White Rooms & Imaginary Westerns: On the Road with Ginsberg, Writing for Clapton and Cream

Published by JR Books, 2010, hardcover, illustrated, index, 296 pages, condition: new.

Pete Brown, lyricist for 60s super group Cream, has been a poet, singer, percussionist, record producer and screenwriter. As a Beat poet he worked alongside Spike Milligan, Allen Ginsberg and Robert Graves. As songwriter he is best known for his work with Cream, whose guitarist was Eric Clapton. Having been part of the Underground, he emerged as the lyricist of their massive hit songs 'White Room', 'I Feel Free', and 'Sunshine of your Love'. White Rooms and Imaginary Westerns is the personal odyssey of this poet, musician and writer. Brown takes the reader from the green fields of Surrey to the claustrophobia of a Jewish school in Hendon, from surreal day jobs operating lifts to hitch-hiking around Britain in a search for identity and girls. White Rooms deals honestly with the problems he faced - from the sexual side effects of a having a Jewish mother, to the mental adjustment necessary when, after years of earning GBP20 a week as a performing poet, he began receiving major sums his hit songs. There are many hilarious tales of being a touring musician, as well as anarchic opinions on drugs, love, music and movies. There are stories of the many more famous people Brown has worked with and met from Ginsberg and Burroughs to Spike Milligan, from Clapton to Peter Green and Jeff Beck, and from Alasdair Gray to Ken Campbell and Martin Scorsese. From affairs with actresses to Browns' 30-year collaboration with Cream singer, Jack Bruce, this is a fascinating journey into music, poetry, love and life by one of the biggest unsung heroes of rock and the beat movement.