My 2 cents on Eric is that my formative music fandom grew out of the late 60s and all the groundbreaking music that was released on a seemingly day to day basis. Cream was way up there along with Jimi, the Airplane and all the rest. I still think Cream was an amazing band in their day, but over the years I came to realize that Jack Bruce was the innovator in that band, not Eric. As time went by I followed his career with much more interest than Clapton who seemed release an endless stream of mediocre albums. I still treasure most of Jack's output, both on solo albums and with more adventurous stuff with artists like Kip Hanrahan and Tony Williams.