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‘Badge’: Cream Wear ‘Mysterious’ Collaboration With George Harrison

A ‘secret’ appearance by a Beatle buddy helped the band’s last UK Top 20 hit.

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Cream 'Badge' artwork - Courtesy: UMG
Cream 'Badge' artwork - Courtesy: UMG

Cream were far more of an album rock band than they were concerned with hit singles during their all-too-brief, two-year lifetime. Nevertheless, they notched up no fewer than seven visits to the UK Top 40. In May 1969, the trio appeared in the Top 20 of the singles chart there for the last time, with “Badge” — and with the help of a “mysterious angel.”

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The song, written by Eric Clapton and his friend George Harrison, was released as a single soon after the appearance of Cream’s final album Goodbye. It was one of three new studio tracks recorded by the trio that augmented the album’s three live cuts, taped at the Forum in Los Angeles the previous October.

Harrison was the song’s secret weapon, and “secret” was indeed the watchword. For contractual reasons, he could not be identified for the rhythm guitar he played on “Badge,” and was credited as “L’Angelo Misterioso,” Italian for “The Mysterious Angel.” It was the return of another studio favor, when Clapton had played the uncredited guitar lead on Harrison’s Beatles epic “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

Laying it down in San Francisco

George joined Cream to record the basic track for “Badge” at Wally Heider’s newly-opened studio in San Francisco with producer Felix Pappalardi, with a later overdub at IBC in London. Engineer Bill Halverson later remembered of the west coast session: “I didn’t actually know how good that room was until I left Heider’s and started recording in other rooms that weren’t nearly as forgiving.

“We’d usually put the drums and bass on the right side of the room and the guitars on the other side,” continued Halverson, “and I did a live Tom Jones vocal in there and got away with it, even with Marshall amps going full blast. It was just a very forgiving room.”

For ‘bridge’ read ‘badge’

Clapton’s distinctive guitar sound on “Badge” was the result of putting his instrument through a Leslie cabinet, but the song’s title was not, as is sometimes suggested, named after a chord progression. It was actually the result of Eric misreading Harrison’s note on the lyric sheet, which said “bridge.”

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The song was only a modest No.60 hit in the US, but in the UK it climbed steadily from mid-April to mid-May. In its fifth chart week, it climbed ten places to its peak of No.18 – as The Beatles and Billy Preston continued at No.1 with “Get Back.”

Buy or stream “Badge” on Goodbye.

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. jaybee

    May 17, 2017 at 1:01 pm

    Looks like you got the time line wrong: Clapton’s contribution to ‘While my guitar gently weeps’ was in 1968, and not “Later in the year …”, whereas ‘Badge’ happened in 1969.

  2. jaybee

    May 17, 2017 at 2:15 pm

    According to Mark Lewisohn’s “The Complete Beatles’ Recording Sessions”, Eric’s solo was recorded on Sept. 6, 1968; the Wally Heider Recording Studio in San Francisco opened it’s doors in spring 1969 (taken from their FB site…

    • Stephen Howes

      May 19, 2018 at 6:23 pm

      It was interesting to read that Eric played the “leslie” guitar part, because it sounded exactly like George’s guitar on Abbey Road’s “You Never Give Me Your Money” Just curious, but some listeners have reacted to “Badge” by saying…sounds like George Harrison! I will say that Eric played the long solo for sure!

  3. Coyote2

    November 6, 2023 at 7:44 pm

    Interesting. I just discovered a Very Best of Cream CD, and found the title track, Badge, to be the BEST. Haunting, mysterious, melodic. The very best part is the Bass (Jack Bruce) and the Drumming (Ginger Baker). Just love how they put out those changing beats! Wonderful.
    — Yes, Clapton’s and Harrison’s guitar work were famous and ringing, but the very best of Cream was the Complex Beats in that song, and I listened to all the supposed BEST, and that was it. Track one: Badge.
    — The rest of the “best” music was too heavy, too me-macho-boy-of-the-times and socially uncool in today’s climate.
    — There are two kinds of creatives (giggle): one that prefers Psychedelics and the other that do alcohol and opiates. Obviously Cream was the later. It was Harrison that elevated them in this one track.

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