Cream’s “Live At The Forum”, featuring the band’s performance recorded at the Los Angeles Forum during their Goodbye Tour of 1968, will be released in a limited edition, blue, 2LP version by UMC/Polydor Records on April 23rd.
The 2LP release is taken from the four-CD set that commemorated the tour and was released in 2020. “Live At The Forum” is produced by Bill Levenson and marks the first authorised release of the full concert on vinyl. The recording of the historic show captures the mighty trio of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker at the height of Cream’s powers, but poignantly also nearing the end of their all-too-brief two-year reign.
Cream’s final album Goodbye, which followed their split and was released in February 1969, contained six tracks, three of which were recorded at the Forum. The LP topped the charts in the UK, where it went platinum, and reached No.2 in the US, where it was certified gold.
“Cream was a shambling circus of diverse personalities who happened to find that catalyst together,” observed Clapton. “Any one of us could have played unaccompanied for a good length of time. So you put the three of us together in front of an audience willing to dig it limitlessly, we could have gone on forever… And we did….just going for the moon every time we played.”
The Goodbye Tour comprised 22 shows at 19 venues across the US from October 4th to November 4th, 1968. Cream’s famous finale, in two shows at London’s hallowed Royal Albert Hall, followed on November 25th and 26th.
“Cream was a shambling circus of diverse personalities who happened to find that catalyst together… any one of us could have played unaccompanied for a good length of time,” Eric Clapton said of the 1968 farewell shows in a statement. “So you put the three of us together in front of an audience willing to dig it limitlessly, we could have gone on forever… And we did… just going for the moon every time we played.” (The announcement of the Live at the Forum vinyl notably comes on the same day, March 30th, as Clapton’s 76th birthday.)
The vinyl release of Live at the Forum is available to preorder now and will arrive as a limited edition double-LP set pressed on blue vinyl. The record was produced by Bill Levenson, while Kevin Reeves mastered the tapes from the original 1968 analogue mix reels. Along with the Forum show, last year’s Goodbye Tour Live 1968 box set featured two other Cream shows in California from October 1968 (San Diego and Oakland), as well as their November 26th, 1968 farewell gig at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
“Live At The Forum” is released on April 23rd.
The Fat Angel Sings 