Famously a rush-job. I read that Jack Bruce called Peter Brown at 3am to give him the melody. Cream had broken up and the record company wanted three more songs for "Goodbye". Clapton contributed "Badge" and Baker contributed "What a Bringdown".
What I imagine is Brown making a cup of tea, playing the melody first on a crappy recorder, and then on a "mongrel piano" while "banging his favorite head". Looking around his flat at various random things, he just played with silly word association in the wee morning hours. The second verse seems to speak to Bruce's Scottish roots. By the third verse he's getting hungry and goes to the fridge and cracks an egg. The last verse seems like a shout-out to the Beatles (I am the Walrus and Yellow Submarine) and the newly-formed Led Zeppelin. There, he's done and ready to call Jack Bruce up at the recording studio—which has devolved into a zoo given the tense nature of the breakup—and blow his mind.
Famously a rush-job. I read that Jack Bruce called Peter Brown at 3am to give him the melody. Cream had broken up and the record company wanted three more songs for "Goodbye". Clapton contributed "Badge" and Baker contributed "What a Bringdown".
What I imagine is Brown making a cup of tea, playing the melody first on a crappy recorder, and then on a "mongrel piano" while "banging his favorite head". Looking around his flat at various random things, he just played with silly word association in the wee morning hours. The second verse seems to speak to Bruce's Scottish roots. By the third verse he's getting hungry and goes to the fridge and cracks an egg. The last verse seems like a shout-out to the Beatles (I am the Walrus and Yellow Submarine) and the newly-formed Led Zeppelin. There, he's done and ready to call Jack Bruce up at the recording studio—which has devolved into a zoo given the tense nature of the breakup—and blow his mind.