Australian singles chart:
Badge entered the Kent charts on 24 May 1969 and peaked at #43.
Album:
The song is on Goodbye which entered the Kent album charts on 17 May 1969 and peaked at #6.
Songwriters:
Eric Clapton, George Harrison
Producer:
Felix Pappalardi
Record label of Australian release:
Polydor Int.
Cream performing Badge at Royal Albert Hall in May 2005:
Songfacts:
Badge was written by Eric Clapton and George Harrison. Harrison also played rhythm guitar on this. It is one of the few Cream songs that Eric Clapton sang lead on, as Jack Bruce usually handled vocals.
Clapton had played on Harrison’s album Wonderwall the previous year, and on The Beatles’ While My Guitar Gently Weeps, which was released the same month as this.
The title has nothing to do with the song. Clapton saw Harrison’s notes for this, and misread “Bridge” as “Badge”, so that became the title.
The lyrics are not intended to make sense. Many of them were taken from drunken conversations Harrison had with Ringo Starr.
Badge is on Cream’s final album, Goodbye, and they had broken up by the time it was released. Clapton was already working with his new group, Blind Faith.
Read more: www.songfacts.com/facts/cream/badge
Personnel:
Eric Clapton – vocals, lead guitar
Jack Bruce – bass guitar
Ginger Baker – drums
George Harrison (credited for contractual reasons as “L’Angelo Misterioso”) – rhythm guitar
Felix Pappalardi – piano, mellotron
Lyrics:
Thinkin’ ’bout the times you drove in my car.
Thinkin’ that I might have drove you too far.
And I’m thinkin’ ’bout the love that you laid on my table.
I told you not to wander ’round in the dark.
I told you ’bout the swans, that they live in the park.
Then I told you ’bout our kid: now he’s married to Mabel.
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