice. Jack was also an inspired improviser, and began playing jazz on the acoustic bass with London’s finest (often including Ginger Baker), well before the advent of Cream. He was a ferocious soloist, and a rock-solid accompanist.
Directly after the implosion of Cream, in quick succession, Jack released his first solo discs, Songs for a Tailor, Things We Like, and Harmony Row, and was asked to join John McLaughlin and Larry Young in The Tony Williams Lifetime, which he did from 1970-71. Jack’s bass and vocal contributions to that seminal jazz-rock unit are simply staggering. He actually sang what later became the violin melody on a nascent, Lifetime version of Mahavishnu’s classic, “The Dance of Maya,” for chrissakes!
Time and time again, and throughout his career, Jack Bruce used his vast talents to re-imagine the rock song format, ignoring stylistic boundaries and limits, and delivering a varied and harmonically-sophisticated outlook on the entire “pop music” idiom, which for him, was often as much jazz as it was rock, or anything else. “I sound like myself,” he once told an interviewer. He certainly did not sound like anyone else.
Truly a thinking-man’s musician, Jack Bruce’s lifetime in sound touched on blues, jazz (traditional, avant, and latin), R&B, world music, Third Stream classical, and rock & roll. In Tony Palmer’s 1969 documentary, Rope Ladder to the Moon (filmed just after the dissolution of Cream, and at the beginning of Bruce’s solo career) we clearly hear Jack offering a thoughtful, and remarkably prescient worldview, and one which he wanted no part of. “We’re exploited by people who want to sell things to us – the newspapers, television, for example,” explains Bruce. “They want to impose upon us certain values and standards of their own, so that they can turn us into good consumers.” It was clear from the start that Jack Bruce would forge his own way.
Jack Bruce was quite an innovative singer and songwriter, often creating tunes that fell well outside of standard song-form and instrumentation. During a glowingly fruitful pairing with lyricist Pete Brown, Bruce created songs in a myriad of styles that could meander, cajole, slam, and sway. He left a body of work that gave us Jack’s unique take on, the ballad, the blues, and serious rockers - in the meantime contributing mightily to that body of music now referred to as Classic Rock. Yet somehow, it has not been properly noted that Jack Bruce was one of the greatest vocalists in the history of ever. Upon closer inspection, his melodic sense, and his bluesy-operatic vocal style would offer rather considerable challenges for most singers. Yes, Jack made it sound easy, but these melodic gems often required real technique and extensive range, often with wide-intervallic, high-wire leaps. So much of Jack’s material remains daunting, or neigh-impossible, for even the most accomplished of vocalists. His was a voice that truly soared.
The full breadth of Jack’s 45-year career includes major collaborations with Leslie West, Lou Reed, Soft Machine, Kip Hanrahan, Robin Trower, Allan Holdsworth, Gary Moore, and in Jack’s final years, a Tony Williams Lifetime tribute project called Spectrum, featuring Cindy Blackman-Santana, John Medeski, and Vernon Reid.
“I wouldn’t know how to describe what I write. It’s not jazz or pop or classical. It’s just me.” Jack Bruce
Jack’s first Bottom Line engagement was back in 1977, in support of his How’s Tricks album, billed as “The Jack Bruce Band.” When he returned in early 1980, his “Jack Bruce & Friends” proffered a funky, high-octane-jazz-rock take on a retrospective of Cream classics, and Jack’s already expansive solo catalogue. You hold in your hands the last set of a four-night, eight-show run - a juicy slice of rock history real estate. This once-in-a-lifetime super-group fuses former Mahavishnu drummer Billy Cobham, and original E Street Band keyboardist/guitarist David Sancious (both already had brilliant solo careers), with none other than Clem Clempson, fresh from Colosseum and Humble Pie, on lead guitar. Each effortlessly navigates The Worlds of Jack, with weight and aplomb. Many Bruce-aficionados rightly consider this to be the very finest of Jack’s ensembles.
The early show that evening had been broadcast on WNEW-FM, and when listening to the widely-circulated bootleg recording of that set, one can sense that the band is perhaps a bit ill-at ease, maybe a bit road-weary. However, the treasures of this, the late set of the night, are presented here for the first time, loud and clear. The guys were clearly more relaxed, feeling feisty, and up for taking some chances. Jack & Co. were now firing on all cylinders, and you’ve got a front row seat. (Note well: this is the very same powerhouse band that in late-1980 recorded Jack Bruce’s seventh solo album, I’ve Always Wanted to Do This.)
Most Bottom Line denizens-in-the-know will cheerfully explain that the late shows at The Bottom Line were the ones to catch. They were often 20-30 minutes longer, looser, more unpredictable, and much hotter than the early ones. This previously unreleased recording bears that out aplenty. It’s a powerful song cycle, featuring Cream classics right alongside Jack’s strongest solo material from his then six existing solo albums.
Running the gamut from hard rock to nimble jazz, to heart-wrenching ballads like “The Loner”, the set includes one of Jack and Pete Brown’s most poignant collaborations, “Running Through Our Hands,” as well as their most beautiful and enduring air, “Theme from an Imaginary Western.” (Try singing along to the bridge on that one!) The duel-guitar, full-frontal attack of “Politician” here is blistering, so let’s place that right next to the Cream one. Jack and the boys joyfully crank throughout, even launching into a rollicking blowout of Billy Cobham’s “Quadrant 4,” off Mr. BC’s first album, Spectrum, before finishing up with tons more Jacksong, and of course, “Sunshine of Your Love.”
Jack Bruce did return to perform at The Bottom Line several times, for a grand total of five different engagements between 1977-88. This includes, most notably, an impromptu Cream reunion in October of 1988, when Eric Clapton sat in on a Bruce/Baker set for “Spoonful,” and “Sunshine of Your Love.” The widely bootlegged mini-set does, in fact, predate Cream’s brief jam at their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 - just another spontaneous and singular occurrence taking place on that Bottom Line stage!
We now invite you to enjoy the music of Jack Bruce & Friends, live at The Bottom Line in 1980. Hear just how high Jack set the bar for himself, and for other musicians to follow. We shall not witness the likes of him again.
Gregg Bendian
