En route to the Albert Hall last Monday for the first of Cream’s hotly anticipated reunion concerts, three questions loomed. First, could they still hack it as a “power trio” with age and infirmity lined up against them, the eldest, the drummer, Ginger Baker, about to turn 66 and Jack Bruce, the bass player, having recently undergone a liver transplant? Second, would they approach this concert like their 1960s shows, as an opportunity to show off their individual skills, with solos lasting up to 20 minutes? Might they be, in other words, a teensy bit boring? And lastly, who were these people who have reportedly been paying four-figure sums to secure rock’s hottest ticket of the year? The answer to that one was hanging out in the bar next to Gate 9. You could recognise them by their accents and the way they talked more animatedly than the rest of us. The Cream fans who had dug deepest to support their returning heroes were middle-aged, middle-class Americans like Dean E McQuiddy. Dean, an equities manager, had flown over from Jacksonville, Florida. He had paid £600 on eBay for his pair of £125 stalls seats, which was generally regarded as a bargain. Dean’s friend told of a fierce eBay bidding war for two front-row tickets that finally went for £3,500. Dean’s wife pointed out that this was “more than you’d pay for the Superbowl”.

The US presence inside the venue was as strong as it had been in the bar. The two reviewers scribbling away on my right were from Rolling Stone magazine. The row of portly gents seated behind was solidly and vocally American. In front was Joan, who had flown in, ticketless, from Oregon and managed to buy her seats, at double the face value, from an “agency”.

Tony, the amiable Liverpudlian sitting on my left, thought they’d all been had. He had phoned the Albert Hall’s box office on impulse 10 days earlier and bought a return. It was the most spontaneous extravagance of his life, he said. The last concert Tony had attended was a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Like most of the audience, he was in his forties: too young to have seen Cream in their brief heyday.

Considering the burden of expectation, the mythical Clapton, Bruce and Baker partnership seemed remarkably unfazed as they strolled onto the Albert Hall stage for the first time since August 1968. They looked trim and fit, less hairy and more sensibly dressed than when they were inventing “heavy” rock. Not at all bad, anyway, for a bunch of sixtysomethings. Jack Bruce’s red jacket provided the only splash of sartorial colour. Ginger Baker, once the group’ s wild man, looked more like old man Steptoe than ever. The youngest of the three, Eric Clapton, owlishly bespectacled in blue shirt and slacks, had such a sober, businesslike air that his Fender Stratocaster might as well have been a briefcase.

Without so much as a “Hello, London!”, Cream immediately launched into Skip James’s cheery blues I’m So Glad; and with only one break for pleasantries, during which Clapton waggishly thanked us all “for waiting so long”, on they played, more or less non-stop, for 1 hours. Your initial thought was how quiet they sounded. This, after all, was the band who first turned their amps up to 11 and the back of the stage into a wall of speaker cabinets.

Only at the end of the encore, Sunshine of Your Love, did Cream let the sound drift off limits the way they used to. In place of all that distorted noise, now there was — disconcertingly at first — clarity.

Clarity means nowhere to hide bum notes, wobbly vocals and rhythmic whoopsies, and, aside from one slight stumble in Outside Woman Blues, Cream rose to this challenge like a true supergroup. From Bruce’s gothic wail on We’re Going Wrong to Baker’s manic, metronomic shuffle on Rollin’ and Tumbling, they took on many of their trickier numbers. Of the songs they didn’t attempt, the a cappella-driven I Feel Free was the one that was most missed.

They made things easier for themselves by partly suspending the original three-way conversation between the instruments and handing the role of soloist to Clapton. This suited the crowd, and it suited him. Having performed in the Albert Hall for weeks on end in the past, Clapton can solo his way through blues classics such as Spoonful, Crossroads and Stormy Monday without breaking sweat: in fact, it took him just over an hour to reach for the towel last Monday night. Yet cool as he stayed, Clapton’s playing seldom sounded automatic. The key to it lay in his pacing, the way he unleashed torrents of notes before selecting one or two for the bendy treatment.

Cream might have sounded like the Eric Clapton band had it not been for two things: Bruce’s nimble, octave-jumping bass and the clattering tom-tom thunder of the indestructible Baker, who got in a blistering solo of his own at the end with Toad. They may have hated each other once, and may do so still, but they looked blissfully happy, shoulders locked and with ear-to-ear grins, when they finally left the stage. There was a chemistry at work when these three men first decided to play together 39 years ago that was still fizzing away last week. As they left the hall, still jawing excitedly, Monday’s audience certainly sounded as if they had had their money’s worth.

Catch sneak previews of the latest albums on The Month DVD, including Garbage, Hot Hot Heat, New Order and Stevie Wonder

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• The super cool Vampire Weekend
• Streep and Baldwin get complicated
• Guy Ritchie on Sherlock Holmes