Remember When: Cream’s Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce Wrote a Beer Commercial Jingle

By the 1960s, popular bands and artists were actively involved in the promotion of brands and products, with many writing and performing jingles for radio and television. Coca-Cola pulled in everyone from Roy Orbison, The Shirelles, The Moody Blues, and the Turtles, among many others, to sing their praises throughout the ’60s. In 1964, the Rolling Stones were also commissioned to come up with a jingle for the popular cereal brand, Rice Krispies, months before releasing their debut in 1964.

By the late 1960s, the Who were involved in two Coca-Cola ads in the UK before recording a batch of jingles for more popular brands, many of which appeared on their 1967 album  The Who Sell Out, a compilation of fake public service announcements and commercials, including one for “Heinz Baked Beans.” The band also sang about milk chocolate and cherry vanilla shake flavors for Great Shakes.

Grace Slick sang White Levi’s come in black, blushing bravo blue / I love you, in this 1967 commercial for Levi’s jeans, featuring Jefferson Airplane. A year later, Iron Butterfly hit with their classic “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” and also recorded a commercial for Ban Roll-On deodorant.

By the end of the decade, Paul Revere & the Raiders also promoted the Pontiac Judge model in a very Revolutionary War-themed car commercial with their original song “Judge GTO Breakaway.”

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Falstaff Beer Adds Cream

In between the height of their three-year span between the band’s 1966 debut Fresh Cream and second release Disraeli Gears in 1967, Cream also got in on the commercial work when Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, and Ginger Baker wrote a jingle for a radio ad for Falstaff Beer. 

Broadcast in 1967, the quick ditty has Bruce singing of the beer as a thirst quencher and the first brew you reach for.

The beer that can slake any thirst, any thirst
The beer you reach for first
When you want to quench your thirst, 

With its roots as far back a 1838 as the Lemp Brewery in St. Louis, the company was renamed in 1903, after Shakespeare’s Henry IV character, Sir John Falstaff.

Falstaff Brewing Corporation was a major brewery in America by the mid-’60s and for many decades until it went out of production in 2005. Today, Falstaff is owned by Pabst Brewing Company, and 30 years after it first aired, Cream’s beer jingle resurfaced on the band’s 1997 compilation Those Were the Days. 

Photo: Ivan Keeman/Redferns