Artist: Blind Faith
Label: Polydor Records
Release: 1969
Duration: 49.28
Rating: 3/5
The Blind Faith story (unintentionally) sprouted as a media-hyped, grand-scale musical experiment from the ashes of British blues rock attraction Cream, after Eric Clapton and ex-Traffic musketeer Steve Winwood pledged allegiance to each other in record time. All kinds of gossip about the imminent launch of a new supergroup, supposedly setting course for the Cream ship that most felt had been abandoned too early, got extra fuel when Family bassist Rick Grech joined the pair, and with his entrance through the back door, the ever-present maestro Ginger Baker finally confirmed the rumors.
Blind Faith is the simply titled debut of the star-studded crew introduced above, an album that fate dealt thankless circumstances when it came to proving its own worth. The burden of expectations from critics and casual listeners soon swept away most of the naive enthusiasm that Clapton and Winwood, as a rule, churned out in series. Add to that the lack of any more concretely developed creative chemistry, which Clapton’s disapproval of Ginger’s sly tagging along with the band didn’t exactly help. The album does boast a high level of interplay and doesn’t shy away from improvised wandering, but in the latter it too often gets stuck in the puddle of vagueness of forcibly stitched-together compositions. Those are surely also a consequence of the haste in which the record was cut.
The Blind Faith debut mostly breathes like a heavily stretched-out jam session. With their built-in sense for improvisation, it’s predictably Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood who impress most often. The collaboration shows its teeth willingly, for instance on opener “Had To Cry Today”, where Winwood’s presence weaves a few less conventional melodic flourishes into the basic bluesy form, and they blend nicely with the laid-back yet sharp-enough testifying of Eric Clapton, which the guitarist then unleashes next. Still, this time the album’s peaks have to be sought beyond the improvised marathons. Winwood’s masterpiece “Can’t Find My Way Home”, drenched in vocal sentiment, and the personal confession “Presence Of The Lord”, pouring from Eric Clapton’s pen, have remained seasoned classics to this day and the definitive creative zeniths of the fleeting Blind Faith adventure. Steering clear of stamina-driven jamming, the two songs put together a compact, melodically very simple and agreeable mood, which against all expectations even turns into the star lineup’s main weapon. Somewhere in between, as a sprout of a sort of emergency truce between melodic chaos and endearing, kitschy catchiness, “Well All Right” makes itself known, though sadly nobody had the drive to turn it into a finer composition.
“Sea Of Joy” leans on Winwood’s exceptional vocal qualities, and thank goodness, because at its core it’s yet another in a line of not exactly successful maneuvers, serving up laid-back, almost weary instrumental meandering in the unpleasant waters of dull psychedelia. “Do What You Like” marks the turning point, the moment where Blind Faith’s imagination finally runs out of steam. The piece is the work of Ginger Baker, a man who never throws in the towel when chasing artistic integrity. The roughly improvised experiment is slathered all over with Ginger’s elementary arrangement moves. Blind Faith leap into the album’s farewell jam with the help of the trademark syncopated rhythms Ginger had been signing his work with since the early Cream days. Not only are we by no means dealing with the chemistry that sprouted from the conceptual collision of the great trio, this time what shamelessly gnaws at the ears is uninspired, limply pulsing motifs and a dry-as-dust division of roles that spreads into every corner of the song, from Winwood’s synthetically shod keyboard tapping, through Rick Grech’s missable bass confession, to Baker’s technically polished solo spot, which chases the magic of the Cream classic Toad in vain.
The Blind Faith debut confirms again and again how hard it was for the creative threads, hastily woven together within the band, to flow, and that’s despite the undisputed renown of its members (and very likely precisely because of it). The relatively modestly worked-out ideas are first and foremost a logical consequence of the discouraging creative environment in which the album was made, which is a real shame. So we’ll have to wait at least a while longer for a new outburst of musical poetry from the star-studded foursome, and even then we’ll mostly meet the Blind Faith artillerymen on solo expeditions.
Lineup
Steve Winwood: vocals, organ, piano, guitar
Eric Clapton: guitar, backing vocals
Rick Grech: bass, violin, backing vocals
Ginger Baker: drums
Production
Jimmy Miller
Tracklist
1. Had to Cry Today
2. Can’t Find My Way Home
3. Well All Right
4. Presence of the Lord
5. Sea of Joy
6. Do What You Like
