Stream On: ‘Do What You Like’—‘Beware of Mr. Baker’
Ex-boxer Jay Bulger braved personal danger to film the 2012 documentary about Cream’s pugnacious drummer, Ginger Baker.
In 1967 I was at the Café au Go Go in New York City to see the power trio Cream. Our table was right in front of the small riser on which the band stood. Eric Clapton was close enough that my friend Bill handed him his dropped pick; bassist Jack Bruce was standing to our left; and a few feet back was Ginger Baker at his drum kit. The musicians had stepped onto the riser in the dark, and we heard Ginger say, “Hold yer ears!” before they hit the crashing open “D” chord that begins “Tales of Brave Ulysses.”
/Amazon /Not Streaming /YouTube /🍅98%🍿87% /Trailer /2012 /NR
“Don't take the wrong direction passing through
“Instead of deep reflection of what's true,
“For it's a combination of judgments made by you
“That causes a deep dejection all the way through.” (“Blue Condition,” by Ginger Baker)
Beware of Mr. Baker opens with skewed footage of a 73-year-old Ginger Baker leaning into a car and berating director Jay Bulger before breaking his nose with his cane. “I’m going to ****ing put you in hospital!” This was the end of the time during which Bulger lived with Baker in South Africa, interviewing him (and his friends and relatives in the U.S. and Britain, including Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton) and filming the documentary.
Jay Bulger is an ex-boxer, fashion model, video director and writer who, in 2009, contributed “The Devil and Ginger Baker” to Rolling Stone magazine, about the legendary drummer who rose to international stardom with Cream, the original supergroup, In it he wrote, “Throughout his five-decade career, Baker has been one of rock’s most influential and innovative drummers, combining the raw power of Keith Moon with the subtler rhythms of jazz and African percussion. He has played with everyone from Eric Clapton and Johnny Rotten to Max Roach and Fela Kuti, but he’s just as famous for being one of music’s original junkie madmen, alienating family, friends and band members at every stop. Since 1999, Baker has been living in a self-imposed exile in South Africa, having been forced out of homes in England, Nigeria, Italy and America.”
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols, in whose later band Public Image Ltd. Ginger also played) introduces the film: “This film is about Ginger Baker—a man who stands for something in life that probably most of you do not. Love and appreciate, no matter how awkward this character may appear to you. God bless him! May the road rise … he helped me rise my road … Love you, Ginger!” Others, like Stewart Copland of The Police, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, Ginger’s first wife Liz Finch and others, weigh in with the consensus. “If the plane goes down and one person walks away, that would be Ginger.” “He should have been dead years ago.” “He was the greatest drummer that any of us had ever known.” “He was the hammer of the gods.” “The world’s greatest drummer.” “He influenced me, as a drummer—but not as a person.” Ginger was still alive when the documentary aired, but who knew for how long?
Bulger’s voice-over recounts, “I was twenty-six years old, and my friend popped in a DVD of this red-headed madman driving across the Sahara desert (“Ginger Baker in Africa,” 1971). My initial reaction was, ‘This guy has to be dead!’ But I searched for his name on the internet and lo and behold, I found this article: ‘Ginger Baker vows to strip in South African court to prove that a woman who claims to be his lover has never seen his ….’ Not only was he still alive, he was still a madman! I had to meet this guy!”
Thus began a remarkable documentary that Bulger made while he lived with Ginger in South Africa for three months, about a career that while not as storied publicly as, say, rock madman and casualty, drummer Keith Moon, was all the more remarkable for not having ended prematurely on a mortuary slab. (Ginger died in 2019 at the age of eighty.)
For the better part of a brilliant four-decade-long career behind the drums, Baker was addicted to heroin … and getting out of town. “You’re fearless if you use smack. You don’t have any feelings. You’re not scared of anybody or of anything. Whatever you wanted to play, you played. It was just wonderful,” Ginger recounted, from his recliner. Much of his quality time was spent in Africa, drumming with the likes of bandleader, activist and “king of Afro-beat” Fela Kuti, until Ginger got into polo, his other great love, spending millions on horses, and raising the ire of Kuti: Polo was the sport of Africa’s oppressors. And typically, Ginger couldn’t care less.
“Open your eyes
“Realize you're not dead
“Take a look at an open book
“Do what you like, that's what I said” (“Do What You Like,” by Ginger Baker)
Sources include The Huffington Post; The Washington Post; and Rolling Stone.
Pete Hummers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to earn fees by linking Amazon.com and affiliate sites. This adds nothing to Amazon's prices. This column originally appeared on The Outer Banks Voice.