Sunshine of Your Love
"Sunshine of Your Love" is a 1967 song by the British rock band Cream. With elements of hard rock, psychedelia, and pop, it is one of Cream's best known and most popular songs. Cream bassist and vocalist Jack Bruce based it on a distinctive bass riff he developed after attending a Jimi Hendrix concert. Guitarist Eric Clapton and lyricist Pete Brown later contributed to the song. Recording engineer Tom Dowd suggested the rhythm arrangement in which drummer Ginger Baker plays a distinctive tom-tom drum rhythm, although Baker claimed it was his idea.
The song was included on Cream's best-selling second album Disraeli Gears in November 1967. Atco Records, the group's American label, was initially unsure of the song's potential. After recommendations by other label-affiliated artists, it released an edited single version in December 1967. The song became Cream's first and highest charting American single and one of the most popular singles of 1968. In September 1968, it became a modest chart hit after being released in the UK.
Cream performed "Sunshine of Your Love" regularly in concert and several live recordings have been issued, including on the Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005 reunion album and video. Hendrix performed faster instrumental versions of the song, which he often dedicated to Cream. Several rock journals have placed the song on their greatest song lists, such as Rolling Stone, Q magazine, and VH1. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included it on its list of the "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll".
Composition
In early 1967, Cream were writing and rehearsing songs for their second album. Their December 1966 debut album, Fresh Cream, was a mix of updated blues numbers and pop-oriented rock songs. Inspired by recent developments in rock music, they began pursuing a more overtly psychedelic direction. "Sunshine of Your Love" began as a bass phrase or riff developed by Cream bassist Jack Bruce. Cream attended a concert on 29 January 1967 by the Jimi Hendrix Experience at the Saville Theatre in London. Cream guitarist Eric Clapton elaborated in a 1988 Rolling Stone magazine interview:Music writers Covach and Boone describe the riff as blues-derived, which uses a minor blues pentatonic scale with an added flattened fifth note. The song follows a blues chord progression during the first eight bars. Brown had a difficult time writing lyrics that fit the riff. After an all-night session, Bruce played it on a standup bass while lyricist Pete Brown was staring out the window. Slowly, he started to write "It's getting near dawn and lights close their tired eyes", which is used in the first verse. Later, to break up the rhythm, Clapton wrote a refrain which also yielded the song's title. It consists of eight-bar sections using three chords, when the key shifts to the V chord :
| I | III–VII | I | III–VII | I | III–VII | I | I |
A bootleg recording from the Ricky-Tick club in London before Cream recorded the song in the studio, shows "Sunshine of Your Love" with a beat common to rock for the period. Cream drummer Ginger Baker compared it to the uptempo "Hey Now, Princess", another Bruce/Brown composition Cream recorded in March. He said that he advised Bruce to slow it down and came up with the distinctive drum pattern which emphasises beats one and three. However, Bruce and recording engineer Tom Dowd dispute Baker's claim, which they say he only made much later. Dowd later explained
Recording
Cream performed their first American concerts in New York City in 1967. Robert Stigwood, the group's manager, booked them for a Murray the K package show at the RKO Manhattan Theatre from 25 March to 2 April 1967. When it was finished, Stigwood arranged for a recording session with Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Studios. Bruce and Brown had a number of new songs in various stages of development and entered the studio on 3 April. Initially, Ertegun assigned Dowd to work with the trio. Dowd had worked with many of the biggest jazz and rhythm and blues musicians in the 1950s and 1960s. However, Cream was his first exposure to extreme volume levels. The group arrived at Atlantic with their concert setup of multiple Marshall amplifiers. Dowd was surprised by the amount of equipment accompanying the trio: "They recorded at ear-shattering level... Everyone I'd worked with before was using Fender Deluxes or Twins —six- and seven-piece bands that didn't play as loud as this three piece did."Ertegun brought in producer Felix Pappalardi, who he believed could work as a go-between with the group and Dowd. They began with "Strange Brew", "Tales of Brave Ulysses", and "Sunshine of Your Love". Ertegun previewed the demos and was unhappy, expecting more blues-based material that was found on Fresh Cream. Jerry Wexler, Ertegun's Atlantic Records partner, reportedly went as far as to call it "psychedelic hogwash". However, Booker T. Jones and Otis Redding gave "Sunshine of Your Love" their wholehearted approval. Differences were smoothed over by the time Cream returned in May 1967 to finish recording the songs for Disraeli Gears.
With Pappalardi and Dowd, work continued on "Sunshine of Your Love". For his guitar solo, Clapton used a sound known as the "woman tone" on his 1964 Gibson SG Standard. Author Mitch Gallagher describes it as a "smooth, dark, singing, sustaining sound". It is one of the best-known examples of the woman tone and quotes the melody from the perennial pop standard "Blue Moon". By using the song's major pentatonic scale, Clapton provides a contrast with the riff's blues scale. A writer for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes this as "creating a balance between the sun and the moon". Baker plays much of the song on the tom-toms, described as sounding African and Native American. Covach and Boone note he "concentrates on the lower tom sounds and uses an articulation and sound reminiscent of the jazz drumming in the Woody Herman or Benny Goodman bands".
Releases and charts
"Sunshine of Your Love" was included as the second track on Disraeli Gears, which was released in November 1967 by Reaction Records in the UK and Atco Records in the US. At first, Atco did not see the song as a single. However, in December 1967, the label issued an edited version of the song as the second single from the album, backed with "SWLABR".It entered Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart on 13 January 1968, reaching number 36 during its initial 14-week run. The record re-entered the chart on 6 July 1968 and reached number five on 31 August 1968. In the UK, the single was not released until September 1968, after Cream had announced their impending breakup. Polydor Records issued the UK single, which reached number 25 in the charts.
| Top singles charts 1968 | Peak position | Weeks on chart |
| Australia Go-Set Top 40 | 22 | 8 |
| Canada RPM 100 | 3 | 11 |
| Dutch Charts | 17 | 1 |
| UK Singles Chart | 25 | 7 |
| US Billboard Hot 100 | 5 | 26 |
| US Cash Box Top Singles | 6 | 24 |
The Recording Industry Association of America certified the single gold on 26 September 1968, signifying sales in excess of 1,000,000 copies. In the US, it became one of the best selling singles of 1968 and one of the best-selling at the time for the Atlantic group of labels.
| 1968 Year-end Charts | Position |
| Canada RPM Top Singles | 21 |
| US Billboard Top 10 Singles | 6 |
As one of Cream's most popular songs, several of the group's compilation albums include the full-length studio recording, such as Best of Cream, Heavy Cream, The Very Best of Cream, and the boxed set Those Were the Days.
Certifications
Recognition and influence
In 2004, the song ranked number 65 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". In March 2005, Q magazine placed "Sunshine of Your Love" at number 19 on its list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Tracks Ever!" In 2009, VH1 included it at number 44 on its list of the "Top 100 Hard Rock Songs". The song is on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of the "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll".Ertegun later admitted that, while his tastes ran more to Robert Johnson, Cream's and Pappalardi's vision resulted in songs which had a much larger impact on the rock audiences of the time. Covach and Boone identified "Sunshine of Your Love" as foreshadowing future trends in rock:
Other recordings
Several live recordings of "Sunshine of Your Love" have been issued on Cream albums. These include a 24 October 1967 recording by the BBC, 9 March 1968 at the Winterland Ballroom, and 26 November 1968 at the Royal Albert Hall. A recording from Cream's reunion show on 3 May 2005 is included on Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005. During their post-Cream careers, Clapton and Bruce recorded several live performances of the song.A variety of musicians have recorded "Sunshine of Your Love". After Cream announced their breakup, Hendrix often performed it in concert as a tribute to the group, apparently unaware that they had dedicated the song to him. He played it as an instrumental and sometimes as part of a medley. A performance by the Experience on 4 January 1969 is one of the best-known. During the live broadcast of A Happening for Lulu, a music variety show hosted by pop singer Lulu on BBC Television, the Experience suddenly broke with the programme. Hendrix announced, "We'd like to stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to the Cream, regardless of what kind of group they may be in – dedicate this to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce". As their performance of "Sunshine of Your Love" ran into the time allotted for Lulu's closing number, the show's producer and staff were frantically signalling for the Experience to stop. However, they continued playing and the show ended on a fade. Hendrix later apologised to Lulu, who thought the performance made for a great television moment.