Composition
"Badge" was originally an untitled track. During the production transfer for the album Goodbye, the original music sheet was used to produce the liner notes and track listing. The only discernible word on the page was "bridge" (indicating the song's bridge section). Due to Harrison's handwriting, however, Clapton misread it as "badge" — and the song was titled soon thereafter.
Harrison remembered the story differently: "I helped Eric write 'Badge' you know. Each of them had to come up with a song for that Goodbye Cream album and Eric didn't have his written. We were working across from each other and I was writing the lyrics down and we came to the middle part so I wrote 'Bridge.' Eric read it upside down and cracked up laughing-- 'What's BADGE?' he said. After that, Ringo walked in drunk and gave us that line about the swans living in the park."
A common legend or misconception is that the name came about because its chord progression is B-A-D-G-E (it is not), or simply because an anagram of a guitar's standard tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E) can be arranged to spell "Badge".
Clapton can be heard on many live solo recordings performing the song and singing the refrain "where is my badge?", incorporating the title into the song.
The arpeggiated guitar part in the song's bridge resembles some of Harrison's contemporaneous Beatles riffs, including "You Never Give Me Your Money", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Carry That Weight". The guitar part also strongly resembles that of Ringo's solo effort "It Don't Come Easy".
Read more about this topic: Badge (song)
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