Sunshine of Your Love

The riff at the heart of "Sunshine of Your Love" came out of a long, frustrating night in early 1967. Jack Bruce and his lyricist Pete Brown usually wrote during the night, the only time Cream's tour schedule allowed, and after one particularly difficult session Bruce played a riff of syncopated eighth notes on his old double bass, almost in a fit of desperation. Brown, staring out the window, came up with the line "It's getting near dawn and lights close their tired eyes", which became the opening of the first verse. Eric Clapton offered a different origin: after a Jimi Hendrix Experience concert at the Saville Theatre in London on 29 January 1967, Bruce went home and wrote the riff as a dedication to Hendrix.

Clapton later added a refrain that gave the song its title, and drummer Ginger Baker devised a pattern emphasising beats one and three rather than the usual backbeat. Recording engineer Tom Dowd remembered suggesting the downbeat approach after the band struggled to find a comfortable groove, though Baker's later claim to have invented it was disputed by both Bruce and Dowd.

Cream recorded the song at Atlantic Studios in New York, beginning on 3 April 1967 with producer Felix Pappalardi brought in by Ahmet Ertegun. For his solo, Clapton used his 1964 Gibson SG, known as "the Fool", producing the "woman tone" and quoting the melody of "Blue Moon" against the riff's blues scale.