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Ginger Baker was one of the iconic architects of rock\u2019s expansive era, a drummer who played as if literally possessed. He was also intimidating, contrary, complicated, imperious and unpredictable in ways his peers and progeny are still coming to terms with. \u201cHe seemed like a person who\u2019d experienced pain and was carrying it with him,\u201d they told Mark Paytress in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Cream (l-r) bassist Jack Bruce, drummer Ginger Baker and guitarist Eric Clapton.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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NOVEMBER 26, 1968: Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker walk out onto the Royal Albert Hall stage to a hero\u2019s welcome. The crowd\u2019s joy at their nine-song set, dominated by exhilarating feats of improvisation, is tempered by the knowledge that the evening\u2019s two concerts will be Cream\u2019s last. For the past two years, thanks to an unprecedented cocktail of volume, virtuosity and one or two classified ingredients, the trio had transformed contemporary music. By taking a jazz approach to a repertoire of blues- and pop-oriented songs, Cream had created a new form.<\/p>\n
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The new, grown-up rock world grieved the early demise of this trailblazing young trio. Not Ginger, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo!\u201d barked the man from his recliner when I visited him at his home outside Canterbury in 2014. \u201cA ruddy relief.\u201d<\/p>\n
Director Tony Palmer, who filmed the farewell concerts for the BBC, takes a more considered view. \u201cI felt Ginger was a lost soul after Cream exploded. And, I\u2019m sorry to say, the same is true to some extent of Jack and Eric. Eric eventually found some peace but I\u2019m not sure Jack ever did. Ginger certainly didn\u2019t. It was very much like, You can\u2019t top that, but you have to go on living.\u201d<\/p>\n
To the surprise of many, that\u2019s exactly what Ginger Baker did, and with all the mad abandon of a man trapped in one of his extended drum solos. When he died, on October 6 2019, it wasn\u2019t the decades-long heroin habit or his ability to make a Range Rover dance that saw him off. Via a blog message in 2016, he announced: \u201cJust seen doctor\u2026 big shock\u2026 No more gigs for this old drummer\u2026 everything is off\u2026 of all things I never thought it would be my heart\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the cause of death has yet to be made public, it\u2019s likely that the heart was involved one way or another. \u201cWithout his drums, his life ceased to have any proper function,\u201d says Palmer. \u201cI\u2019m sure Ginger loved his many wives, but his prime responsibility was to give a good account of himself with his drums.\u201d<\/p>\n
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PETER EDWARD BAKER was born in Lewisham, south-east London, on August 19, 1939, and born for a second time one late summer day in 1955. That was when, fresh out of school and at a party, Baker was persuaded by some old classmates to have a bash at a vacant drum-kit. His compulsive desk beating in class had not been in vain: \u201cChrist, we\u2019ve got a drummer!\u201d said one of the horn players. Baker overheard them, but it had felt good anyway. Within days, he\u2019d bought a \u00a33 toy kit which he customised to boost its capabilities. The music he listened to for inspiration was The Quintet Of The Year, whose LP he\u2019d stolen from a shop two years earlier. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charlie Mingus and drummer Max Roach \u2013 Baker started at the top.<\/p>\n
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Naturally gifted, he worked his way through London\u2019s \u201950s jazz scene, confounding \u2018traddies\u2019 with his offbeats, impressing Sister Rosetta Tharpe \u2013 who wanted to take his trousers down \u2013 and earning a reputation. He taught himself to read and arrange music, and the earnings graph on his bedroom wall continued its upwards trend. It had to be so because he\u2019d married Liz in 1959, and become a father to Ginette (alias \u2018Nettie\u2019) the following year.<\/p>\n
During the early days with Liz, Baker made it clear his playing would always come first. The kit was both mistress and protector to a man whose sanity was often questioned. \u201cI think it was the fame and the drugs,\u201d says Baker\u2019s son Kofi, born in 1969 and a drummer like his dad, currently playing with Jack Bruce\u2019s son Malcolm and Eric Clapton\u2019s nephew Will Johns (son of engineer Andy) in The Music Of Cream. \u201cMum said people would come up to him and say, \u2018Ginger, you\u2019re God, you\u2019re the greatest.\u2019 And he was high and he\u2019d be like, \u2018Yeah, I am the fucking greatest.\u2019 She said he only got like that when he got into heroin and got famous. She said he really changed. I mean, he was always a nutcase. Both my parents were nutcases.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heroin. Like smoking dope but better, drummer Dickie Devere told Baker in May 1960. Later that week, before going on-stage with The Johnny Scott Band in Brighton, Ginger had another snort. He\u2019d found the answer, Baker wrote in Hellraiser, the autobiography he wrote with Nettie: \u201cAll the barriers were down and I was just playing.\u201d He happily acquired a habit.<\/p>\n
Later that year, another epiphany. The jazz great Phil Seamen walked in on Baker playing a session at the Flamingo in Soho, \u201cYou can play,\u201d he told Baker, who\u2019d copied Seamen\u2019s habits of playing with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, as well as his \u2018matched grip\u2019 (both drumsticks held with the hand over the top). The man Ginger called his \u2018Drum God\u2019 invited him back to his Maida Vale flat. It was an eventful night. Smack addict Seamen had Baker help him jack up, then told him never to go near the stuff. Hours later, as he walked home, Baker still had the rhythms of the Watusi Drummers in his footsteps. \u201cFor the first time, I felt the pulse of Africa,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n
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GINGER WAS FLYING. One night in autumn 1962, he\u2019d sat in with Alexis Korner\u2019s Blues Incorporated and, according to sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith, had driven the band through the Marquee roof. Regular drummer Charlie Watts resigned so Baker could take his place. Within months, Baker, bassist Jack Bruce and organist Graham Bond all quit. (Heckstall-Smith followed soon after.) Going out as The Graham Bond Organisation, the quartet earned a fearsome reputation in the clubs, their tough R&B material styled up with jazz-honed virtuosity. Baker cooked up the artwork for the The Sound Of \u201965 album, his distinctive solos started to acquire titles (Camels And Elephants) and, early in \u201966, he even sold an Organisation outtake (retitled Waltz For A Pig), to The Who. He bought a new Rover 2000 with the proceeds.<\/p>\n
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After three years, Baker \u2013 dubbed \u2018The Thunder Machine\u2019 by the press \u2013 needed a new challenge. Ditto disgruntled Blues Breakers guitarist Eric Clapton, or \u2018God\u2019 as his fans knew him. Clapton had seen Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy\u2019s trio months earlier and convinced Baker they just needed a bassist. Only one man fit the bill \u2013 Baker\u2019s Bond Organisation nemesis Jack Bruce.<\/p>\n
The temperamental two had previously fallen out while Baker was detoxing, leading to on-stage punch-ups and ultimately, in August 1965, Bruce\u2019s departure. Baker accused the bassist of playing too loud and over his solo. \u201cI was trying to find a new way of playing,\u201d Bruce explained years later to Phil Sutcliffe. \u201cIt was kind of busy and Ginger didn\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Launched at the Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival on July 31, 1966, Cream \u2013 initially The Cream, in case anyone doubted their pedigree \u2013 was the product of everything Baker had been working towards. \u201cIf we\u2019d played the music of Humpty Dumpty and Mickey Mouse, it would have still been great,\u201d he told me in 2014. \u201cIt didn\u2019t matter what the song was. It was the people that played it that made it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cream wrote and played songs for fun and fame but their primary purpose was to explore. On a good night, the effect of their instrumental surges could be transcendent \u2013 and not only for those fashionable acid trippers in the audience.
\u201cThis happens to us quite often,\u201d Baker told Hit Parader\u2019s Jim Delehant. \u201cIt feels as though I\u2019m not playing my instrument; something else is playing it and that same thing is playing all three of our instruments\u2026 It\u2019s frightening sometimes.\u201dThe trio\u2019s connection was, he claimed, comparable to ESP.<\/p>\n
Tony Palmer, who heard Cream in concert many times before filming the Albert Hall shows, insists tension \u2013 as much as teamwork \u2013 was key to the group\u2019s achievements. \u201cThere was this intense musical rivalry between the three of them which made Cream so extraordinary,\u201d he says. \u201cThe LPs are poor because in the studio you\u2019re more disciplined. On stage, they were immensely disciplined, but in a totally freeform way. And they got that from Ginger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Writing for the Harvard Crimson late in 1968, the distinguished future composer John Adams provided a fascinating portrait of Ginger Baker at the height of the group\u2019s fame. Baker, he wrote, is \u201clike a beast from another world\u201d. His \u201cghastly croaks begin somewhere down within his sinewy frame and emerge through a crooked row of half rotten teeth.\u201d After a performance, \u201chis whole nervous system is so wracked by amphetamines that he literally has to be carried off the stage.
\u201cIf Baker lives for another year it will be a miracle,\u201d he predicted. As for Cream that October night in New Haven: \u201cOn the stage, in that blue light, they were superhuman.\u201d<\/p>\n
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CREAM MIGHT HAVE\u00a0been a spiritual experience for Baker, but once Clapton heard The Band\u2019s Music From Big Pink earlier that year, he felt the game was up, that Cream were a con. They had jammed themselves into oblivion. Returning to the family home in Harrow, now swelled by the arrival of a second daughter, Leda, Baker continued to work on the fibreglass and steel sculpture he\u2019d been creating since the group\u2019s first days. The pleasure, it seemed, was more in the journey than the destination.<\/p>\n
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The \u201cruddy relief\u201d of Cream\u2019s dissolution had a personal downside for Baker. Now 30 and a millionaire, he returned to his old heroin habit without restraint. Hearing Clapton was rehearsing with Steve Winwood, then extricating himself from Traffic, Baker turned up at the door of Winwood\u2019s remote Berkshire cottage to announce that the pair now had a drummer. Clapton, who now regarded Baker as \u201cseriously antisocial\u201d, was crestfallen. Hyped into instant \u2018supergroup\u2019 status, Blind Faith toured the States for six lucrative weeks in the summer, and had fizzled out by October.<\/p>\n
While on the West Coast, Baker heard he\u2019d been found dead from a heroin overdose in his hotel. He was belting down Route 101 in an AC Cobra at the time with three female passengers and a car radio. As he wrote in Hellraiser: \u201cI looked round at the chicks and thought, Fucking hell, I must be in heaven!\u201d<\/p>\n
His own 10-piece big band, Ginger Baker\u2019s Air Force, lasted no longer than Blind Faith. Heavy friends included Winwood and ex-Moody Blues man Denny Laine. Graham Bond and Phil Seamen were reeled in from Baker\u2019s past. But it was the presence of percussionist Remi Kabaka and the band\u2019s Afro-jazz leanings that suggested Baker\u2019s next move.<\/p>\n
According to Bill Laswell, who saw Cream when he was 14 and worked with Baker in the \u201980s, \u201cGinger could have moved to LA and become like Fleetwood Mac. He could have pulled that off. But he decided to go to Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of stars at that time \u2013 and John Lennon\u2019s a perfect example \u2013 felt they missed out on their education,\u201d says Tony Palmer, who in 1971 accompanied Baker on his second trip to Lagos, Nigeria, to film a documentary. \u201cFor Ginger, it was in every sense a journey of exploration. The drive across the Sahara took at least three times as long as we thought it would simply because he kept stopping, looking and talking to people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palmer found his travelling companion differed markedly from his reputation: \u201cHe was absolutely delightful. Witty, concerned about our welfare and anxious to be a good guide and a good guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
On reaching Lagos, Baker headed straight for Fela Kuti\u2019s Afro-Spot nightclub. All the downers back home, including the recent death of his friend and fellow free spirit Jimi Hendrix, ebbed away. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t stand still and listen to that band,\u201d he told me in 2014, still visibly moved by the memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cGinger felt there was a whole world of music, relatively unexplored, that was not rock\u2019n\u2019roll,\u201d says Palmer. \u201cWe filmed an amazing session at a gathering of talking drummers. And he gave as good as he got. It\u2019s your beats and patterns of beats that do the speaking, giving voice to his thoughts at that moment. It was astonishing. Ginger was new to it, but he clearly found his voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ja\u2019Baka, as Baker was known locally, made himself at home in Lagos, and made albums with Fela Kuti in London. In Ikeja, he built a 16-track studio, dubbed ARC, and persuaded Paul McCartney\u2019s Wings to come and record Band On The Run there. But he hadn\u2019t reckoned on the intimidatory tactics of associates of EMI\u2019s existing Lagos facility \u2013 Baker\u2019s rivals for the ex-Beatle\u2019s business. Ultimately just one song, Picasso\u2019s Last Words (Drink To Me), was taped at ARC Studios. \u201cGinger played a fire bucket full of gravel on that one,\u201d remembers Denny Laine, by now McCartney\u2019s foil in Wings.<\/p>\n
Arriving at ARC one day, Baker discovered that the locks had been changed. As he sped away, the sound of gunshots filled the air. His Nigerian dream had collapsed. It was time to go home.<\/p>\n
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GINGER SOON FOUND HIS FEET. He formed Baker Gurvitz Army with guitarist Adrian Gurvitz and bassist brother Paul who, as The Gun, had scored a lone hit in 1968 with Race With The Devil. They bagged a big-money deal, enjoyed a major promotional push and their 1974 debut album hit Top 30. The band also included White Room and Sunshine Of Your Love, both key Baker arrangements, in their live set. This tended to happen whenever Baker joined a rock band over the next couple of decades, culminating in the BBM project in 1994 where, lured in by serious money and the promise of first class travel between Britain and the States, Baker was teamed with Jack Bruce and Gary Moore. He dismissed the venture as \u201ca pretend Cream thing\u201d.<\/p>\n
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\u201cCream was a jazz thing,\u201d Baker insisted, dismissing two generations of pretenders. \u201cIt was 80 per cent totally improvised and never the same two nights running.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why he despised people like John Bonham,\u201d says Tony Palmer. \u201cGinger was a jazz drummer and that mattered to him.\u201d It was, said Baker repeatedly, all about the swing. \u201cKeeping metronomic time is not the same as swinging!\u201d<\/p>\n
By the end of the \u201970s, Baker was divorced, broke and a bit of a joke. \u201cPeople thought he was this drug addict and nutcase just blasting the drums,\u201d says Kofi Baker. \u201cAs far as I know, Animal from The Muppets was modelled on my dad. They talked to my mum and asked if he\u2019d be fine about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Ginger was past caring. He was back in the grip of heroin addiction, dating a friend of his daughter\u2019s and was rumoured to be couriering coke to Olympic Studios while Eric Clapton and his band were recording 1978\u2019s Backless. \u201cGinger didn\u2019t behave himself terribly well, but that\u2019s life on the road,\u201d says Tony Palmer. \u201cBut the moment he split up with Liz, he knew he\u2019d lost something, screwed something up.\u201d<\/p>\n
By 1980, Baker was drumming for Hawkwind. \u201cHe\u2019d tell us all these stories about how he\u2019d lost his money,\u201d says Hawkwind mainstay Dave Brock. \u201cIt was a lesson for us. Let\u2019s not end up like Ginger. This guy used to come round to deal him his bad drugs. We didn\u2019t realise. He used to get a bit wobbly but we thought it was because he was drinking a bottle of Bacardi a day. The strangest thing was it never affected his ability. He just seemed to carry on regardless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fed up with rock bands and facing an \u00a384,000 tax bill, Baker fled to Tuscany in 1982 with future wife Sarah. He was off heroin and pruning olive trees. By the end of 1983, Sarah had walked out. \u201cHe was living on a hilltop,\u201d says Bill Laswell, who flew in with a proposal for a new project. \u201cNo electricity, no telephone, lots of dogs. He seemed aged, like a person who\u2019d experienced pain and was carrying it with him. His kit was set up in a room at the top of his house. You\u2019d open these huge windows, look down into the valleys and there was nothing there, just some rundown castle. He\u2019d play almost every day in that room.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laswell was putting together a studio band for the new Public Image Limited album, Album. \u201cWhen I said the lead vocalist was Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols he really liked the idea. Though they were very different people, they\u2019d come from similar backgrounds. And they both told people to fuck off a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the PiL experience, Baker relocated to the US, ending up in LA by 1988. He recorded West African-flavoured albums with Laswell, and perhaps his best post-Cream rock album \u2013 Masters Of Reality\u2019s 1992 LP Sunshine Of The Sufferbus. But it was his first love, jazz, that prompted a joyful creative flourish through the \u201990s, first with The Ginger Baker Trio then The Denver Jazz Quintet To Octet.<\/p>\n
He even embraced the unthinkable \u2013 joining Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton for a Cream reunion in 2005. Ginger was tempted by the money, which he used \u2013 and later lost \u2013 to build up his polo ranch in South Africa, where he met his fourth wife Kudzai. At the Madison Square Garden shows, Baker spotted a photo of Bruce Springsteen and removed it, a symbol of his unwavering displeasure at rock celebrities and post-Cream rock generally.<\/p>\n
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When I interviewed Baker in 2014, he was slow, his skin was yellow, he chain-smoked and was still heartbroken at having to sell his 38 horses in South Africa due to more financial bad luck. \u201cI\u2019m na\u00efve,\u201d he explained. There were no traces of his musical past in the house. Large photos of Kudzai lined the hall. He fussed over his Dalmatian dog Jakey. A cushion bearing the words \u2018Love Is All You Need\u2019 lay on the sofa.<\/p>\n
On September 25 2019, the Baker family announced that Ginger was critically ill in hospital in Canterbury. Kofi Baker flew in from the States. In 2018, he\u2019d told Rolling Stone he\u2019d been disowned so many times by his dad that he doubted he\u2019d be upset by his death. \u201cIt was completely the opposite,\u201d he says a week after losing him. \u201cIt fucking trashed me. I really thought he didn\u2019t like me, or that I was just a disappointment to him. But it seemed like it was all just a front. I told him how I felt. He listened, his eyes lit up and he laughed. I told him I was learning [Cream\u2019s] Blue Condition for the next tour and he was all happy about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
During those final days, Kofi had a conversation with percussionist Abass Dodoo from Baker\u2019s last band. \u201cHe told me my dad was living through me, that he loved the fact that I was doing the Cream stuff again. I didn\u2019t hear all this shit until a week ago! I\u2019m like, What an asshole. I find out all this and the fucker\u2019s died on me. I finally get to connect to you and you\u2019re gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared in Issue 314 of MOJO<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n MAIN IMAGE:<\/strong> GETTY<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Thunder MachineGinger Baker was one of the iconic architects of rock\u2019s expansive era, a drummer who played as if literally possessed. He was also intimidating, contrary, complicated, imperious and unpredictable in ways his peers and progeny are still coming to terms with. \u201cHe seemed like a person who\u2019d experienced pain and was carrying it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2277,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"akindell","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2274"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2286,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274\/revisions\/2286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}