Cream’s Ginger Baker: The Complete Interview, Warts And All

In 1997, I had the opportunity to interview the late, great and sometimes cantankerous drum legend, Ginger Baker. The chat occurred at Baker’s then-horse farm, in Parker, Colorado. Baker died in 2019, of course, but what he had to say back then is still relevant, and an important part of rock history.

We spent the day discussing the supergroup Cream, the band with guitarist Eric Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce he is most famous for; Led Zeppelin and his disinterest in its drummer John Bonham; how Americans don’t know how to make a proper cup of tea; his volatile relationship with Jack Bruce; the power trio’s induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1993; the possibility of a Cream reunion (it did happen, in 2005); his disdain for heavy metal music; and more.

This interview has been published in bits and pieces over the years, but for the first time appears here in its entirety, with light edits. Baker was on good behavior the day we met. At one point, he even teared up when we were discussing his jazz drummer mentors. Good behavior was not always a given with Ginger, though. Take the 2012 documentary, Beware Of Mr. Baker, where, in a fit of rage, he threw his crutch at the director, breaking the guy’s nose.

Jim Clash: Cream did great stuff during its short life, from 1966-68. What do you remember about the abrupt end of the group?

Ginger Baker: Looking back on the last tour, Eric [Clapton] came to me and said, “I’m fed up with this.” And I said, “So am I.” And that was it. Finished. It wasn’t enjoyable anymore. We’d walk on stage and get a standing ovation before we played a note. Even if the gig was bad - if we thought it was f’ing awful - all these people were screaming and going crazy saying, “This is wonderful!”

That [1968 farewell] concert at the [Royal] Albert Hall is not anywhere near Cream at its best. It was an enormous relief, but also a feeling of, “all that for nothing.” It has stayed with me to this day. Some wonderful music, some wonderful times, but also some of the most horrendous for me personally.

I can remember at the recording studio going down to the bar and drinking Bacardi and Coke, Bacardi and Coke, doing eight or nine of them in order to be able to go back into the studio and not punch people. That’s how pissed off I had become. I could see what was happening. In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore, and Eric was the same.

Clash: How was the experience in 1993 when you, Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame?

Baker: The rehearsals were magic. But at the actual thing, we had to listen to a lot of bozos making these extraordinarily mundane speeches. It was virtually the same one, over and over again: “I’d like to thank my mum and my dad, the uncle that lent me 50 bucks, my cat, my kids, the horse.” You know, this long list. These diatribes went on while we sat at a table for eight hours! Then, finally, you go on stage. We did okay, but it wasn’t anywhere near the same as rehearsals. [During those] it was like the 25 years [since our Royal Albert farewell concert] had not gone by.

Clash: At the height of Cream, were you guys wealthy?

Baker: We thought we were [laughs]. But we were being ripped off just about everywhere. I was the one responsible for that. They would ask me to sign this contract, and I would. It was standard back then and we were getting like 4½% of 90% for the first three Cream records. Later, we got it up to 8% of 90%.

When CDs first came out, we got a letter saying they were going to pay us the same royalty because it was so expensive to produce them. The 90% [instead of 100%] was supposed to be because of breakage [with records], but you don’t get breakage with CDs [laughs]. The record companies, unfortunately, had you by the balls. They had the distribution network. And they took the majority of the money.

Clash: How about royalties from radio stations each time your song was played?

Baker: There was so much money Cream made that went by the boards because it was never claimed. Every country virtually had its own performing rights society. They collected the money from the radio stations when the records were played. Unless you go to them and say, “Can I have my money, please?” you won’t get it. We were finding money for years after with stuff like this.

Clash: You’re a big fan of polo.

Baker: Polo in America is the sport of Wall Street kings. They take their attitudes into the sport. Winning is everything in America, and they win by hook or by crook. Polo, to me, is an honorable game played by honorable gentlemen. If I had a good game and played well, I don’t really care whether I win or lose. It’s about having fun. I’m not greedy. I don’t understand the point of having more money than you know what to do with. Money is the root of all evils. The happiest times in my life were when I’ve had nothing to do with money.

Clash: What is your take on heavy metal, and marginal show bands like Kiss who reunite occasionally for several million dollars?

Baker: These people that dress up in spandex trousers with all the extraordinary makeup - I find it incredibly repulsive, always have. I’ve seen where Cream is sort of held responsible for the birth of that heavy metal thing. Well, I would definitely go for aborting [laughs]. I loathe and detest heavy metal. I think it is an abortion. When it comes on the radio, it goes off!

A lot of these guys come up and say, “Man, you were my influence, the way you thrashed the drums.” They don’t seem to understand I was thrashing in order to hear what I was playing. It was anger, not enjoyment - and painful. I suffered on stage because of that [high amplifier] volume crap. I didn’t like it then, and like it even less now. That whole Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame thing - at least half the people in there don’t have a place in any kind of hall of fame anywhere, in my opinion.

Clash: Anybody you want to name in particular?

Baker: I don’t want to cause any more trouble.

Clash: Are there bands that came from Cream’s influence you consider to be good, maybe Led Zeppelin?

Baker: Jimmy’s [Page] a good player. I don’t think Led Zeppelin filled the void that Cream left, but they made a lot of money. I probably like about 5% of what they did - a couple of things were really cool. What I don’t like is the heavy bish-bash, jing-bap, jing-bash bullshit.

Clash: What do you think of Zeppelin’s late drummer, John Bonham?

Baker: Years ago, John said, “There are two drummers in rock and roll, Ginger Baker and me.” There’s no way John was anywhere near what I am. He wasn’t a musician. A lot of people don’t realize I studied. I can write music. I used to write big band parts in 1960, ‘61. I felt that if I was a drummer, I needed to learn to read drum music.

I was so good at sight-reading, a guy in one of the big bands told me to get two books. I studied them at the same time. One was about the rules of basic harmony, the other how to break them all [laughs].

Clash: Are you proud of your accomplishments as a musician?

Baker: Very much so. I had to play all kinds of music in order to work early on. They would stick a part in front of me, and I would have to play it. And I would have to do a bloody good job, better than any other drummer, so they wanted me the next week.

We used to go down to [London’s] Archer Street, where all the musicians went [to get work]. It was part of being a musician to me, to make straight bloody dance music sound good. That is something those heavy metal guys lack. All they can do is go bish-bosh diddy-bop, bish-bosh diddy-bop. They can’t read music.

Even Paul McCartney needs someone to write it down for him. And he thinks that’s good. There was an article where he said that if he learned to read music, he might not be able to write as well. We used to say about the Beatles in 1963: “They don’t know a hatchet from a crotchet.” A crotchet is what we call a quarter note.

Clash: I’ve heard that you’re a real stickler about tea, the drink.

Baker: One thing that really bothers me in America is the inability of restaurants to make a good cup of tea. The instructions printed on the bag say, “Pour boiling water over the tea.” How simple is that? No, they bring you an empty cup with an unopened tea bag beside it - how nice - and a pot of water that may be hot, but boiling it isn’t. So tea you have not. It’s boiling water that brings out tea’s flavor, and perhaps a dash of milk. But the brown liquid you end up with here looks like gnat’s pee, and has nothing to do with a really good cup of tea.

Clash: When I first thought to look you up, people told me not to bother, that you were dead (again, this interview, of course, was before Baker died in 2019).

Baker: A lot of people think I’m dead. I’ve been dead at least two times. One classic was when I was driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a Shelby Cobra with three gorgeous young girls. The radio program was interrupted to say I’d just been found dead in my hotel room from an overdose of heroin.

That was 1968. I must be in heaven, I thought. I’m out on Route 101, the sun’s shining, the birds are in the trees [laughs]. Then, in the early 1970s, Playboy featured a “dead” band, with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix - everybody who was dead - and I was playing the drums!

Clash:Being a lapsed drummer, I’ve always found the beat on, “Sunshine Of Your Love,’’ interesting. It is far from the simple way it first sounds.

Baker: If you notice on “Sunshine,’’ the writing is credited to Jack Bruce, Pete Brown and Eric Clapton. And yet it was my drum part which made the thing. I slowed it down - Jack had originally brought it in as quite a quick tune - and then did a backwards drum beat. Nobody even said, “Thank you.”

I also played a little behind the beat - that’s the way I play. Too many drummers play in front of it, and the tempo speeds up. With Cream, I was often holding Jack’s and Eric’s tempos down, and consciously doing so. Eric once tried “Sunshine’’ with Phil Collins. The write-up in the newspaper said they needed Ginger Baker [laughs].

Clash: You and Jack Bruce originally played together in the Graham Bond Organisation. You fired him, right?

Baker: Graham Bond was an extremely popular band. We were working 320 gigs a year, earning good money for those days. Sometimes Jack would get really pissed off on stage and start screaming at me.

Jack’s personality was Jekyll and Hyde. If you said the wrong thing, he would suddenly turn on you. One day during my drum solo, Jack began playing a bass thing with me. I was really getting off on it, phrasing with him on the bass drum. Suddenly he turned around and said, “You’re playing too f**king loud.” The result was that I nearly killed him. A bouncer had to pull me off.

After the gig, he was okay for a while, but then he’d yell again. It wasn’t my decision [to fire him], it was the band’s. Graham had tried to talk to him one night about it, and Jack just got pissed off. When he drove the band bus from Ipswich, he nearly killed us all. Graham got out and said, “He’s got to go.” Of course, I was the heavy, so I had the job of doing it. But it was a band decision.

Clash: How did you go from that group to Cream?

Baker: Eric used to turn up at Graham Bond gigs and sit in. I didn’t realize who he was. To me, he was this young guy I got on extremely well with from the first time we met, and one hell of a guitar player. I was totally unaware that he had this huge following [from The Yardbirds].

He was with John Mayall at the time. I found out where John was working, and went to a gig. Originally Cream was my idea. I told Eric I was getting a band together, and would he be interested? I was getting fed up with Graham Bond. Eric said yeah, but asked about bass. He really wanted Jack, the best bass player around, so we agreed Jack was the one.

Clash: Was Cream an instant success in Great Britain?

Baker: [Robert] Stigwood was our manager, who also had managed Graham Bond. In the beginning, we were going out for £40 a gig at the clubs, £70-80 at universities. But it took off quickly because Eric was extremely popular - and so was Graham Bond. All three of us had our own followings.

Whereas we had been getting 800 people with Graham Bond, we suddenly were getting 1,500 with Cream. We couldn’t get them all in! There were as many outside the gigs as inside [laughs]. They used to open the windows so people could hear. It just went crazy, much to Stigwood’s surprise.

He was also trying to sell the Bee Gees with full-page adverts in Melody Maker, and they were bombing. When our album [Fresh Cream] came out in the [United] States, it went straight up the charts. We had a meeting, and Stigwood said he wanted to take Cream to America for $3,000 a gig, with the idea of exposing us. So we agreed.

Clash: Were you ready?

Baker: Big mistake, really, because we did six months of solid touring, five or six nights a week. We didn’t have a holiday, we just worked. Where it all went wrong for me was when Marshall decided to produce these big speakers. Originally Eric had one and Jack had one - the drums weren’t mic’d. Then they had two, and then four. People used to come up and say the only time they heard me was during the drum solo.

It got stupid. It was so loud that my hearing was damaged. Jack’s was damaged worse. Pete Townshend has had problems, Gary Moore, too, from playing so loud. I finally started complaining about it. I asked Jack to turn down, but he didn’t like that at all. And, of course, that caused a big problem.

Clash: When did you kick your addiction to heroin?

Baker: I decided to get straight in 1964, and I finally made it in 1981! I had about 29 cold turkeys in that period. I would get off, sometimes for nine months, then something would happen. It was a crutch – it was there.

Clash: You went to work on an olive farm, correct?

Baker: I went to Italy totally broke after losing my money in a recording studio in Nigeria. I worked with a couple of builders there. In order to survive, I began farming olives. I had over 300 trees. It was very rewarding. The place had been abandoned for 20 years, and I took it over. If I hadn’t moved there, the house would not be standing today. Half had fallen down, and I repaired it. It was at the top of a mountain, and it wasn’t an easy job. Then I took care of it, so I didn’t pay rent. It was probably the best thing that happened to me. I completely left the drug world behind.

Clash: Sounds like nirvana.

Baker: It was God’s recipe. It was someplace where nobody spoke English. I didn’t know anybody. Farming olives is probably one of the hardest labor things you can do. You’ve got to prune the trees - it’s an art form, really. Only the Italians know, which is why they make the best olive oil, especially in Toscana. It’s the most beautiful place in the world. It’s also where the best wine, Chianti, is made. I used to help with that, too.

The beauty and working with the trees [were key]. I was also very lucky that the adjoining farm was the top olive guy in all of Toscana. During my last year, I actually beat him on the amount of oil from the olives - he took 21.8% and I took 22% from around 100 kilos of olives, which is very good.

Clash: Were you recording during that time?

Baker: I was out of music then. There was a period when my drums were in one of the barns I built there, untouched for a year. Then Bill Laswell found me. He flew out to Italy and, in 1986, got me to New York to do a record [Horses And Trees].

Clash: You are a jazz drummer at heart. Name some of the greats who you have met and/or played with.

Baker: I’ve played with Art Blakey, a totally unrehearsed thing in Munich in 1972. I’ve played with Elvin Jones. One of the nicest compliments I’ve ever had was from “Philly” Joe Jones when he heard me play. He said, “Man, you tell a story.” There was also playing in Nigeria and getting the whole audience on their feet!

Clash: I know many people here in America consider you the best of all time.

Baker: I wouldn’t quite say that. I think I’m one of them, for sure. I had my own thing, which Phil Seamen had, which Art Blakey had. When you hear them playing, you know who it is. Max Roach, “Philly” Joe Jones, Elvin Jones. It goes back to “Papa” Jo Jones and [Warren] Baby Dodds.

All of these guys had a huge influence on me, but I didn’t copy them. Probably the biggest influence was Phil Seamen. He was God. He heard me play one night and said afterward, “Sit down, I want to talk to you. You’re the only drummer I know who’s got it.”

Clash: You’re tearing up a bit. You seem a little emotional discussing that.

Baker: Well, I’m getting old I suppose [laughs].

Clash: It’s 1997 now, three decades since Cream has done a concert. Any plans to reunite?

Baker: There was a point where I wanted to do it, when I totally went broke. I went down to Eric and proposed it. He said he didn't want to do it just because I was broke. This really hurt at the time, but it was also absolutely true. That is not a reason to do something, you know.

[Editor’s Note: Cream did reunite, in 2005, to critical acclaim with shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall and New York’s Madison Square Garden. Ginger didn’t miss a beat. He would have been 84 yesterday.]

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