The night Ginger Baker challenged a jazz legend to a drum battle
Stories about Ginger Baker tend to revolve less around his work in jazz and rock music and more around the fact that he’s an utter maniac with a violent streak a mile wide, which is fair enough; the man came at Jack Bruce with a knife while onstage at a Graham Bond Organisation gig. He wrote entire blog posts lovingly recalling his parents’ violently volatile relationship, and he assaulted the director of his documentary on camera, lending it the hauntingly prescient title: Beware of Mr Baker.
With that in mind, it won’t surprise you a jot to know that he also had an ego the size of a continent. In fact, anyone who dared to sit down with him for an interview would hear all about how no rock drummer could hold a candle to him.
An interview with Classic Rock in 2011 saw him in full ‘old man yells at cloud’ mode, hollering, “If you’re going to judge from minus two to ten, then I’m a golden ten. Mitch Mitchell was a journeyman. He was hopeless. John Bonham, Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts… they’re a three or four.” This was mainly because Ginger Baker saw himself as a jazz drummer.
He hated being considered a rock drummer because he saw the music being beneath him. The same interview as before had the old man whining, “Why does rock music have to be so loud?” as if he already wasn’t enough of a caricature. Clearly, this was a misconception that haunted him even in his heyday because he went to great lengths to try to prove his chops as a jazzer.
How did Ginger Baker try to prove he was a jazz legend?
Arguably, his greatest was in 1971 when he engaged in a protracted war of words with jazz legend Elvin Jones. For all of Baker’s hot air, Jones was as legit as they get. While Baker was playing pop music with the Smothers Brothers, Jones was John Coltrane’s drummer of choice for nearly the entire 1960s. There are levels to this game, it seems.
One writer in particular, Albert Goldman, got tired of the titanium hard-on Baker had for himself as the saviour of jazz drums. So, when he interviewed Jones for Life Magazine, he played the first single of Baker’s post-Cream group Blind Faith to him. Jones was not impressed, cutting the red-headed bully down to size, saying, “Nothing’s happenin’, cat’s got delusions of grandeur with no grounds. They should make him an astronaut and lose his ass.”
Now, personally, if someone of Jones’ calibre said that about me, I would retire immediately to Nepal and live the rest of my days as a goat. Ginger Baker felt differently, challenging Jones to a drum battle at the Lyceum Theatre on February 1st, 1971. Now, if this is all starting to feel a bit WWE to you, you’re right to feel that way.
Right off, it was clear that this was a show and not an actual battle between men who hate each other. Baker graciously introduced Jones onstage as “a man I’ve admired since I was a boy”. Which might just be the nicest thing Baker has said about anyone that isn’t his “best friend” Eric Clapton.
After that, the two launched into a 20-minute version of the Nigerian folk song ‘Aiko Biaye’. The show ended with a big hug between the two drum greats and, as if to prove the whole thing was a waste of time, the press who watched the show were divided as to who “won”.
The jazz critics who watched the show gave it to Jones, while the rock press said Baker took it on points. However, considering the rock hacks seem very keen to stress that Baker “held his own” and the jazz writers felt that Jones handed Ginger Baker his own arse on a platter, I think we can make up our own minds from here.
