The one drummer Neil Peart said influenced the world: “He set the bar”
Anyone who has even entertained the idea of being a great rock and roll drummer is going to end up going through their Neil Peart phase at least once.
While Peart never envisioned himself to be one of the finest in his field by any stretch, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the rock sphere who put more time and attention into their craft whenever they sat behind the drum kit. He was almost clinically precise whenever a new Rush record came out, but that sense of precision only came from listening to other drummers who knew the importance of hitting hard.
But being in a power trio, Peart always needed to hold down the fort a little bit more than normal. In any great supergroup like the Canadian icons, every one of them would need to hold more or less equal weight, or everything would fall apart, and all of them responded in kind. Alex Lifeson created wonderful sonic worlds with his effects pedals and solo work, Geddy Lee hit the bass with the kind of ferocity most people could never imagine, and Peart did it by being one of the single most energetic performers in his field.
Then again, this wasn’t energetic in the same way that Keith Moon used to be in The Who. The band definitely had a sense of humour about themselves, but what Peart was doing was the equivalent of advanced mathematics whenever he played. There were times when he even admitted he sounded too stiff, but when listening to a record like Hemispheres, it’s hard to think of any moment where his energy falters, especially when getting to the end of ‘La Villa Strangiato’.
If it hadn’t been for the other supergroups of the late 1960s, though, there’s a good chance Peart wouldn’t even be behind the kit. He was already in love with what Buddy Rich had been doing in the jazz world, but it wasn’t until John Bonham came along that a lot of people realised the power someone could have when playing drums. This was a way to unleash the animal inside you, but Ginger Baker was the one who brought the right level of finesse to everything in Cream.
Whereas a lot of modern drummers relied on pure power whenever they got behind the kit, what Baker did was approach rock and roll from the jazz perspective. He was a far more complex musical thinker than the average drummer, and when listening to his solo on ‘Toad’, he was creating pieces of music in the same way that the greats were, only this time he had an instrument that didn’t necessarily have a melody behind it.
And while Peart did like the idea of working at that level, he figured that what Baker did extended far beyond what he first heard on Disraeli Gears, saying, “He set the bar for what rock drumming could be. I certainly emulated Ginger’s approaches to rhythm – his hard, flat, percussive sound was very innovative. Everyone who came after built on that foundation. Every rock drummer since has been influenced in some way by Ginger. Even if they don’t know it.”
While they might not have been in love with the man’s personality, it’s easy to see where Peart is coming from with that. The biggest names in modern drumming might not be going to Ginger Baker first when they practice their chops, but they are almost guaranteed to have played parts from those that were influenced by him, especially when looking at the offbeat intro to ‘White Room’ or the primal way that he bashed the hell out of his kit on ‘Sunshine of Your Love’.
So despite not being considered the drumming god by the masses in the same way that Peart is, Baker belongs in the same league as the true greats that came before him. After all, he never described himself as a true rock and roller, and it was much easier for him to take a seat next to the likes of Gene Krupa as a jazz drumming legend.
