10 Perfect Hard Rock Power Trios
5. Cream
Most people who take the guitar pretty seriously don't really like to venture into the rock world before Jimi Hendrix. Outside of people like Chuck Berry, it wasn't until Hendrix came along that guitar felt like it was becoming the prominent instrument in rock and roll. They have a point... so long as they don't count one of the greatest bands to ever come out of the British blues scene.
Fresh out of The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton struck upon gold when putting Cream together, drafting in Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce to create a primal approach to the blues. While you still hear the faint of wisps of Clapton's earlier groups in here, the heaviness is what makes everything stand out a little bit more. For all of the bluesy tones going on in something like Sunshine of Your Love, there's also shades of everything from classical music to the jazz background that Bruce had, which blends into this strange eclectic mix of sounds.
Hell, occasionally they'll hit on something that didn't even have a genre yet, like the midsection of something like Spoonful, which delves into a strange dirge with a dark and brooding energy. Others might have called it primal or neanderthalic back in the day, but what they were hearing were the sounds of metal finding its feet.