Pete Brown

Lyricist, singer

Most U.S. rock audiences would probably know Pete Brown solely as the lyricist for many of the rock trio Cream's best-known songs, including "Sunshine of Your Love," "I Feel Free," and "White Room." Brown, however, went on to lead two British jazz-rock combos, Battered Ornaments and Piblokto!, with many of England's most respected musicians. He also produced records for several British jazz and rock performers.

When he was 14, Brown began writing poetry inspired by American Beat poets of the 1950s and 1960s, and he began publishing his poetry when he was 18. He was invited to perform his poetry at St. Pancras Town Hall in 1963 and soon was at the vanguard of a British poetry and jazz renaissance. A flourishing economy at the time made funding of arts festivals plentiful, and Brown was able to hire musicians to provide musical support for his poetry readings. In 1961 he hired British music legend Graham Bond to support him, with the assistance of future Cream drummer Ginger Baker. In 1963 Brown was a regular performer at London's Marquee Club, and during this period he regularly abused alcohol and other drugs. "During the early 1960s I was busy being a beatnik and living in a slum with lots of people," he told journalist Chris Welch.

In 1966 his guitar hero Eric Clapton left John Mayall's Blues Breakers to form Cream with Jack Bruce and Baker. The British psychedelic blues power trio asked Brown to contribute lyrics. "As far as my addled memory of the time goes, one day I got a phone call asking me to come down to a recording studio in Chalk Farm," Brown told Welch. "They'd written a song for Cream and needed some lyrics. It was as simple as that. … I had been writing poetry specifically to be done with music, and I had a strong awareness of blues lyrics. I was also a big film fan, so my head was full of movie imagery as well."

Brown began writing with Bruce and Baker. Cream's heavy touring commitments gave them little time to write songs for upcoming albums, so Brown was enlisted to assist. "They were on the road all the time and they had few opportunities to write. It was really down to who could come up with stuff fast. I always wrote on the spot with Jack," Brown told Welch.

By the time Cream recorded its landmark second album, Disraeli Gears, Brown and Bruce had formed a strong creative partnership, including collaboration on the classic rock staple "Sunshine of Your Love." Other songs with Brown lyrics on the album included "SWLABR" (an acronym for "She Walked Like a Bearded Rainbow"), "Dance the Night Away," and "Take It Back."

Cream's third release, Wheels of Fire, featured Brown's lyrics on "As You Said," "Politician," "Deserted Cities of the Heart," and "White Room." The latter song featured bolero drumming from Baker, wah-wah guitar pyrotechnics from Clapton, thundering bass and impassioned vocals by Bruce, and, finally, vivid and colorful lyrics by Brown that detailed his deteriorated mental state from drug abuse. "It was in my white-painted room that I had the horrible drug experience that made me want to stop everything," he told Welch. "I was pretty strange at the time. … The song was about going through serious changes and starting life again."

Post-Cream

Brown and Bruce collaborated on several songs for Cream's final studio effort, Goodbye, and wrote several songs that the band recorded but didn't release until 1997's four-disc box set. Two of these songs, "The Clearout" and "Weird of Hermiston," eventually wound up on Bruce's solo debut. The songs he co-wrote for the band helped make them immensely popular and made Brown extremely wealthy. He had never signed a contract with Cream's management company, which meant that he retained his full share of the songs' royalties, unlike band members Clapton, Bruce, and Baker, who only received small portions of the royalties for the songs they wrote.

Brown's poetic and musical aspirations led him to form the First Real Poetry Band in 1967, which included guitarist John McLaughlin, bassist Binky McKenzie, drummer Laurie Allen, and percussionist Pete Bailey. The band played at the Middle Earth Club, a nightclub specializing in psychedelic rock. When the opportunity arose to record songs, Brown enlisted double bassist Danny Thompson, saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith, trombonist John Mumford, keyboardist John Mitchell, guitarist Phil Lee, and vocalist Graham Layden. The group recorded two songs, "The Week Looked Good on Paper" and "Late Night Mental Tyre Service." Renamed Pete Brown and His Battered Ornaments, the group performed Brown's poetry and lyrics with Brown playing trumpet. Layden quit shortly thereafter, and Brown, for better or worse, took over all vocal duties. "The voice is a bit off, but the boys play well," was how Brown described the band in 1969. "Obviously the Battered Ornaments was a peculiar mixture between and R&B and rock and folk. Quite an interesting thing," Brown told Kimberly J. Bright. The band recorded its debut, A Meal You Can Shake Hands With in the Dark, with Chris Spedding on guitar, Charlie Hart on organ, Rob Tait on drums, Butch Potter on bass, and Nisar Ahmed Khan and Heckstall-Smith on saxophones. The group toured constantly, opening for such acts as the Move, the Who, and Pink Floyd. An opening slot for a Rolling Stones concert, however, sounded the death knell for Brown's tenure in the band he created. The band members fired Brown prior to their performance. "In the end, I felt overwhelmed by the musical heaviness of my accompanists, both in the band and on the recordings," Brown wrote in the liner notes for a compact disc reissue of the group's recordings. "They were just much too good for my decidedly dodgy singing." The remaining members of the band erased Brown's vocals from the tapes of the group's upcoming second album, Mantle-Piece, and replaced them with Spedding's vocals.

Brown rebounded from the Battered Ornaments by forming Pete Brown & Piblokto! with Roger Bunn on bass, Dave Thompson on keyboards, and Laurie Allen on drums. The group's name was taken from a Lawrence Ferlinghetti novel titled Her. Allen left to join the final incarnation of Battered Ornaments, and Ornaments' drummer Rob Tait was brought in to replace him in Piblokto!. The new group recorded the single "Living Life Backwards," which was eventually covered by Jeff Beck. After the group's first album, Things May Come and Things May Go, But the Art School Dance Goes on Forever, Piblokto! experienced many lineup changes and recorded the album Thousands on a Raft, taking the title from Cockney slang for baked beans on toast. Lack of a record deal caused the group to disband in 1971.

In 1972 Brown teamed with Graham Bond for the album Two Heads Are Better Than One. He then formed the group Back to the Front, a band featuring keyboardist Ian Lynn that never recorded. In 1983 he released Party in the Rain prior to a long recording hiatus, which was broken in the 1990s with the release of The Land That Cream Forgot, Ardours of the Lost Rake, and Coals to Jerusalem with keyboardist Phil Ryan. Brown also formed the Interoceters, a rotating lineup of musicians who performed songs from Brown's back catalog.

For the Record …

Born December 25, 1940, in Surrey, England.

Granted regular showcase at London's Marquee Club, 1963; worked as lyricist with Cream bassist and singer Jack Bruce, 1966-68; formed Battered Ornaments, 1968; formed Piblokto!, 1969.

Addresses: Management—Jon Brewer, Big Fish, River House, Point Pleasant, London, SW18 1NN, telephone: 0208-871-9669. Agent—Phyllis Belezos, 74A Charlotte St., London, W1T 4QJ, telephone: 0207-637-6979, e-mail: phyllis@itb.co.uk. Website—Pete Brown Official Website: http://www.PeteBrownWeb.com.

Selected discography

(With Battered Ornaments) A Meal You Can Shake Hands With in the Dark, Harvest, 1969.

(With Piblokto!) Things May Come and Things May Go, But the Art School Dance Goes on Forever, Harvest, 1970.

Thousands on a Raft, Harvest, 1970.

(With Graham Bond) Two Heads Are Better Than One, 1972.

Party in the Rain, Discs International, 1983.

(With Phil Ryan) The Land That Cream Forgot, Viceroy Vintage, 1996.

Ardours of the Lost Rake, Voiceprint, 2003.

Coals to Jerusalem, Voiceprint, 2003.

(With The Interoceters) Live, Mystic, 2004.

Living Life Backwards: The Best of Pete Brown, EMI, 2006.

Sources

Books

Bright, Kimberly J., Chris Spedding: Reluctant Guitar Hero, iUniverse, Inc., 2006.

Welch, Chris, Cream: The Legendary Sixties Supergroup, Miller Freeman, 2000.

Online

All Music Guide,www.allmusicguide.com (September 17, 2007).

Additional information for this profile was obtained from the following liner notes: Pete Brown & His Battered Ornaments: A Meal You Can Shake Hands With in the Dark and Mantle-Piece, (CD reissue); Beat Goes On, 2001; and Pete Brown & Piblokto!: Things May Come and Things May Go, But the Art School Dance Goes on Forever and Thousands on a Raft, (CD reissue), Beat Goes On, 2001.

—Bruce Edward Walker