Crossroads

Crossroads is Cream's reworking of Robert Johnson's Cross Road Blues. It entered the repertoire in July 1966, when Clapton began playing with Bruce and Baker, and Clapton imagined it as a rock song, with a prominent guitar riff, hard-driving backing and an open space for improvisation. The version on Wheels of Fire was recorded on 10 March 1968 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco and opens the live disc. Cream had also played it for the BBC radio program Guitar Club on 28 November 1966, in a take of under two minutes released in 2003 on BBC Sessions.

Atco released it as a single in January 1969, and it reached number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100. Both the album and single credit the writer as Robert Johnson.

Rolling Stone placed Cream's version at number three on its 2003 list of the greatest guitar songs, and in 1995 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed both Johnson's and Cream's recordings among the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Cream played it at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 November 1968, at their 1993 Hall of Fame induction and at the 2005 reunion. Lynyrd Skynyrd played it as an encore in their early days, and Rush recorded it for the 2004 EP Feedback.