Blind Faith - Blind Faith (1969)

Despite my obsession with music during the first classic rock era there are a few supposedly must-hear albums that I never heard in their entirety, and the eponymous LP by Blind Faith was one of them. I've always been familiar with the album's radio favorites - "Can't Find My Way Home," "Well...All Right," and "Sea of Joy," but not the whole record. Just recently, I experienced all of it for the first time and came away disappointed. 

The seeds of Blind Faith grew from the wreckage of both Cream and Traffic. Half of the new supergroup came from Eric Clapton's late, great power trio. Ginger Baker was the drummer, Steve Winwood worked behind the microphone and handled keyboards while Ric Grech - a refugee from the band Family - joined them on bass.

Clapton's axe work on this set was more restrained than it was with Cream. He played tastefully, and Winwood proved he is a keyboard master. All four members blended their instrumental talents together quite well, so musicianship is not the problem here.

The record's weaknesses are twofold. First, Winwood's singing is often unpleasant and is especially grating on "Sea of Joy." It's surprising, because on subsequent records his vocals were much more palatable. His very next release, John Barleycorn Must Die - from a reunited Traffic - is one of the all time great albums of its day, and much of his singing on his solo records, like the classy Arc of a Diver, passed the listening test too. Clapton has always been a fine singer, so I don't know why his vocal talent wasn't utilized at all on this album - especially on "Presence of the Lord," his lone songwriting contribution.

The second problem was a lack of quality material. The whole album has only six songs. Those of us who listened to the radio and bought records in 1969 remember the sidelong excesses many artists plagued us with as a rebellion against the three minute, top 40 single. Sometimes, prog-rock groups could make these very long pieces work, but as Baker already proved on Cream's Wheels of Fire they could also be quite tedious. His sixteen minute track, "Toad," came from that album and included a thirteen minute drum solo. On Blind Faith's fifteen minute finale, "Do What You Like," solos by each member - including another long, tiresome one from Baker - take up the bulk of the song. It ends with almost a minute and a half of cacophony that could have been chopped off the end of The Beatles' "Revolution #9." The entire song sounds like filler because it probably is.

A final criticism has nothing to do with the music. It's the truly pornographic album cover art work displayed on the front of the British release but not on the original American version seen here. In Britain, it showed a naked, eleven year old girl holding a sleek, futuristic looking aircraft in her hands with a bright, blue sky behind her. Some people consider the jet to be a phallic symbol. The band's name only appeared on the cellophane wrapper directly over her breasts. Once removed, the girl's body parts were fully exposed. The photographer called his picture Blind Faith and Clapton used it for the band's name. The photo shoot was done with the permission of the girl's parents for which she was paid £40. Later American pressings were released with the original cover that you can see here.

Considering the major talent that made up this short-lived outfit, Blind Faith is disappointing.