I always heard Harrison played "scratch rhythm" on this Cream song he co-wrote with Clapton. But some guys in a FB group think he also played that mid-section Leslie speaker guitar also. I thought that was EC playing that. It does remind me of some of GH's Abbey Road sound. Anybody know for sure? What do you think?
Reminds me, I listened to this a few times. Badge with instruments only. It didn't quite sound how I expected, especially the piano which I can't say I noticed.
And in case the guys on Facebook still want to argue about it, here's George's definitive statement, from a 1992 Guitar World interview: GW But you did play that Beatles-sounding bridge riff in "Badge" on Cream's Goodbye album, didn't you? HARRISON No, Eric played that! He doesn't even play on the song before that. We recorded that track in L.A.: it was Eric, plus Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, and I think the producer, Felix Pappalardi, played the piano part. I was just playing chops on the guitar chords and we went right through the second verse and into the bridge, which is where Eric comes in. Again, it sounds Beatle-ish because we ran it through a Leslie speaker.
For the longest time, “everyone” figured that arpeggio bit simply had to be George. I mean, come on…straight out of Abbey Road!!
Jack Bruce of Cream "I met George during the session Cream did for Badge, and I was very impressed with his playing… when you actually play with George you could see what an amazing guitar player he was, doing things that I hadn’t even thought of.”
I watched a documentary about Eric Clapton, it stated The Band and George Harrison were a big influence on him in the late 1960's and early 1970's. I think George Harrison, one ups Clapton on "It Don't Comes Easy" on that guitar sound and style. I do think right around 1969 George Harrison, did develop into a really a great guitarist.
I don't know what to say. The rhythm guitar and bass always struck me as the main part along with the vocals. I only listened on cheap boomboxes most of my life. May be that? The piano ought not to be the dominant part even if nicely done.
The keyboards are more textural than primary but they definitely add to the overall sound of the recording in a subtle manner; there’s a mellotron in there as well which at first sounds like synth strings.
It’s the most standout instrument in the song, at least at the beginning of the song. That piano riff holds my attention through the entire song. If you never noticed it until now, I am shocked, to be honest. But hey, enjoy the song any way you want. And there’s nothing wrong with the piano being dominant, is there? Don’t miss the guitar riff in Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones, either. It’s quite prominent in the song as well.
It's Clapton trying to sound like George/The Beatles. Or maybe him just playing with his friend saying "I can do you."
I always thought of it along the lines of the extensive use of leslie through the Get Back/Abbey Road era as being more the other way around - Harrison trying to sound more like Clapton on Badge and the other studio stuff on Goodbye Cream. The Cream sessions came first in autumn 1968, then in early 1969 Harrison starts playing though the leslie a lot. He even had Mal Evans steal the leslie guitar pre-amp (which belonged to the studio) from the Cream sessions and took it back to London.
The Japanese SHM mastering of this song does not have the scratchiness in the Leslie guitar solo. Outside this instrumental version, it’s the only place I’ve heard the actual full song with what might be a repair during that section. It’s nice to hear that way.
Oh interesting. Could be! I just always assumed since Clapton was around some of the White Album sessions before Badge was made that he was picking up on their guitar tone (and how his guitar was mixed on WMGGW) or how George played his leads on poppier material, because to me the Badge lead is different from his typical blues style. But what do I know! I'm not a blues specialist or Cream expert at all.
I noticed it now, and once I did hear it I couldn't un hear it. Like someone else said the piano seems to me to be more about adding colour to the track, but as you say, it's also super out front there. My attention was just focused elsewhere. There's actually quite a bit going on, that bass part is rather wonderful too. Someone did a breakdown of the parts of 'I Heard Her Call My Name' by The Velvet Underground. I don't hear that the same these days either.
If you listened to a mix of "Badge" without the piano, it would very quickly be evident that the piano is essentially the main instrument in the song up until that bridge. Otherwise, it's just bass and drums and those choppy guitar bits. Imagine, like, "You Won't See Me" without the piano. I would argue anybody that has ever listened to "Badge" has "heard" the piano, because it's filling most of the space of the song. It's as prominent as the drums essentially. Maybe some don't really single it out as a piano and just hear some sort of musical color in the track that they're not associating with a particular instrument. When they did the song on the 2005 Cream reunion shows, they of course did it without the piano, and it not surprisingly sounds very sparse. Even then, Clapton is trying to do more full guitar chords/motifs/figures to fill the sound out more.
Bill Halverson: "On Goodbye, I really learned a lot about production working with Felix [Pappalardi]. The band members weren’t really talking to each other, they’d already broken up, but they’d been persuaded to record one last album, and so Felix spent a lot of time going to the Beverly Hills Hotel and dragging them one by one back to the studio. On one of the first days, Eric [Clapton] was in there, fooling around by himself, and SIR provided a prototype Leslie foot pedal for him to try out. It was basically a little box with a button on it, and you could plug a guitar into the back as well as a cable that went to a Leslie speaker, and then power up both the box and the speaker. The button made the Leslie go slow-speed or fast-speed, so you could go back and forth. “After the roadies hooked it up, Eric just sat there for hours, playing his guitar through that Leslie — I wish I recorded that. He was having a ball with it, and then, after the other two guys showed up, [Beatles roadie] Mal Evans suddenly walked in with George Harrison. So, then Eric and George were out there, playing through the Leslie for hours, and after Felix also had me set up the piano in the back of the room, little by little ‘Badge’ started to come out of that. I still have a rough mix of the bass, drums and piano, as well as George’s rhythm guitar and Eric’s [flanged bridge figure on] guitar through the Leslie, without the vocals or lead guitar.” These were recorded sometime in late November or early December by Damon Lyon-Shaw at IBC in London, where Clapton and Harrison wrote the lyrics, with the “swans that live in the park” line being contributed by, according to Harrison’s later recollection, an “absolutely plastered” Ringo Starr. (Harrison himself was credited on the record as “L’Angelo Misterioso”.) “That was the first time I had ever heard a guitar through a Leslie,” Bill Halverson continues with regard to the Wally Heider session, “so I was sitting there, unable to believe what I was hearing. “By the evening, we had this track, but the kicker to the story is that, after everybody had left and I was packing up, I noticed the pedal was gone. The next day, when the roadies came in, I asked where it was, saying that SIR wanted it back. Nobody knew where it had gone, and so I then had to call SIR and explain what had happened. Now fast-forward to a year later, when I was in England helping [Stephen] Stills to produce his first solo record, and who should walk through the door but Mal Evans and Ringo, who was going to play some drums. That night, we recorded a few songs, everybody had a good time, and after Ringo left, Mal drove me in his hot rod around London. While we were doing that, I said, ‘Mal, back during the ‘Badge’ session, do you have any idea what might have happened to the pedal?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, George wanted it, so I put it under my jacket and took it back to England.’ That may be how all of that Leslie guitar ended up on George’s solo records. I don’t know that for sure, but it seems too coincidental not to be the way it went down.”" Bill Halverson - Legendary Producer, Engineer, Arranger - Bio Here's the backing track: Badge backing track “We’d usually put the drums and bass on the right side of the room and the guitars on the other side, and I did a live Tom Jones vocal in there and got away with it. I also cut [Cream’s] ‘Badge’ live in there with Felix Pappalardi’s piano, and again we got away with it, even with Marshall amps going full blast. It was just a very forgiving room.”
