If you know only as the then drummer in , you really don’t know Ginger Baker at all. Yes, it was in Cream that Baker became the world’s first superstar rock drummer, was the first to play an extended rock drum solo (on , from Cream’s debut ) and solidified the rock drummer archetype of the crazy bastard at the back. But that’s not where Baker’s reputation really lies.
This is the guy who routinely dismisses his peers out of hand. According to Ginger, “[John] Bonham had technique but he couldn’t swing a sack of shit. The same with [Keith] Moonie.
” The guy who said: “I won’t go within ten miles of a gig.” Ginger Baker is the drummer who even hated his own band, claiming he would never play with them again, even after he’d just done seven reunion shows in 2005. Why? “We’ve done it.
” Baker would throw his drum sticks at Cream bassist ’s head during shows, get up and fight him during others, and even fired him once, when they were both in the . Bruce told me before his death: “Ginger Baker had the idea [for Cream] with , but Eric said: ‘Yeah, I’ll play with you but we’ve got to have Jack as the bass player and the singer.’ Ginger was like: ‘No problem.
’ What he didn’t tell Eric was that the last time he’d seen me he pulled a knife on me and told me if he ever saw me again, the knife would be waiting for me.” A few hours before his death in 2014, Bruce phoned Baker and told him: “I’m dying, Ginger, fuck you,” then slammed th.