Sunshine of Your Love - Cream (Drum Cover)

Drum cover of "Sunshine of Your Love" a 1967 song by the British supergroup Cream.

   / rhythmantic  


Song written by Jack Bruce, Pete Brown and Eric Clapton. It was originally released on the album Disraeli Gears in November 1967, and was later released as a single in January 1968. It is Cream's only gold-selling single in the United States.

The song was ranked at No. 65 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. If you're a drummer, this song has got to be a part of your drum cover repertoire.

The producer of this session is the late Felix Pappalardi who later played bass for the band Mountain with Leslie West. The session took place in my hometown of New York City, in Manhattan where I was attending the High School of Art & Design at the time of the recording.

Development of the song began when Bruce and Clapton attended The Jimi Hendrix Experience show at the Saville Theatre in London. After the concert, Bruce returned home and wrote the riff that runs throughout the song. Most of the lyrics to "Sunshine of Your Love" were written during an all-night creative session between Bruce and Brown, a poet who worked with the band: "I picked up my double bass and played the riff. Pete looked out the window and the sun was coming up. He wrote 'It's getting near dawn and lights close their tired eyes...'" Clapton later wrote the song's bridge which also yielded the song's title.

Clapton's guitar tone on the song is created using his 1964 Gibson SG guitar (the famous "Fool" guitar) through a Wah-Wah pedal and a Marshall amplifier. The song is renowned among guitarists as perhaps the best example of his legendary late-1960s "woman tone", a thick yet articulate sound that many have tried to emulate. For the solo, Clapton played the opening lines from the pop standard "Blue Moon", creating a contrast between the sun and the moon.

Drummer Ginger Baker came up with the song's tempo, which was based on African drumming. Engineer Tom Dowd later claimed to have suggested the drum part, but Baker insists that he was indeed the one who came up with the drum pattern and didn't receive writing credit: "not even a thank you!"

The drumming on the first two verses emphasizes beats one and three, contrary to rock and roll standard practice, which emphasizes beats two and four.

Cream's American record label, Atlantic, did not like the song originally and was not going to release it, but changed their mind when Booker T. Jones (of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, whose Stax label was at the time distributed by Atlantic) said he liked the song.

Triggering a Custom & Vintage SDX kit from Superior Drummer 2.3. I dig the snare, it's a Slingerland 7x14" Radio King from the 1940s.