IT would be too simplistic to call Ginger Baker the greatest drummer ever to play rock music, just as it would be incorrect to label his music as simply rock. He was much more than that. He was a musical visionary, a musical conceptualist, an arranger, a band leader, an innovator and a composer. He was one of the most colourful and tempestuous figures to blaze forth across the glittering rock firmament and leave a trail of output that has dazzled music lovers for more than six decades. A fiercely individualistic iconoclast, Baker broke musical boundaries and introduced never-before-heard rhythms, structures and patterns in Western popular music. It also changed the very role of the drummer in a musical ensemble. He practically broke the shackles of all future generations of drummers and set them free. “Every rock drummer since has been influenced by Ginger, even if they don’t know it,” said Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist for the Canadian band Rush.
The great jazz drummer Art Blakey once said: “What I want to do is get into the bowels and the guts of the human soul—and I have just the instrument to do it with.” Ginger Baker, who idolised Art Blakey, did just that. The drummer never took centre stage in a rock show. He remained hunched in his seat, keeping time for the band—the backbone of the rhythm section, but never the star attraction, until Ginger Baker came along. Nobody had heard drums played that way before. The enormous finesse that he combined with the power of thunder, the way his drumming enveloped the music, guided it without ever overshadowing any of the other instruments, just blew the minds of listeners. Ginger Baker’s technique was unique. It gave the impression that he was playing breathlessly fast, but it was actually more a masterly utilisation of the whole range of his drum kit. He was among the first drummers to use double bass drums, which added muscle to his heavy style of playing.
Self-expression
In the true jazz tradition, music for Ginger Baker was a process of self-expression. “It’s not how you play, it’s what you say,” he had said. While he was one of the pioneers of the drum solo, he also had the most delicate touch. A critic described his playing in the piece “Ginger Spice” in his album “Why?” (2014) like “hearing the rhythm of a tear drop”. Ginger cut a striking figure behind his massive drum kit, six feet and four inches tall, gaunt, with long flaming red hair (for which he got the nickname Ginger) and a maniacal gleam that never left his eyes. There was something awe-inspiring in not just the sound of his drums, but the manner in which he played.
If there was anyone who was born to play the drums, it was Ginger Baker. The story goes (which may be apocryphal) that young Ginger, urged by his school mates, sat behind a drum kit one day and realised that he could play the instrument, although he had no prior training. He realised that he had “natural time”, “a gift from God”.
Born Peter Edward Baker on August 13, 1939, Ginger Baker was a troublemaker from the start. He moved around with a gang, took part in petty crimes, until he discovered jazz. It was during an expedition to steal records from a shop that he heard “Jazz at Massey Hall”, one of the seminal live jazz recordings made in 1953 by the immortal group The Quintet, comprising Charlie Parker on alto saxophone, Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, Charles Mingus on bass, Bud Powell on piano and Max Roach on drums. That changed his life.
After discovering his talent, Ginger Baker dedicated his energies to playing the drums and made a name for himself in the jazz and blues circuit. Upon hearing him, Phil Seamen, the great English jazz drummer, took Ginger Baker under his wings. He introduced Ginger Baker to something that would change the latter’s art and which would, in turn, have a profound impact in the world of music—African drummers and their rhythms. After an early stint in the jazz scene, Ginger Baker joined Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. Alexis Korner’s drummer Charlie Watts had quit to join “the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world”, The Rolling Stones, and had recommended Ginger Baker in his place. It was in Alexis Korner’s band that Ginger Baker met the wizard of the bass, Jack Bruce. It was not long before the two of them and Eric Clapton created music history with their group, Cream. But before Cream came about there was the highly acclaimed Graham Bond Organisation, a rhythm and blues/blues/jazz band, led by the keyboards and saxophone player Graham John Clifton Bond. It was here that Ginger Baker got his first taste of stardom. However, constant friction between him and Jack Bruce resulted in clashes on stage, and finally, Jack Bruce left when Ginger Baker allegedly pulled a knife on him and fired him from the band. With Jack Bruce gone and Graham Bond deep in the depths of cocaine addiction, it fell upon Ginger Baker to run the show, until he decided to move on and form another band.
In 1965, on a wall in Islington, London, someone had spray-painted the words, “Clapton is God”. Eric Clapton had established himself as the top blues guitar player of his generation, with his work with The Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. For Ginger Baker, already considered the top drummer of his generation, playing with Eric Clapton was a temptation he could not resist. But Eric Clapton insisted that Jack Bruce also be in the band. Ginger Baker reluctantly agreed, and Cream, the first “supergroup” of rock comprising three established superstars, came into being in 1966.
A three-piece monster of an improvisational jam band, Cream, in its short life of just two years and four albums, revolutionised rock music. Here Ginger Baker established that the drums were no longer merely a part of the rhythm section, and with his technique and drum solos, brought it to the fore. His rhythms and patterns were propelling music in a new direction, and he had the best band mates to make that journey with. It was not just his virtuosity with the drums, but his musical ideas and concepts that played a crucial role in giving Cream its unique sound. Although he always complained that he never got credit for his ideas and that Jack Bruce and Pete Brown (Cream’s lyricist) made all the money from the royalties, it was his ideas of arrangement that changed the way classics like “Sunshine of Your Love” and “White Room” ultimately sounded in the album.
But the constant bickering between Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce began to take a toll on Eric Clapton, who was often reduced to tears, caught in the middle of their violent confrontations. He was looking for a way out. Cream disbanded in 1968 with a “Farewell Concert” after selling more than 15 million records and taking the whole world by storm. The three would get together for a "Reunion Concert" at the Royal Albert Hall in 2005, and almost 40 years later they demonstrated that they had not lost any of their old magic or their great musical powers.
In 1969, Ginger once again teamed up with Eric Clapton and formed a new “supergroup”, Blind Faith, with Steve Winwood of Traffic. But for all its hype and the critical and commercial success of its only album, the eponymous “Blind Faith”, the group decided to call it a day in August 1969, just three months after giving its debut performance in Hyde Park in front of 100,000 fans.
The year 1970 once again saw Ginger Baker pushing musical boundaries with his new band, Ginger Baker’s Air Force. He went back to his roots with an 11-piece big band jazz set-up and teamed up with his old mentor, Phil Seamen. It was here, playing with such stalwarts as Steve Winwood, Graham Bond, Phil Seamen, the bassist Ric Grech and the guitarist Denny Laine, that Ginger Baker demonstrated his genius as a band leader and musical arranger. Through this band, he introduced into the mainstream those intricate African rhythms he so loved.
Africa and its beats beckoned Ginger Baker. In 1971, he left his lavish rock-star life behind in England and landed up in Ghana at the house of friend and master drummer Guy Warren. This was an important period in Ginger Baker’s troubled life. Here he felt truly content, playing with his old friend, the famous composer and activist Fela Kuti, in Lagos and picking up new rhythms and grooves. For all his flamboyant hell-raising lifestyle, Ginger Baker was a serious researcher and experimenter of music. He delighted in playing in his new group, Fela Kuti and The Africa ’70 with Ginger Baker, which soon became immensely popular in the region and started getting noticed abroad as well. However, just before a planned tour, a series of unfortunate events led to Ginger Baker getting busted for possession of marijuana, and the whole project had to be cancelled. It was in Lagos that Ginger Baker was introduced to another enduring passion of his life—horses and polo.
When he returned to England in 1974, Ginger Baker joined the brothers Paul and Adrian Gurvitz (former members of The Gun) and formed the Baker Gurvitz Army. The group lasted a couple of years and acquired quite a large following of its own. The band broke up after its manager Bill Fehilly, a close friend of Ginger Baker, died. The period that followed found Ginger Baker hitting another low with his failing health and his heroin addiction. His reputation as an out-of-control hell-raiser made him an outcast, with nobody wanting to play with him anymore. At that time, he was living in the United States. He started a polo club in Colorado. After playing polo, he would play jazz with his new group DJQ20 in the club grounds. And just when fans began wondering what had happened to him, Ginger Baker dazzled all with a performance like the one at the Iridium in New York in 2014 with his group Ginger Baker’s Jazz Confusion.
The size of the stage or the audience mattered little to Ginger Baker as long as he had someone to play with. He was one of the wildest, strangest figures to ever ignite the passions of music lovers. An unrepentant loner, who burnt practically every bridge, fought with everyone, alienated his family and friends and lost his money faster than he could earn it. He treated adulation and fame with contempt and seemed to have nothing but scorn even for his adoring fans. He did not seem to care if he was misunderstood, hated or even feared. “There is no myth about Ginger,” said Eric Clapton in the documentary, Beware Mr Baker (2012) “He is exactly what he is, and that’s the thing we value.”
What mattered most to Ginger Baker was the respect of his heroes, the jazz legends he looked up to. He would take part in “drum battles” with Art Blakey and Elvin Jones, and hold his own against them. “Four drummers in my life who were my absolute heroes: Phil Seamen was the first one, Max Roach, Art Blakey and Elvin Jones. All four of them became my friends, and I mean dear friends. That is worth more to me than anything in the whole world,” he said once.
For all the madness and frenzy that governed his life, nothing could hamper the full bloom of his genius—not drugs, not alcohol, not a heart condition nor pulmonary problems, not even degenerative osteoarthritis. Perhaps one of the most enduring memories of Ginger Baker would be one of his last stage appearances in 2016. It was at a memorial concert for Jack Bruce who had died in 2014. A frail Ginger came to pay tribute to his old partner and beloved foe. He had not yet fully recovered from a recent open-heart surgery and was clearly in no physical condition to play. “I really shouldn’t be here,” he said, before seating himself behind a drum set. What followed was two minutes of magic. He played a mesmerising African beat, and for those two minutes while he played, all his weakness, his illness, his age seemed to disappear. Then he stopped playing and reality came crashing back as he was gently helped off the stage amidst a prolonged standing ovation.
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