• Writers: Jack Bruce and Pete Brown
• Producer: Felix Pappalardi
• Recorded: August 1967 at IBC Studios, London, England, and February 1968 at Atlantic Studios, New York City
• Players:
  Eric Clapton — guitars, vocals
  Jack Bruce — bass, harmonica, vocals
  Ginger Baker — drums, percussion, vocals
  Felix Pappalardi — violas
• Album: Wheels Of Fire (Atco, 1968)
• Also On:
  Best Of Cream (Atco, 1969)
  Live Cream, Vol. II (Atco, 1972)
  Heavy Cream (Polydor, 1972)
  Strange Brew: The Very Best Of Cream (Polydor, 1983)
  Crossroads (Polydor, 1988; Eric Clapton)
  24 Nights (Duck, 1991; Eric Clapton)
  and many others.
• “White Room” opens Wheels Of Fire, a two-record set that comprises one album of Cream studio recordings and another one of songs recorded live at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. It hit Number Three on the Billboard 200.
• Wheels Of Fire was also released as a single album with the studio songs only. It peaked at Number Seven.
• By the time of the album’s release, Cream had announced their decision to split up and had begun a 15-show farewell tour of the United States, followed by two sold-out farewell concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
• According to singer-guitarist Eric Clapton, “Cream was originally formed as a blues trio — like Buddy Guy with a rhythm section. We were going to play small clubs… We didn’t want to be big in any way. We had gigs when you could have mistaken us for the (Jimi) Hendrix (Experience), it was that good, but the bad nights were awful.”
• A trio of virtuosos, Cream paved the way for such heavy rock bands as Led Zeppelin and also inspired many fusion jazz artists to mix jazz’s complex melodic structures with rock power.
• “I hit it off with Jack (Bruce) really well,” Clapton said of his first time working with the singer-bassist, when both were members of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. “Then he (Bruce) left to go with Manfred Mann and (Mayall) got John McVie back. I decided that playing with Jack was more exciting. There was something creative there. Most of what we were doing with Mayall… I was imitating records we’d got, but Jack had something else. He had no reverence for what we were doing and was composing new parts as he went along. I had never heard that before and it took me someplace else.”

FAST FORWARD:

• Cream broke up following a pair of farewell shows on November 25th and 26th, 1968, at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
• Clapton and Baker went on to form Blind Faith in 1969.
• Since disbanding in 1968, Cream has only reunited three times — for their induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1993, in Los Angeles; at the Royal Albert Hall in London in May 2005l and at Madison Square Garden in New York City in October 2005.
• Clapton has also been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Yardbirds, and as a solo artist.
• Since Cream split, Bruce has done a variety of projects, including a band with Mountain‘s Leslie West and Corky Laing, recording with Robin Trower, and working with Cream drummer Ginger Baker and Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore as BBM. He also recorded with Clapton on 1989’s Willpower and 2001’s Shadows In The Air.
• Baker released two albums with Ginger Baker’s Air Force, one solo album titled Eleven Sides Of Baker, and then joined Adrian Gurvitz as part of the Baker-Gurvitz Army before taking a hiatus from rock to grow olives in Italy. In the early ’90s, he played on the Sunrise On The Sufferbus album by Masters Of Reality, and in 1994 he recorded a jazz album with the Ginger Baker Trio.
• Clapton was inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 2001.
• Clapton has devoted himself to establishing and maintaining the Crossroads Centre drug-and-alcohol-treatment facility in Antigua.
• Clapton was awarded an MBE (Member Of The British Empire) honor from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II in 1995, and she upgraded him to a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2003.
• Bruce was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2003 and underwent a successful transplant.