Strange Brew

Cream rises to top as Bruce finally gets degree - 50 years after angry walk-out

As a precocious and talented teenager who believed he was destined for stardom, Jack Bruce thought he knew it all. So, when his tutors at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama failed to take his ideas on music seriously enough, he quit the course in protest. Click to learn more... Now, nearly 50 years on, Jack Bruce, the rock legend who founded the superband Cream with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, has returned to Scotland's national school of music to receive an honorary degree and make peace with the body he walked out on.

Bruce, together with Ginger Baker, were both jazz enthusiasts and Bruce claimed that he tried to get Cream to play progressive jazz in disguise with Eric Clapton unwittingly 'playing the part of Ornette Coleman'. Listening to Cream again with that thought in mind you get a completely different perspective on some of their music.