Don’t you know when a head’s dead, Cream asks in this recording, in the song “What a bringdown”, on their Goodbye album, 1969, an amazing bit of forecast on later events.
The song tells of the many marry pranks of the sixties prankster, and yet, their whole purpose was dying down. The head had been killed. The song describes the artistic reason why the world’s first supergroup (after the Beatles) closed shop.
“Moby Dick and Albert making out with Captain Bligh
So you know what you know in your head”.
Yet all these trips and head maneuovers won’t make out – unless there is some reality change too.
When the head is dead, there is no more to be said. What a bringdown!
So, goodbye, Cream.
“The head” in this lyric was slang for the counterculture, including the hippies, at the time.
Note that this song was written before the Kent University student murders, the murders of the Black Panthers, and other events. It became “sadly true”, even more than anticipated.
On their Goodbye LP, Cream was also before their time, reflecting on the influence of women, e g in the song Badge (with some of Clapton’s best guitar work ever);
“Thinkin’ ’bout the times you drove in my car.
Thinkin’ that I might have drove you too far.
And I’m thinkin’ ’bout the love that you laid on my table.”
