Lyricist Pete Brown's original idea for the song revolved around a
hippie girl titled "Cinderella's Last Goodnight", but when that did not work, he dipped into an earlier eight page poem he had written about a new apartment he had moved into with white walls and bare furnishings, where he gave up drinking and drugs. The personal demons he battled while living in the white room spawned the imagery of the poem, which was eventually whittled down to a few verses for the song lyric. In July 1967, at the initial sessions for Cream's third album (then still unnamed), recording for "White Room" began in London. In October and December work continued at
Atlantic Studios in New York City and was completed during three sessions in February, April and June 1968, also at Atlantic.
Jack Bruce sang and played bass on the song,
Eric Clapton overdubbed guitar parts,
Ginger Baker played drums and
timpani, and
Felix Pappalardi – the group's
producer – contributed
violas. Clapton played his guitar through a
wah-wah pedal to achieve a "talking-effect". The song has an identical chord progression to Cream's previous recording "
Tales of Brave Ulysses". Both Bruce and Baker claimed to have added the distinctive or
quintuple metre opening to what had been a or
common time composition. Bruce later revealed that the opening had made the record company wary that it would do well commercially. ==Credits==