He was a musical genius. He was a monster. He was a father to three children. He bedded his daughter’s friends. He was a jazzman. He was, till kicking the habit in 1981, a heroin addict for 20 years. Spanning the peak of his musical career. He was a bluesman. He was a drummer. He was a rock star. He was unique. He was angry. He was born relatively poor, he died in relative poverty after spending much money, wealth he had won, earned, lost, or had stolen over the years. In between he lived a life full of color, full of emotion, rich in music, rife with discord.
Ginger Baker’s life story is rich enough it will, one day I predict, be committed to a movie — or a multi-part serial.
Ginger Baker was born within a fortnight of the onset of World War II, on August 19th, 1939. Christened Peter Edward Baker, Ginger earned his moniker from the unkempt head of flaming red hair. Before the end of the war, his father died, leaving his mother as the primary means of family support. A situation that, in ‘40s England left the family poor.
Baker began playing drums at age 15, at a party, by invitation because no one else would. He liked playing them (and according to his telling of the story, the band and small audience liked him playing them). He began as (if anything) a jazz drummer, a classification to which he clung whenever quizzed about his fame as a rock star, or R&B or heavy metal drummer. He would dismiss all such labels and declare himself a jazz drummer. Just one who could effortlessly introduce polyrhythmic drum lines into a blues song, or a piece of rock music.
Often the oldest member of the many bands he played in, Baker took his talents to many different groups — bringing something new and original to all of them. He was such a trailblazer in many ways that it should come as little surprise that, when still just 18 Baker could be credited with beginning the trend of temperamental musicians trashing hotels. In his case setting one on fire, in France, while on tour with jazz guitarist Diz Disley.
The lineage of groups touched by Baker’s considerable talents was long and storied. Beginning with Terry Lightfoot, then onto the Blues Incorporated, an outfit with fluid membership — including at one point an early incarnation of The Rolling Stones — it was there that he first began working with (and getting angry toward) Jack Bruce. Most tellings of Baker’s musical career set his first notable gig as the Graham Bond Organization, in which he continued his contentious relationship with bassist Jack Bruce.
Most people remember what next transpired, the meteoric and too brief beauty that was Cream. A note of irony. It was at Clapton’s insistence that Baker and Bruce were reunited in Cream. Thankfully for music history, Baker assented. For less than two years they produced some of the most innovative, incendiary and individualistic music ever heard. It was entirely new, it was mimicked, never copied. Arguably immune to mere imitation. In Cream, Baker brought showmanship and instrumental brilliance to rock music.
Anyway, farewell Ginger Baker. You might have been a complex man, of uneven temper, uncontrollable appetites and self-destructive inclinations. But, there is no doubting that you also used that fury as catalyst for your creative side.
The one we will long remember.