Goodbye

In July 1968 Cream announced that they would break up after a farewell tour of the United States and two concerts in London. The tour began in Oakland on 4 October 1968, and on 19 October at the Forum in Los Angeles the three live recordings on the album were made with Felix Pappalardi and the engineers Adrian Barber and Bill Halverson. The plan had been a double album like Wheels of Fire, but there was not enough good material, so it became a single disc.

Shortly after the tour ended, and just before the last Royal Albert Hall show, Cream recorded three studio songs over three days at Wally Heider Studios in Los Angeles, with overdubs at IBC in London a month later. Each song was written by a different member of the band. Clapton played through the Leslie speaker of a Hammond organ on Badge and Doing That Scrapyard Thing. On 21 November George Harrison, credited for contractual reasons as L'Angelo Misterioso, played rhythm guitar on Badge, which he co-wrote with Clapton.

Atco issued it in the US on 5 February 1969, and Polydor followed in Europe a month later. It entered the British chart at number 1 on 15 March and stayed there four non-consecutive weeks, and peaked at number 2 in the US. The single Badge reached number 18 in Britain. Interest was so great that Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears both climbed back to number 7 in Britain. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that the album had strong moments rather than cohesion, while Robert Christgau named it his favorite Cream record.