Kofi Baker pays tribute to Music of Cream.
KOFI BAKER PAYS TRIBUTE TO CREAM, DESPITE HIS TROUBLED RELATIONSHIP WITH FATHER GINGER
It should come as no great shock that Kofi Baker doesn’t harbor fond memories of those boyhood drum lessons he got from his dad, the notorious Ginger Baker.
“I remember he made me do a para-diddle and then left, said ‘keep doing it,’ and he didn’t come back for two hours. My hands were hurting. I think I was crying when he came back. But back in those days,” he said, “you did what your parents told you to do, you didn’t rebel.”
Ginger Baker, the irascible drummer for Cream, left the family not long after that and Kofi’s relationship with his dad was more off than on over the years, but for the past decade he’s been intimately involved with his father’s legacy, touring now as The Music of Cream in a family affair with bassist/ singer Malcolm Bruce (son of the late Jack Bruce) and guitarist/singer Will Johns (nephew-in-law of Eric Clapton).
The 50-year-old drummer grew up well aware of Cream, the short-lived ‘60s British power trio known for such classic-rock staples as “Sunshine of Your Life,” “White Room” and “I Feel Free,” but his interest intensified after he saw the reunion show at the Madison Square Garden in 2005.
“I played original music my whole life,” he said, “but when I saw Cream play the reunion, I thought, ‘I really like this s--t. This
is really cool.’ Cause I had been playing jazz and fusion, original stuff, and people would always say, ‘Play “Sunshine”’ or ‘Play “White Room”’ and I would be like, ‘No, I’m playing my own music. I don’t play my dad’s stuff.’ But when I started playing it, I thought, ‘This is a hell of a lot of fun, because I don’t have to think.’ … I thought, ‘This is really easy to play and I still have the freedom.’”
Malcolm Bruce, whose father died in 2014, was resistant to the idea at first, but signed on with a little nudging.
“Malcolm is more into it as a stepping stone,” Mr. Baker said. “I’m just doing it because I love doing it.”
Kofi Baker had a rough childhood, as he described to Rolling Stone, living practically homeless and hand-to-mouth when he was a teenager. Despite the lack of support from his dad, in all aspects, he was drawn to the drums, nonetheless.
“When I was a teenager,” he said, “my mom wouldn’t let me go see him, and he would say, ‘I’m teaching drummers better than you’ll ever be anyway’ and ‘you s--k and you’ll never amount to anything.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I like playing drums and I’m just going to make my dad proud of me and I’m just going to practice and practice and practice and get really good.’
“Unfortunately, it did the opposite thing anyway. When I got really good, he was like ‘You’re too much technique’ and ‘you’re playing too much stuff.’ He was never really happy with me, but it doesn’t matter, if you’re doing it for yourself. If you do it because you love it and it’s your own thing, it doesn’t really matter what other people think.”
Mr. Baker joined Steve Marriott’s band when he was 18, wanting to do his Gingerstyle thing on drums. “[Steve] would always says, ‘Keep it simple, Baker!’”
His resume also includes touring with Jack Bruce in the ‘90s, recording with Jonas Hellborg and Shawn Lane, and, recently, playing drums for the supergroup on The Extreme Guitar Tour.
After seeing the Cream tribute, he formed Kofi Baker’s Cream Experience with guitarist Godfrey Townsend and bassist Greg Smith, which has evolved into the current project. Despite it being called the Music of Cream, he insists it’s not a tribute band.
“We do it our way, completely,” he said. “Cream evolved as they were doing it and the whole point was to venture into the music and create new stuff every night. So why would we sit there and copy it? That’s why I really don’t understand tribute bands. OK, you’re playing a tribute to it, but, really, you’re playing it note for note? Exactly the same. It doesn’t make any sense to me. We play the songs the way the songs were done, but when it comes to the jams, we do it our own way. Cream was the first jam band, and you can’t have a jam band copying what the band played every night as a jam band.”
He asserts that aren’t any other bands on the circuit doing what they’re doing, because, “we don’t just go out — we go OUT. And we’re not talking like Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead was a great band, but they weren’t really good musicians, they were average musicians, so they could only go out so far. Cream were the top of their level, and again with us, we can go out as far as we want.”
So, is his father aware of this Cream non-tribute band?
“He’s aware of it,” Mr. Baker said. “Whether he’s really aware of anything right now is debatable. He’s been on morphine for years.
“He’s never really been supportive of me,” he adds, “but I think what it was, was ego. My dad wants to be the best, to be known as the best drummer in the world, full stop. And he can’t have anybody upstage him or be better than him, which is a shame because if I had a kid and he took up drums and became better than me, I’d be like ‘That’s great!’ “