[Aktungbby]

Pete Brown, the British poet and singer who helped co-write some of Cream’s most enduring songs — including “White Room” and “Sunshine of Your Love” — has died at the age of 82. Brown started his artistic career as a Beat Poet in the late 1950s,” the statement notes. “By the mid 1960s he had sold out The Royal Albert Hall with both his British and American contemporaries including Alan Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Michael Horowitz at the poetry happening Wholly Communion.”
Brown’s work with the First Real Poetry Band, featuring legendary jazz guitarist John McLaughlin, brought him to the attention of Cream drummer Ginger Baker, who enlisted Brown as a writing partner ahead of the supergroup’s 1966 debut album Fresh Cream. Brown instead found better chemistry working with bassist Jack Bruce, first resulting in the single “I Feel Free.” As Brown later revealed, the “white room” was where he lived after a period of semi-homelessness, and where he both kicked his drug and alcohol issues as well as honed his poetry toward songwriting.
“Jack had more or less the music of ‘White Room,’ and we tried a few lyrics, and none of them had worked,” Brown said in a documentary about the song. “And then I thought about this poem that I had and it was an eight-page poem, and I thought if I cut that down to one page, it might be the right thing for it.”

Most of my trukkin' was done to Cream and other rock bands (it keeps ya awake at 0200 hours) so i didn't end up in a 'white room ' of my own "no gold pavement" indeed??! Still my favorite version: 1968 Albert Hall