Recently, I came across the documentary Beware Mr. Baker (2012), by filmmaker Jay Bulgar. It's about the musical career and life of Ginger Baker. Baker first made a name for himself as the drummer for Cream, the British rock group from the 1960s.
When I was a kid, the 1960s bands that I listened to were The Doors, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Rolling Stones, and Black Sabbath. So, unfortunately, Baker was never on my radar. Now that’s not to say I did not appreciate good drumming, as I grew up in the late 1990s New York City musical environment, which meant I was going to lots of Hip-Hop, jungle, and Drum n Bass shows. Certain albums, like DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing used drum samples in such an aggressive way it was like sample-based drum patterns were creating new forms of drumming. In other words, the drum was everywhere.
The music on stage and radio speakers was also complemented by the music on the street and in the parks. Drum circles appeared every week in places like Tompkins Square Park, where they were led by old Puerto Rican dudes who took percussion seriously. Sometimes I’d catch the start of the exercise. The circle would form, drumming would commence as other musicians would appear. The circle would grow. There would be a core group of percussionists and then people, who just so happened to be musicians themselves and who also carried their instruments with them, would join the jam. Frequently, these jams turned into full percussive events, full of multi-rhythms, with the sounds bouncing off trees, vibrations hitting birds and squirrel as they moved through the scene, the whole energy of the park would elevate. In Beware Mr. Baker, Baker calls the key to music and maybe life, “time,” and the following inevitable question, did somebody or something have “time?” Were they able to intuitively sense all the rhythms that exist around us right now and can they translate some of that for the rest of us? That was the most important thing he wanted to know about someone.
I first heard of Ginger Baker when Oz Fritz, artist, writer, and studio engineer, told me the story of how his friend and musical collaborator, Bill Laswell, recruited Baker for an album that Laswell was producing for John Lydon’s group Public Image Limited. After writing my article “Flowers for Bill Laswell” I hit the web and found the documentary Beware Mr. Baker and watched it. The film explores the musical career and life of a man with tremendous talent and the most horrible people skills one could imagine. It lays out Baker’s biography and career highpoints while utilizing animation sequences-created by David Bell, Tatia Rosenthal, and Joe Scarpulla- that moves the story along in artistically interesting ways. From the first few scenes of the movie the audience learns that Ginger Baker was an extremely difficult person to know. He was a violent junkie who was cruel to those who were closest to him, especially his son, Kofi. Quite simply, he was unable to maintain any long-term relationships, family included. Overall, Ginger Baker was a giant shithead. He was also, as the film reveals, one of the most talented, gifted, and influential drummers in modern music.
Baker was finding and applying rhythms to the rock n roll format that few, if any, had done before. Underneath the destructive façade and deranged psychopathic Cheshire cat grin, Baker had the discipline that some drummers only get through a highly disciplined jazz-oriented practice. Stories of Baker’s exploits as a badass musical genius fuckhead are the stock of rock n roll legend. The most memorable one about Baker reveals his brilliance and gives hope to those that have completely dedicated their lives to what Joe Strummer called, “the road to Rock n Roll,” where there “is a lotta wreckage in the ravine.”
After five years of relentless touring with three successive bands (Cream, Blind Faith, and Air Force) and beating himself up with hard drugs, Baker was burnt out. At the time, his reputation was like that of Lord Bryon, as he was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” In many ways he was seen as a liability of the highest sort. And then he disappeared. Many in “the biz” thought he had dropped out to achieve a post career drug-fueled oblivion. What these people did not know was that Baker had packed his bags, rented a Land Rover, and drove across the Sahara Desert as a film maker friend filmed it. The result was 1971 documentary, Ginger Baker in Africa, a movie which shows Baker seemingly racing through the desert and randomly arriving at a Nigerian music venue. The venue just so happens to be Afro Spot where Fela Kuti and his band the Africa 70 played regularly.
While Baker was still a young drummer, he had played a set at a jazz spot in England called the Flamingo. While he was walking off the stage he was approached by Phil Seaman, British jazz drumming legend and one of Baker’s all-time favorite musicians. Seaman stopped Baker and gave him feedback about the set. “You’re the first fucking drummer I’ve heard here,” he said. Seaman then invited Baker to his apartment where, as Baker tells it, Seaman tied off and shot up some heroin. Then he put on record of Watusi drummers on his record player. This was the first time Baker had seen someone shoot up and it just so happened to be one of his heroes, so he was compelled. Later, as Beware Mr. Baker shows, Baker became a full-blown junkie for twenty years straight. As they listened to the music Seaman asked Baker to identify the beat. Baker said, “It’s a three beat.” “No!” Seaman said, “Listen.” Baker then heard it, and he describes it like a religious experience. He heard what he called “the real beat,” which was a four. “The basic African rhythms were so fucking cool,” recounts Baker. Seaman had hipped him to “time”, and Baker never looked back.
In 1970, at the Afro Spot in Nigeria, Baker saw Fela Kuti and the Africa 70 creating some of the most impressive live music he had ever seen. Kuti’s career was still young in 1970, though he would eventually go on to receive worldwide recognition as one of the greatest musicians of the 20th Century. He would become the king of Afrobeat as well as an influence on the later Afrobeats musical genre sweeping the charts in recent years. But back there at the Afro Spot, it was still early in the game. An interview from the movie shows that Fela recognized Baker immediately and the two became fast friends and musical collaborators. According to one story, Baker had already met Fela in the early 1960s when Fela showed up at the Flamingo as a trumpeter and played along with Baker and others in the jams.
Baker hung out in Nigeria for a while, becoming a member of Africa 70 and playing with Fela a lot. He also got into playing polo and buying horses. Before leaving Nigeria, Baker built the first 16-track recording studio in the country. By creating a space for musicians to record with high grade equipment, Baker helped the burgeoning Nigerian musical scene to flourish for years to come. Baker ended up fleeing Nigeria in a chase - police were after him because he refused to pay them extortion money. The story goes that they entered the studio one day as Ginger was plugging away and they told him that if he wanted to keep the shop open then he better pay up. In true Ginger style he not so eloquently told them, “Fuck off.” They did not take kindly to this red-haired devil telling them off so they pulled their guns out. Baker, moving with the swiftness of a hare ran out the studio, hopped into the Land Rover and drove into the desert sand storms like a character from Mad Max. The Nigerian police followed, trailing close behind and then busting off shots at Baker’s vehicle. Things got really serious for a second as Baker heard the whizzing of bullets zoom past his SUV; he was being treated more like a gunrunner or drug trafficker than the musical emissary he was. Somehow, he made it past the border of the country without being shot or arrested. Baker left Nigeria and he never went back, but his studio remained. It was used by local musicians, including Fela Kuti. Later, after being acquired by a major label, it was used by Paul McCartney and Wings to record their album Band on the Run (1973). Other 16-track studios emerged around Ginger’s original one and today, the Nigerian music market is huge with an influence as a global beat provider that has been felt through the modern Afrobeats movement of the last ten years.
For a moment in time in 1970, before Baker fled Nigeria, he was effectively a member of Fela’s band. However, as Bulgar’s film reveals, their friendship soured over Baker’s decision to remain playing polo with the elites of the Nigerian society with whom Fela had serious beef. Fela thought Baker was betraying his friendship by hanging out with people who really did not want the best for him and who were also opposed to Fela’s pan-Africanist political philosophy. Fela had a point. But Baker was a stubborn guy and he liked playing polo. He liked it so much that buying horses became a lifelong obsession for him from then on. It pretty much cost him the meager fortune that he had amassed in a life of rock n roll.
Bulgar’s film also does a good job examining why Baker had many strained personal relationships. His family perhaps got the worst of it. Baker’s son, Kofi, is featured throughout much of the film and there is footage of the two of them together in the story. At the time of the filming of the documentary they seemed to be on good terms. There is a great scene where Baker and Kofi, who is also a drummer, were playing at a festival or camp together, and they play in absolute unison for seven minutes straight. It’s a phenomenal moment to have been captured on film, as it shows a father and son playing music together. One can feel the joy even just watching it online. Bulgar including this footage, I’m unsure who originally shot it, made the movie that much better. Sadly, the film shows that before the documentary closes Baker said some nasty things to Kofi, essentially telling him to fuck off, and his son left the picture. Baker eventually tells Bulgar to fuck off, too, before hitting him in the face with the handle side of his cane. Yet, before the movie closes it focuses again on the great contribution to the world of drumming that Baker achieved.
After watching Bulgar’s movie, I searched for a possible Baker/Fela collaboration and was blown away to find a whole damn live album called Fela Kuti with the Africa 70 LIVE! with Ginger Baker. I have been a general Fela fan for over ten years, and at one point in 2013, Fela’s music was all I listened to. One of the great musical elements about his sound is the percussion and the organ which overlays on top of everything through slight distortion and groove. Live! is the perfect soundtrack to Beware Mr. Baker. One hears the precision in Baker’s multi-rhythms that he was able to lay down in the super-charged live setting that Fela created. There is one track called “Ye Ye De Smell,” which features Baker’s drumming at the top of his game. It’s so loose and complex at the same time, as Baker created multiple percussive rhythms at the same time, layered in perfect audible proportion, arriving at a zone where his insane musical genius shines. What a drummer!
Beware Mr. Baker is available for viewing on YouTube and I highly recommend it.
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* Don't miss Lawrence Peryer's conversation with Nettie Baker, daughter of Ginger Baker and writer of "Tales Of A Rock Star’s Daughter" on this fascinating back episode of Spotlight On.
