If you know Ginger Baker only as the then drummer in Cream, 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 Toad, from Cream’s debut Fresh Cream) 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 Rolling Stones 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.”
