“He was a fucking good musician”

Cream lyricist PETE BROWN on his wild rides with Ginger Baker

I first saw Ginger drumming with Dick Heckstall-smith’s band in 1961. I loved his playing, which was influenced by Elvin Jones and various African drum cultures – it was certainly a very original style for the time. When Cream started, Ginger was the one who phoned me up and asked me to work with them. I tried to write with him but it didn’t work out, the chemistry wasn’t quite there. He loved his heroin at the time, of course. He was also the world’s worst driver. I remember him picking me up from the actual White Room, just off Baker Street, and driving to Neasden in what seemed to be about 10 minutes. It was terrifying!

I worked with him recently for a ‘Cream Acoustic’ project, which is coming out in February. He was very frail but he still had the musicality. Ginger was often very salty about the fact that Jack [Bruce] and I had made a lot of money from Cream’s hit songs, but [on this occasion] he was really nice and self-deprecating. His self-image was that he was a hard man and could be nasty, but there was another side of him. He did care about things, the environment particularly.

He didn’t suffer fools gladly and he had his opinions, but he was a fucking good musician. Something like “Pressed Rat And Warthog” was wonderful: imaginative, funny, taking into account his cockney heritage. People think of him as a primitive, but in fact he was an incredibly sophisticated person with a tremendous musical talent. That’s what he needs to be remembered for.