Tales of Brave Ulysses
Encyclopedia
"Tales of Brave Ulysses" is a song performed by the 1960s group Cream
Cream (band)
Cream were a 1960s British rock supergroup consisting of bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce, guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker...

. The lyrics were written by artist Martin Sharp
Martin Sharp
Martin Sharp is an Australian artist, underground cartoonist, songwriter and film-maker. Sharp has made contributions to Australian and international culture since the early 60s, and is hailed as Australia's foremost pop artist...

, and the music was composed by Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...

 and Jack Bruce
Jack Bruce
John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce is a Scottish musician and songwriter, respected as a founding member of the British psychedelic rock power trio, Cream, for a solo career that spans several decades, and for his participation in several well-known musical ensembles...

. Arranged
Arrangement
The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...

 by Robert Stigwood
Robert Stigwood
Robert Stigwood is an impresario and entertainment entrepreneur who relocated to England in 1954...

, the song is featured on Cream's album Disraeli Gears
Disraeli Gears
Disraeli Gears is the second album by British supergroup Cream. It was released in November 1967 and went on to reach #5 on the UK Albums Chart. It was also their American breakthrough, becoming a massive seller there in 1968, reaching #4 on the American charts...

. Sharp had written the words on the back of a beer mat, which he gave to Clapton after a chance meeting. These lyrics were put to a melody inspired by Judy Collins
Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins is an American singer and songwriter, known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records ; and for her social activism. She is an alumna of the University of Colorado.-Musical career:Collins was born and raised in Seattle, Washington...

' version of Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...

's "Suzanne
Suzanne (Leonard Cohen song)
"Suzanne" is a song written by Canadian poet and musician Leonard Cohen in the 1960s, and often heard in a recording by Judy Collins. It has become one of the most-covered songs in Cohen's catalogue....

" and chords inspired by The Lovin' Spoonful
The Lovin' Spoonful
The Lovin' Spoonful is an American pop rock band of the 1960s, named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. When asked about his band, leader John Sebastian said it sounded like a combination of "Mississippi John Hurt and Chuck Berry," prompting his friend, Fritz Richmond, to suggest the name...

's "Summer in the City
Summer in the City
"Summer in the City" is the title of a song recorded by The Lovin' Spoonful, written by Mark Sebastian and Steve Boone. It came from their album Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful and it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1966...

". The music originated from bassist Jack Bruce
Jack Bruce
John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce is a Scottish musician and songwriter, respected as a founding member of the British psychedelic rock power trio, Cream, for a solo career that spans several decades, and for his participation in several well-known musical ensembles...

's ability to match the meter of the song to a riff
RIFF
The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....

, adding it with his vocals to what had previously been a poem but was then expanded by Clapton into a song. The song is credited on the single to P. Brown, J. Bruce, and E. Clapton.

The song also featured Eric Clapton's first use of the wah-wah pedal
Wah-wah pedal
A wah-wah pedal is a type of guitar effects pedal that alters the tone of the signal to create a distinctive effect, mimicking the human voice...

 (released a day before Hendrix's first wah wah single, "Burning of the Midnight Lamp
Burning of the Midnight Lamp
"Burning of the Midnight Lamp" is a song by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, first released as a mono single b/w "The Stars That Play with Laughing Sam's Dice" in the United Kingdom on August 19, 1967 . It later appeared on the band's final studio album, Electric Ladyland...

"). This has been considered one of the first recorded uses of the wah-wah pedal in rock music.

Song meaning

The lyrics are inspired by Homer's
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

 Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

, an account of the adventures undertaken by Ulysses
Odysseus
Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....

. This can be seen in the song's reference to "how his naked ears were tortured by the siren
Siren
In Greek mythology, the Sirens were three dangerous mermaid like creatures, portrayed as seductresses who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. Roman poets placed them on an island called Sirenum scopuli...

s sweetly singing," an event from Homer's epic poem
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

. When interviewed on the episode of the VH1
VH1
VH1 or Vh1 is an American cable television network based in New York City. Launched on January 1, 1985 in the old space of Turner Broadcasting's short-lived Cable Music Channel, the original purpose of the channel was to build on the success of MTV by playing music videos, but targeting a slightly...

 show, Classic Albums
Classic Albums
Classic Albums is a documentary series about pop and rock albums that are considered the best or most distinctive of a well-known band or musician or that exemplify a stage in the history of music.-Format:...

, which featured Disraeli Gears
Disraeli Gears
Disraeli Gears is the second album by British supergroup Cream. It was released in November 1967 and went on to reach #5 on the UK Albums Chart. It was also their American breakthrough, becoming a massive seller there in 1968, reaching #4 on the American charts...

, lyricist Sharp explained that he had recently returned from Ibiza
Ibiza
Ibiza or Eivissa is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea 79 km off the coast of the city of Valencia in Spain. It is the third largest of the Balearic Islands, an autonomous community of Spain. With Formentera, it is one of the two Pine Islands or Pityuses. Its largest cities are Ibiza...

, which was the source of many of the images in the song (e.g. "tiny purple fishes run laughing through her fingers") and the general feeling of having left an idyll
Idyll
An idyll or idyl is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus' short pastoral poems, the Idylls....

 to return to "the hard lands of the winter"; Clapton stated in the same show that he had been independently writing a tune based on The Lovin' Spoonful
The Lovin' Spoonful
The Lovin' Spoonful is an American pop rock band of the 1960s, named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. When asked about his band, leader John Sebastian said it sounded like a combination of "Mississippi John Hurt and Chuck Berry," prompting his friend, Fritz Richmond, to suggest the name...

's "Summer in the City
Summer in the City
"Summer in the City" is the title of a song recorded by The Lovin' Spoonful, written by Mark Sebastian and Steve Boone. It came from their album Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful and it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1966...

", and when Sharp gave him the words (on the back of a bar napkin) they fit the tune.

Composition

The main guitar riff follows a descending chord progression
Chord progression
A chord progression is a series of musical chords, or chord changes that "aims for a definite goal" of establishing a tonality founded on a key, root or tonic chord. In other words, the succession of root relationships...

 in D minor
D minor
D minor is a minor scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. In the harmonic minor, the C is raised to C. Its key signature has one flat ....

: D D/C D/B D/Bb, very similar to that of another famous Cream song, "White Room
White Room
"White Room" is a song by British "supergroup" Cream. The song was a psychedelic rock number written by bassist Jack Bruce and poet Pete Brown. It originally appeared on the US release of their double album, Wheels of Fire, by Atco Records in July 1968 and was released as a single in September 1968...

". Both songs also feature Clapton's distinctive and pioneering guitar decorated with a wah-wah pedal
Wah-wah pedal
A wah-wah pedal is a type of guitar effects pedal that alters the tone of the signal to create a distinctive effect, mimicking the human voice...

.

Despite it being one of their more popular songs, Cream did not play it in their 2005 reunion show at the Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....

, though they did play it at their Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...

 shows.

Later use

  • The song is featured twice on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The first of these episodes is the sixth episode of season 3: Band Candy, the second of these is episode 17 of season 5: Forever. In both instances it is played by the character Giles
    Rupert Giles
    Rupert Giles is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon for the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The character is portrayed by Anthony Stewart Head. He serves as Buffy Summers' mentor and surrogate father figure...

    .
  • The song is featured on the HBO series Entourage
    Entourage (TV series)
    Entourage is an American comedy-drama television series that premiered on HBO on July 18, 2004 and concluded on September 11, 2011, after eight seasons...

    . On the season 5 episode "Tree Trippers" on the end credits.
  • The song was covered by pioneer doom metal band Trouble
    Trouble (band)
    Trouble is an American doom metal band noted as one of the pioneers of their genre, alongside bands such as Candlemass and Saint Vitus. The band created a distinct style taking influences of the British heavy metal bands Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, and psychedelic rock of the 1970s...

     on their 1984 album, Psalm 9, by the grunge band Screaming Trees
    Screaming Trees
    Screaming Trees was an American rock band formed in Ellensburg, Washington in 1985 by vocalist Mark Lanegan, guitarist Gary Lee Conner, bass player Van Conner and drummer Mark Pickerel. Pickerel had been replaced by Barrett Martin by the time the band reached its most successful period...

     on the 1990 compilation album Taste Test#1, and by psychedelic soul band Rotary Connection
    Rotary Connection
    Rotary Connection was an American psychedelic soul band, formed in Chicago in 1966. The highly experimental band was the idea of Marshall Chess, son of Chess Records founder Leonard Chess. Marshall was the director behind a start-up label, Cadet Concept Records, and wanted to focus on music outside...

     with Minnie Riperton
    Minnie Riperton
    Minnie Julia Riperton was an American singer-songwriter best known for her 1975 single "Lovin' You". She was married to songwriter and music producer Richard Rudolph from 1972 until her death in the summer of 1979. They had two children - music engineer Marc Rudolph and actress/comedienne Maya...

     on vocals, as found on their 1969 album Songs and on the 2005 compilation Psychedelic Jazz and Funky Grooves. It was also covered by the New Wave
    New Wave music
    New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...

     band Algebra Suicide.
  • An extended arrangement of the song was recorded in 2007 by American artist Cary Grace
    Cary Grace
    Cary Grace is an American recording artist, singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. She plays guitar and analogue synthesizers.Her music is strongly influenced by classic British psychedelic and progressive rock as well as space rock, but spans a wide range of genres, from folk rock to...

    , and was released as the B-side of the single "Pandora".
  • The song is featured on the soundtrack of the documentary "Tom Dowd and the Language of Music" about the legendary Atlantic Records recording engineer.
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