At first, to some, it was just the B-side of a new single by the most happening power rock trio of the day. Soon, we were realizing that Cream’s “Tales of Brave Ulysses” was quite a strange brew of its own. Described by Eric Clapton as the first song he ever wrote, the track unexpectedly took Greek mythology to record players around the world.
After a first appearance on 45 with “Wrapping Paper,” Cream ended 1966 with the double punch of a second Jack Bruce/Pete Brown composition, the dynamic “I Feel Free,” and its debut album Fresh Cream. Incessant touring throughout 1967 left little time for recording, and it would almost be the year-end before Bruce, Clapton, and Ginger Baker unveiled their second LP, Disraeli Gears.
Listen to Disraeli Gears on Apple Music and Spotify.
But in June, they bridged the gap with another indelible single: “Strange Brew,” featuring Clapton’s best Albert King-style blues groove, was backed by the dark, mysterious “Tales of Brave Ulysses.” For the B-side track, Clapton teamed up with Martin Sharp, a subtly influential Australian poet, writer, and visual artist. It was, wrote Clapton in his 2007 autobiography, “the start of a long friendship and a very fruitful collaboration.” They went on to share a studio in King’s Road, Chelsea. “Martin was a very gentle man,” he reflected, “with an insatiable appetite for life and new experiences.”
The pair had been introduced one night at the Speakeasy Club in London, where Sharp told Clapton he had written a poem that he thought might be suitable for a song. “I asked him to show me the words,” recalled Clapton. “He wrote them down on a napkin and gave them to me. They began: ‘You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever…’ ”
Clapton had been working on a melody inspired by one of the most enduring hits of 1966, The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City,” and a recent trip to the Greek islands. He married it to Sharp’s lyrics and, aided by his adventurous and early use of the wah-wah pedal, created one of the era’s great moments in psych-blues. “It’s funny actually,” Clapton said in a 1968 interview with Hit Parader, “because I’ve been playing guitar and working in groups for about five years and that’s the first song I ever wrote in my life.”
Whether Cream fans knew it or not, “Tales of Brave Ulysses” told the story of a key figure from Greek mythology: Odysseus, also known by his Latin name Ulysses. A hero of the Trojan War and of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, his story was also reimagined by James Joyce in his novel Ulysses. “At the time we wrote the song, there was a novel by James Joyce which was made into a film,” Clapton told Hit Parader. “It was getting a lot of publicity and the whole thing clicked. People were connecting our song with the film.”
In the same interview, Clapton revealed that the wah-wah sound was something of an accident, by way of his encounter with a Vox pedal. “The day that we cut that recording, I was walking through 48th Street in New York and there’s this shop called Manny’s and they gave me this thing,” Clapton recalled. “They said try it out. I’ve never in my life used any kind of modification or gimmicks. I’ve never used a fuzz box, for instance. I just thought what a drag but it’s worth a try. I used it on the record and it worked.”
The New Musical Express review of the single duly raved about “Strange Brew,” but it also reserved a paragraph of praise for “Ulysses.” “A complex enigmatic lyric combines with a pounding walloping beat,” wrote Derek Johnson. “Bit more psychedelic than the topside, but not nauseatingly so. Very interesting item.”
Early in the two-month UK chart run of “Strange Brew” and its unusually literary flipside, which peaked at No. 17, Cream (or The Cream, as they were still often referred to) were part of a dazzling bill at London’s Saville Theatre with the Jeff Beck Group and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Nick Jones’ Melody Maker review noted that “Tales Of Brave Ulysses” arrived “swooping from the sky” into the impressive set.
When the Disraeli Gears album arrived in November 1967, featuring both “Strange Brew” and “Tales of Brave Ulysses Ulysses,” who should be the designer of its memorably day-glo cover art but Martin Sharp? He used a publicity shot of Cream and adorned it in lurid shades of red, orange, and green, some of them borrowed from Victorian decorative engravings.
“Tales of Brave Ulysses” inspired an interesting cover version in 1969 when it was remade by Rotary Connection, the group featuring a young Minnie Riperton, for the Songs album, released on the jazz subsidiary of Chess Records, Cadet. The Disraeli Gears LP had clearly made its mark on the Chicago group, as Songs included two other Disraeli Gears tracks: “Sunshine Of Your Love” and “We’re Going Wrong.” It was a fitting acknowledgement of a mythological rock landmark.
Listen to Disraeli Gears on Apple Music and Spotify.
Discover how words on the page become words in song, and vice versa, through uDiscover’s Music and Literature series. Much like literature, music is a medium for storytelling and world-building, and songwriters often look to poetry, drama, and prose to inspire their work. Similarly, music has gone on to shape new literary styles and even entire movements. Spanning genres and time periods, the series celebrates the relationship between these two artistic forms and digs into little-known facts about some of the most literary artists and songs.
