Sessions with producer Felix Pappalardi began in July and August 1967 at IBC Studios in London, months before the release of Disraeli Gears, with the basic tracks for "White Room", "Sitting on Top of the World", and "Born Under a Bad Sign" put to tape.

[2][5] Jack Bruce expressed the band's preference for working with Pappalardi and Dowd, as well as the new unhurried atmosphere contrasted with the first two albums: "We're all temperamental but Tom...and Felix manage to get rid of that temperament...We spend a long time in the studio, so we don't have to rush.

[6] Recordings continued with short sessions at Atlantic Studios in September and October 1967 where overdubs were added to the aforementioned three songs along with basic tracks for "Pressed Rat and Warthog" and the non-LP single "Anyone for Tennis".

The band's drummer Ginger Baker co-wrote three songs for the album ("Passing the Time", "Pressed Rat and Warthog", and "Those Were the Days") with jazz pianist Mike Taylor.

Bassist Jack Bruce co-wrote four songs with poet Pete Brown including "White Room", "As You Said" (the only Cream recording which does not feature Clapton), "Politician" and "Deserted Cities of the Heart".

[7] "Politician" came together quickly for a January 1968 BBC radio session when, needing one more track, Bruce came up with a riff which Brown, who was present in the studio, thought was perfect to match with lines of a poem he'd written several years earlier; the song was finished and recorded for broadcast that day.

Production on the studio disc was more elaborate than that for the first two albums, with the addition of exotic instrumentation including glockenspiel, calliope, cello, trumpet, bells, viola and tonette creating a psychedelic feel, with the three blues numbers featuring the group's basic three piece sound.

In a lengthy review, Chris Welch of Melody Maker began by noting "If Cream have been disappointing on record in the past...their long awaited double album is sufficient to restore the faith of the most errant disciple", praising the group's taste and restraint on tracks like "As You Said" and enthusing that the live disc was "electrifying".

[21] Disc & Music Echo labelled it "Best LP of the month" and "a fitting--at times superb--memorial to Britain's best live group" with the best material they had put on record.

[17] In a four-star review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine at AllMusic notes that the album "is indeed filled with Cream's very best work, since it captures the fury and invention (and indulgence) of the band at its peak on the stage and in the studio, but...doesn't quite add up to something greater than the sum of its parts.

"[16] In May 2012, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it at number 205 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, noting it is "incontrovertible proof of Eric Clapton's interpretive mastery".