The bandmate Ginger Baker considered his “best friend”
It was notoriously difficult for anyone to get along with Ginger Baker. The legendary drummer was a genius when it came to music, but as a human being, he was as difficult as they came. With a fiery temper and a combative streak to boot, Baker was constantly threatening, beating up, or otherwise demonizing even his closest friends and allies. You never knew if you were going to get the calm and methodical jazz mind, the eccentric red-haired curiosity, or the violent bringer of pain.
That reputation formed the basis for Jay Bulger’s 2012 documentary Beware of Mr. Baker. The film took its name from a sign outside of Baker’s compound in South Africa, but the elderly Baker still had a threading aura around him. During the final day of filming, Baker even whacked Bulger with his cane, nearly breaking the director’s nose in the process. Footage showed Baker unrepentant, staying true to himself to the very end.
Baker’s most frequent and famous combatant was Jack Bruce. The two were bandmates in the Graham Bond Organisation and later briefly called a peace treaty in order to form Cream. However, the blow-ups, physical fights, and ego battles between the two never ceased. Even during their reunion in 2005, Bruce and Baker had their differences. “It’s a knife-edge thing between me and Ginger,” Bruce told Bulger in the 2009 Rolling Stone article that preceded Beware of Mr. Baker, ‘The Devil and Ginger Baker’. “Nowadays, we’re happily co-existing in different continents… although I was thinking of asking him to move. He’s still a bit too close.”
So who did Ginger genuinely consider a close friend? The list was short, but he did have his people. Largely, they were former bandmates that Baker hadn’t had any specific falling-outs with. Specifically, Baker listed both Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton as close mates, even as the pair decided to break up Blind Faith without Baker’s knowledge or input in 1969.
Still, Baker couldn’t stay mad at Clapton. “You could see it coming,” Baker said about Blind Faith’s breakup. “Something about me getting so fucked up at the end of the tour. He’s the best friend I’ve got on this planet and always will be.”
However, Clapton didn’t necessarily share the sentiment. In Beware of Mr. Baker, Clapton got candid about not wanting to ever got too close to Baker. “We’re talking about compulsion, and what’s the payoff in being compulsive?” Clapton explained. “For Ginger, I’m not going to be his doctor in this or a psychologist or make a diagnosis. I can’t make a diagnosis of Ginger.”
“When I was driving in today, I thought, ‘Well, do I know Ginger well? Do I?'” Clapton wondered. “I’ve been with him in fairly rarified situations which have allowed me to see certain sides of him. I probably haven’t seen him like you [Bulger] have seen him, because I didn’t take the effort, the time, [or] the risk to step into his life and become a part of it for any length of time. I always pulled back when it started to get scary or threatening or just difficult.”
Check out a reunited Cream playing ‘White Room’ down below.
