Blind Faith

Blind Faith's already famous personnel stayed together for one album and one arena-circuit tour before splitting up. Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker had been two thirds of Cream [see entry], and Steve Winwood had led (and would return to) Traffic [see entry]. Rick Grech was from Family [see entry], which had been considerably more popular in Britain than in the U.S. The first rock "supergroup" debuted before 100,000 fans in London's Hyde Park on June 7, 1969, and began a sold-out American tour in July before its one and only album had been released. The LP was recorded in such haste that side two consisted of just two songs, one of them a 15-minute jam entitled “Do What You Like.” Nevertheless, Blind Faith did include two classics: Winwood’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” and Clapton’s “Presence of the Lord.” Its jacket, featuring a prepubescent nude girl, was deemed controversial in the U.S. and was replaced by a photograph of the band. (A later U.S. reissue bore the original cover.)

Clapton and Winwood went on to highly successful solo careers. Grech’s post–Blind Faith résumé included Baker’s Air Force, Traffic, the Crickets, and KGB, a mid-’70s supergroup (far less super than Blind Faith, however) that included Mike Bloomfield, Carmine Appice, and Barry Goldberg. Grech died in 1990 of a brain hemorrhage.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)