Sea of Joy

The Zoo Crew just dropped the needle on "Sea of Joy," and if you have been riding with THE ZOO for any length of time you already know what that means. Four players who had already rewritten the British blues book stepped into a London room in the spring of 1969, and Steve Winwood came out with a song that feels like a boat waiting on the tide. Blind Faith only ever made one album, the self-titled set that hit the shops in the summer of that year, and "Sea of Joy" sits near the close of it, right before Ginger Baker stretches out for a quarter of an hour on "Do What You Like." Winwood wrote it, sang it, and played the autoharp that gives the track its odd, open-air shimmer. Ric Grech, borrowed from Family, laid a violin line across the middle that still catches people off guard. Eric Clapton answered with that arching guitar figure, and Baker kept the whole thing from drifting out to sea.

The words have a Coleridge hang to them. Winwood follows the shadows of the skies and wonders whether they are only figments of his eyes, then pictures the crew waiting in their boats to set sail. Listeners have argued for years over whether he was chasing a dream of joy the way the ancient mariner chased land, or simply describing the strange, half-lit weeks when the band itself was still a rumor. Either reading fits. The track was cut between Morgan Studios and Olympic Studios in London, with Jimmy Miller producing, the same man who had been steering the Rolling Stones through their late-sixties records. Engineers on the sessions included Andy Johns and George Chkiantz. The album was rushed. Side two is basically this song and Baker's long jam. Winwood has said in later interviews that the four of them barely talked through the serious business, and the record still sounds like four strong players finding a pocket rather than a band that had rehearsed a stage show into the ground.

The name of the group came from Clapton, and he meant it with a crooked smile. He figured they were proceeding on blind faith that the thing would work no matter what the papers printed. The papers printed plenty. Time magazine had already tagged them rock's first supergroup before most people had heard a note. Winwood told Classic Rock years afterward that by the spring of 1969 he had reached an impasse with Traffic, and he had started jamming with Clapton at the Traffic cottage in Aston Tirrold and at Clapton's place in Surrey, Hurtwood. One night there was a knock, and Ginger Baker was standing there. Winwood was all for bringing him in. Clapton, writing about it much later in his autobiography, remembered the opposite feeling. Steve's face lit up, he said, while his own heart sank, because up until that point they had just been having fun with no agenda. That gap in the room never really closed. Winwood only learned how uneasy Clapton had been when he read the book decades on. That, he said, shows you how little they spoke about the serious situations.

Ric Grech came aboard in May, leaving Family in the middle of an American tour, which did not endear him to his old bandmates. The quartet played their first public show in Hyde Park on June 7, 1969, in front of a crowd often put around a hundred thousand. Free, Taste, and Delaney and Bonnie were on the road with them once the American dates started. Clapton was already looking sideways at Delaney and Bonnie's looser, song-based groove, and by the time the tour reached Hawaii in late August the group had come apart. Winwood has been plain about it. Egos, management, and the simple fact that a supergroup does not get a lifetime to figure out what it wants to be. You start with the whole of your life to hone the act, he said, and then if it works you are immediately stuck for a follow-up. Blind Faith never got the second record. The flame did not quite go out, though. When Winwood joined Clapton at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago in 2007, the old songs drew a roar, and a 2008 tour followed. Reviewers noted that "Sea of Joy" was one of the pieces left on the shelf that night in favor of other album tracks, which only made the studio version feel more like a private letter.

The man who wrote the letter had already been at it for years. Stephen Lawrence Winwood was born in Birmingham in 1948 and was sitting in with his brother Muff's jazz band while he was still a schoolboy. Spencer Davis heard him and pulled him into the Spencer Davis Group when Winwood was about fifteen. The kid had a voice that sounded like it had come up through the American South, and the hits followed: "Keep On Running," "Gimme Some Lovin'," "I'm a Man." He wanted more room than a hit-machine R&B band could give him, so in 1967 he stepped out and formed Traffic with Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood, and Dave Mason, chasing a blend of soul, folk, and jazz out of a cottage in Berkshire. Traffic stalled over the winter of 1968, which is how he ended up in Clapton's basement in the first place. Clapton, for his part, had already passed through the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and Cream. Cream had closed at the Royal Albert Hall in November 1968, worn down by volume, expectation, and the friction between Baker and Jack Bruce. Clapton wanted something quieter and more song-shaped. For a few months, "Sea of Joy" was part of that want.

The album cover became its own story. Bob Seidemann photographed a young girl holding a silver model airplane, and the American pressing swapped that image for a straight band shot after distributors flinched. None of that changed the music. The record went to number one on both sides of the Atlantic. "Can't Find My Way Home" and "Presence of the Lord" took the spotlight, and "Sea of Joy" stayed the deep cut the Zoo Freaks argue about on the long rides. Winwood still keeps the door open on the old catalog. You can follow the trail from his official home at stevewinwood.com, his page at Facebook, his photos at Instagram, and his notes at X. Clapton's own house sits at ericclapton.com. The band itself never built a standing office. It lasted about half a year, left six songs and a jam, and then the players went back to the long roads they already knew. Put "Sea of Joy" on again and you can still hear the boats knocking against the dock.