Blind Faith

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Blind Faith was British blues supergroup which consisted of Eric Clapton (The Yardbirds, Cream), Ginger Baker (Graham Bond Organisation, Cream), Steve Winwood (Traffic) and Rick Grech (Family). The group only released one album Blind Faith in August 1969 (see 1969 in music) and were often seen as stylistically similar to the bands which Winwood and Clapton had most recently participated in, Traffic and Cream. The band helped to pioneer a fusion of rock and roll with the blues and their album was an early innovative recording in the development of heavy metal.

1 Formation and Early History
2 Debut and Touring
3 Album Release and Controversy
4 Dissolution and Separate Paths
5 Members
6 Charts
7 External links

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Formation and Early History

Blind Faith's beginnings start in mid 1968 with the breakup of Cream. The band had become a financial powerhouse selling millions of records within a few years and raising the group's and each member's repertoire to international popularity. Despite success the band was crumbling from within with frequent animosity between Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker with Eric Clapton as the mediator. The band would breakup that year and Clapton tired of being coerced into playing commercially-driven blues looked to start a new experimental less straight-jacket approach to the genre.

Winwood was facing similar problems in The Spencer Davis Group where he had been the lead singer for 3 years while they produced straight laced blues but Winwood wanted to experiment with the band's sound by infusing Jazz and he left the band due to his musical differences instead forming a new band Traffic in 1969. That band would temporarily split that same year and Winwood a well known friend of Clapton (they had previously collaborated on a record as "Powerhouse") started to jam with Clapton in his basement in Surrey, England.

Clapton was pleased with the jams and looked towards seriously starting a trio with Winwood but they were in need of a drummer. Ginger Baker turned up to sit in with them in 1969 and the band took near final form. Although Clapton questioned letting Baker in the band because he had promised Baker that if they were to work with one another again that they would have all three play but Clapton didn't want to reunite with Cream after just 9 weeks and didn't want another "Cream". Winwood persuaded Clapton into finalizing Baker in the lineup arguing that he only strengthened their musicianship and it would be hard to find an equally talented drummer.

By May of 1969, Rick Grech, bassist with Family was invited to join them (he left Family, mid-tour) and they laid down most of their album at Olympic Studios under the supervision of producer Jimmy Miller who provided focus to a band who perferred jamming over the standard commercial 4-5 minute track. By then the group was collectively known as Blind Faith, a slyly cynical reference by Clapton on his outlook of the new group.

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Debut and Touring

News of the formation of the group created a buzz of excitement among the public and press to go as far as heralding the band as "super Cream". The group debuted at a free concert at London's Hyde Park on June 7, 1969. The performance was well received by fans there but troubled Clapton who thought that the band's playing was sub-par and that the adulation was undeserved and was reminiscent of his Cream days when the crowds would applaud for nearly everything. Clapton knowing the band had not rehearsed enough and was unprepared was reluctant to tour and feared that the band would develop into a Cream repeat.

Image:Blind Faith large picture.jpeg The recording of their album continued; followed by a short tour of Scandinavia where the band played smaller gigs and were able to rehearse their sound and prepare it for bigger audiences in America and England. After Scandinavia, the band toured the United States making their debut at Madison Square Garden on July 12th for more than 20,000. During the performance a 30 minute long riot occurred on stage with police and concert goers leading to Baker accidently getting clubbed on the head by a police officer and Winwood's piano being destroyed. The band would tour for seven more weeks in America finishing their tour in Hawaii on August 24, 1969.

A major problem with the tour was that the band had only a few songs in their catalog barely enough to fill an hour and were forced to play old Cream and Traffic songs to the crowd's delight who usually preferred their older popular material to their new Blind Faith material

Clapton was now exactly where he didn't want to be, he was stuck in a "super Cream" that was causing riots during their live shows (Cream hadn't even reached the status to create riots) and they were playing the exact same material from his Cream days to appease the audience and fill the time void that the new material didn't fill. Opening acts for the band included the band Free and a blues based rock act called Delaney & Bonnie. Clapton peticularly liked the soulful folksy sounding blues of Delaney & Bonnie and he began spending most of his time with them instead of Blind Faith letting Winwood take take a more prominent role in the band.

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Album Release and Controversy

Image:BlindFaithBlindFaith.jpg

Upon its release, Blind Faith (album) topped Billboard's at the No. #1 spot for Pop Album in both America and the United Kingdom and peaked at #40 on the Black Albums chart, an impressive feat for a British rock quartet. The album sold more than half a million copies within the first month of its release and was a huge profit making device for Atlantic Records and for Clapton (Blind Faith sales were helping to stimulate demand for Cream albums as well).

The release of their album caused controversy at the time because the cover featured a topless young girl holding a (supposedly phallic) silver space ship in her hands. The U.S. record company issued it in an alternative cover, with a shot of the band on the front.

The cover art was created by photographer Bob Seidemann, a personal friend and former flatmate of Clapton's who is primarily known for his photos of Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. Bizarre rumors both fueled and were fueled by the controversy, including that the girl was Baker's illegitimate daughter or was a groupie kept as a slave by the band.

Another interesting note about the cover was that the cover was nameless and only the wrapping paper told the buyer who the artist was and the name of the album. According to Seidemann, "It was Eric who elected to not print the name of the band on the cover. This had never been done before. The name was printed on the wrapper, when the wrapper came off, so did the type." (Actually, it had been done before, including on Traffic's self-titled 1968 album.)

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Dissolution and Separate Paths

After the tour finished in August, the band returned to England surrounded by rumours of breakup or a possible U.K. tour. By October the band would effectively dissolve within a year of their creation and not produce another studio or live album although several live tracks from the band can be found on Steve Winwood's 1995 retrospective album The Finer Things.

Clapton would step out of the spotlight, first to sit in with the Plastic Ono Band, and then to tour as a sideman for Delaney & Bonnie and Friends whom he had become good friends with since the U.S. tour. This way he could be free of the limelight that he had considered to plague both Cream and Blind Faith. After his sideman stint he would take several members from Delaney & etc. to form a new supergroup Derek & the Dominos.

Unlike Clapton, Ginger Baker had enjoyed his Blind Faith experience and looked to carry on an offshoot of the band in the form of Ginger Baker's Air Force with both Grech and Winwood. After a few shows together Winwood would leave with Grech and go to Island Records to reunite and reform Traffic producing the hit album John Barleycorn Must Die.

Clapton and Winwood would later on look favorably on their work in the band and the songs featured in both Clapton (Crossroads) and Winwood collections and catalogs.

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