London Evening News GAD, SIR... it's enough to make you choke on your pink gin! Dukes, earls and princes are being pushed to one side as rock stars have taken up polo... the traditional sport of kings. Drummer Ginger Baker who used to play with Cream, Kenny Jones of The Faces and Brian Morrison, the former manager of the Pink Floyd, T. Rex and Free, are all dedicated members of the exclusive Ham Polo Club in Surrey. "It’s the fastest, most exciting sport in the world,” Ginger—who owns four polo ponies—tells me.
By Judith Simons
GINGER Baker is acknowledged to be the best drummer in the world a description with which he agrees. "There aren’t many drummers who can get anywhere near me." he says with a smile.This Viking-like, 35- year-old South Londoner, tall and lithe, with a spiky ginger beard, is proud of his skill and dazzling evidence of the riches it has brought him is abundantly displayed at his home at Harrow, Middlesex.
There, in the square entrance hail are gold and platinum discs, certifying sales of £20 million worth of records for his groups Cream and Blind Faith.
Ginger’s own share was around £2 million earned, at one stage, at the rate of £23,000 a night for appearances in America.
With such wealth in his fast fingers he has freedom to choose his own life style. He has made only one concert tour in four years — with an African band called Salt — and has spent most of his time in Nigeria, where he has invested £150,000 building and equipping a recording studio.
Now Ginger (real name Peter) is back on the raod again, enthusiasm for playing refreshed, with new partners — guitarist brothers Adrian and Paul Gurvitz. The first record album, by this band, the Baker Gurvitz Army, has already been released, and after touring Europe, they have kicked off on a 10-concert British tour.
Considering Ginger’s status in that most pressured area of music — the complicated rock-jazz scene — his outlook is remarkably solid.
He, his wife Liz and their three children — Ginette Karen, 14, Leda Kirsten, six, and Kofi Streatfield five — live in a detached house bought seven years ago for £10,000 and now worth £40,000.
Its rooms are packed with the souvenirs of Ginger’s extensive travels — valuables like Persian carpets and carved African furniture — plus a set of unusual African drums which Ginger plays only to amuse his children. He also owns five motor vehicles ranging from two Jensens to a five-ton truck.
As he has never abandoned his youthful ambition to be an artist, his home is also enhanced by his own abstract sculpture.
Speed and rhythm, mechanical or that of his own hands,has been a gift that has been with Ginger since childhood.
His whole career emerged accidentally from the wreckage of his first love — a bicycle.
He told me: "When I was at Shooters Hill Grammar School I made up my mind to be a racing cyclist. I worked on a paper round, baker’s round and milk round to save up for my bike, and then my whole ambition collapsed when I collided with a taxi and my bike was completely wrecked.
With time on my hands I started visiting some friends who had a little band. I sat in on the drums one day, and heard one of them comment ‘What a good drummer'. That settled my next ambition.
When I told my Mum I was going back to my delivery rounds to save up for a drum kit she put her foot down and said ‘No’ because I’d just spent so much on my wrecked bicycle, and she didn’t want to see me slogging again for something that would come to nothing.
"Strangely, she made more fuss then than when I announced a couple of years later that I’d given up my job in an art studio, had got a flat in town and was leaving home to make my way as a drummer.
"The only time after that when we clashed at all was during my one spell out of work, when I was 18. I stayed at home practising the drums night and days. I nearly drove them insane."
By this stage of his life Ginger had met Liz. She took up their story.
"I was out with a boy friend and he said: ‘Just go up to the band and watch Ginger Baker playing.'
"It seems that Ginger also watched me. Because I saw him on the Tube next day and he spoke to me. Our romance flourished on the Bakerloo Line. He went off to play in Copenhagen and came back with an engagement ring. We married when we were both 19".
By that time Ginger’s career was beginning to sweep him upwards.
"I made my first record in 1957 with Acker Bilk. I played with Terry Lightfoot, Alexis Korner, Harold McNair, Diz Disley, the Graham Bond Organisation. I made my first real money through selling a composition to The Who for £1500. That bought me my first car.
"I also worked for a time with an Irish dance band in Kilburn — a vital step, because I learned to read music and play every percussion instrument.
"That turned me from a natural talent into a real musician. Many jazz and pop players have natural talent, but to be a first class musician you need to study theory too.
"For me it is easy. Of course I have a gift, I am ambidextrous and have remarkable co-ordination... so much so that my favourite party trick is falling down a flight of stairs, on a chair, backwards without hurting myself or doing any damage."
It was In 1966 that Ginger’s abilities began to reach their peak earning power; he teamed with guitarists Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce to form Cream. It was the first so-called "Super Group".
We became so popular we could go on stage and play badly, but still go down well with the audience. That was disheartening and frustrating.
"Though the three of us are close friends — like brothers and always will be — we started clashing. In 1970 we split. Eric and I formed Blind Faith with Steve Winwood and Rick Grech. But though still wildly successful it lasted only a few months.
After that I formed Air Force — 10 musicians and not a money-making pro. position, because we were badly organised.
“After that I changed my life altogether. Being a drummer I had always wanted to go to Africa. I had also wanted for years to build a recording studio.
"What helped me decide to build it in Nigeria was the reception I got when I arrived in Lagos for a holiday. The army was at the airport to welcome me, and it seemed everyone in the streets knew who I was.
"The business side of things was viable. We started properly, by buying the land. By January 1973 we were in full swing. Already one world hit has been recorded there — ‘Band on the Run’ by McCartney’s Wings."
It says much for Ginger's strength of character that he has survived the chief danger of his trade — drugs — without wrecking his family life or career.
He said: "I have been through all that, and for me it is now finished. When I was an up-coming musician everyone I dug was involved in, and like other youngsters around I thought it was the done thing— so I did it too.
"The biggest, most sobering disappointment of my life was actually getting a job with John Dankworth — and then being turned away by him when he found out I was a junkie.
"I have seen friends of mine die through drug-taking. And today I have no sympathy for anyone involved in that scene. Drug-taking musicians who achieved greatness have done so despite the habit, not because of it.
"If you need kicks and life-line there are other ways to get them. I get stability from my family. You can’t be on drug trips with young children watching you. As I wrote in one of my new songs, the look in the children’s eyes made me realise I was going wrong."
Though he claims he is a "male chauvinist pig" he is obviously happy to be married to a strong partner.
Ginger is pleased about his wife’s spirit. "She gets wild when she’s pregnant. Once, at a concert she laid a bouncer out cold."