This song is about depression and hopelessness, but the setting is an empty apartment. The lyrics were written by a poet named Pete Brown, who was a friend of Cream bass player Jack Bruce, the lead vocalist on the track. Brown also wrote the words for "
Sunshine Of Your Love," "
I Feel Free" and "
SWLABR."
The music was written first. Pete Brown's first attempt at a lyric was something about a "doomed hippie girl" - the song was called "Cinderella's Last Goodnight." Jack Bruce wasn't buying it, so he scrapped that idea and pulled up an eight-page poem he had written earlier, which he reworked into "White Room."
In a
Songfacts interview with Pete Brown, he told the story: "It was a meandering thing about a relationship that I was in and how I was at the time. It was a kind of watershed period really. It was a time before I stopped being a relative barman and became a songwriter, because I was a professional poet, you know. I was doing poetry readings and making a living from that. It wasn't a very good living, and then I got asked to work by Ginger and Jack with them and then started to make a kind of living.
And there was this kind of transitional period where I lived in this actual white room and was trying to come to terms with various things that were going on. It's a place where I stopped, I gave up all drugs and alcohol at that time in 1967 as a result of being in the white room, so it was a kind of watershed period. That song's like a kind of weird little movie: it changes perspectives all the time. That's why it's probably lasted - it's got a kind of mystery to it."
Jack Bruce wrote the music. He was inspired by a cycling tour that he took in France.
The "white room" was a literal place: a room in an apartment where Pete Brown was living. It was not, as some suspected, an institution.
Upon its release,
Wheels Of Fire was given a terrible review by
Rolling Stone magazine. They claim that "White Room" has "The exact same lines for guitar, bass and drums" as "Tales Of Brave Ulysses." If you listen to both songs, they are somewhat similar, but nowhere near the level they claim.
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Suggestion credit:
Geoff - Lake Arrowhead, CA
Eric Clapton used a wah-wah pedal on his guitar. He got the idea from Jimi Hendrix.
Clapton's solo earned the #2 spot on
Guitar World's greatest wah solos of all time in 2015. The #1 spot? Hendrix' "
Voodoo Child (Slight Return)."
Why are the starlings tired? Because the pollution in London was killing them. Pete Brown also told Songfacts: "The 'tired starlings' is also a little bit of a metaphor for the feminine in a way, as well. It was women having to put up with rather a lot - too much pressure on them at the time."
More lyric interpretation courtesy of Pete Brown:
"Goodbye Windows" - "Just people waving goodbye from train windows."
"Black-roof Country" - "That was the kind of area that I lived in. There were still steam trains at one point around that area, so the roofs were black. It was black and sooty. It's got that kind of a feel to it."
On their last tour before the band broke up, Cream opened most of their shows with this song. When Cream did a reunion tour in 2005, they played it near the end of the sets.
Clapton refused to play this after leaving Cream until 1985, when Paul Shaffer urged him to play it while he was sitting in with the band on Late Night With David Letterman. That same year, Clapton played it at Live Aid.
This was released as a single after Cream had broken up. It did better in the US than in England, since Cream had caught on in the States.
In 2000, Apple Computer used this in commercials for their white iMacs. While the song does have the word "white" in the title, the subject matter is not good for selling computers.
Drummer Ginger Baker came up with the iconic 5/4 Bolero introduction but received no songwriting credit for his efforts. This troubled his pride and his bank account. With no songwriting credits, he earned the least amount of royalties. That was the case not only with "White Room" but also the hit "Sunshine Of Your Love" and every other Cream song. Baker suffered financially for the rest of his life and resented Cream for it - particularly bassist Jack Bruce. Their rivalry started the day they met but was greatly exasperated by the royalties issue.
Clapton performed this in 1999 for the album Sheryl Crow and Friends: Live From Central Park. Clapton and Crow were an item for a time in the '90s.
Pete Brown said: "It was a miracle it worked, considering it was me writing a monologue about a new flat."
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Suggestion credit:
Damien - Sydney, Australia
The song plays during a scene in the 2019 movie The Joker where the title character is sitting in the back of a cop car. The Joker has a smile on his face, as he observes the destruction he has caused in Gotham.
Jack Bruce recorded a new, Latin-influenced version on his 2001 album Shadows In The Air. Clapton played on this as well as his new recording of "Sunshine Of Your Love."
"White Room" was largely arranged before Cream recorded it in New York. Jack Bruce worked out the music on manuscript paper, including the descending chord sequence and sustained chords that give the track its distinctive sound. The introduction changed slightly during recording, becoming the unusual 5/4 passage that opens the song, but the finished version was close to what Bruce had originally envisioned. "I very much had an idea what it would end up sounding like," he told Uncut magazine. "Eric had the idea of taking all the strings off his guitar and just having one string to get this amazing high sustain."
Felix Pappalardi, who produced the track, played viola, while Bruce added cello. Numerous overdubs helped build the song's rich, layered sound.
