Drummer known for his frenzied solos formed and split from rock group Cream

Ginger Baker, who has died aged 80, was often credited with being the finest drummer in rock’n’roll, notably during his time with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce in Cream; it was entirely in keeping with his perverse nature – which embraced tastes as varied as polo, heroin and olive farming – that he should insist he was actually a jazz musician.

With his shaggy red hair and beard, wildeyed stare and emaciated appearance, Baker seemed the epitome of the crazed rock drummer. In their two-year existence Cream achieved spectacular success, establishing themselves as the first rock ‘‘supergroup’’ and gathering an army of fans in

Europe and the

United States.

When the group was formed in 1966, neither Clapton, Bruce nor Baker was especially well-known, although they had played in some respected bands. Bruce and Baker, in particular, had been together in the Graham Bond Organisation, from which bass guitarist Bruce had been sacked by Baker.

Thus it was much to Baker’s chagrin that, when he asked Clapton to form a group with him, the guitarist agreed to do so only if Bruce also joined them. Moreover, all of them were to have equal status within the band.

Unpleasant as these conditions were to Baker, they were the foundations of Cream’s success. The result was a magnificent blend of power blues and pop. I Feel Free, Sunshine of Your Love and White Room made stars of all three, especially in America, where the albums Disraeli Gears (1967) and Wheels of Fire (1968) sold multiple millions of copies.

Yet the almost instant success of Cream appeared not to satisfy Baker, who had cut his teeth in tight jazz bands in south London. In particular, he felt that the group’s emphasis on power degraded their playing. ‘‘Cream took off like a flamin’ rocket,’’ he later reflected. ‘‘If we’d played ruddy Donald Duck it would have been just as popular.’’

Baker had firm opinions on other artists – ‘‘The Beatles? I was never a fan’’ – and regarded himself as one of the few genuine musicians in rock (‘‘Elvis Presley? One of the biggest berks that ever lived’’).

Soon his ego clashed with Bruce’s. Both wanted to go in new directions and, in 1968, after only two years together, the band split. Baker and Clapton then joined Steve Winwood in another short-lived supergroup, Blind Faith, which enjoyed huge ticket sales before imploding within a year. Baker was not yet 30, but he was to spend the remainder of his career without another hit and would finally renounce rock music.

Peter Edward Baker was born and brought up in Lewisham, south London. His father was killed in World War II; his sole legacy to the son he barely knew was a letter he left for him to open when he was 14; in it he advised Ginger to make his way in the world by liberal use of his fists.

Young Ginger was in fact a bright if rather unruly boy. His initial ambition was to become a professional cyclist, but after a taxi wrote off his racer he diverted his considerable energies into drumming, the basics of which he mastered with a knife and a fork and the school dining table.

‘‘There aren’t many drummers who can get anywhere near me,’’ he once said. ‘‘Of course I have a gift. I am ambidextrous and have remarkable coordination.’’ He liked to illustrate this with his favourite party trick, which involved falling down a flight of stairs on a chair backwards.

While playing in jazz clubs he was introduced to heroin, which would blight his life for the next 25 years. His drug use contributed to his reputation for wild antics and thinned out an already spare form; at 35, he did not appear a day under 50.

He was fearless, intimidating and, in his days of addiction, by his own admission ‘‘not terribly pleasant’’. But there was no doubting the force and conviction of his style, nor his ability to ‘‘feel’’ the music he played.

After the demise of Blind Faith, he decamped to Nigeria. He built a studio near Lagos where Wings recorded the Band on the Run album and he played regularly with the Nigerian superstar Fela Kuti.

A reciprocal tour of Britain arranged by Baker for several other Nigerian musicians did not go so well. ‘‘They all got sent home the moment they arrived at Heathrow,’’ he remembered. ‘‘Very stoned, they were.’’

He lost a fortune in the studio venture, and disagreements with the authorities over tax matters persuaded him to move in 1976 to Tuscany, where he set himself up as an olive farmer. But a hard winter destroyed many of his trees, his second marriage collapsed, and by the mid-1980s Baker found himself working as a day labourer on building sites.

He then moved to the US, and worked with John Lydon’s band Public Image Limited. Drug convictions dating back to the 1970s meant he could not settle permanently in America, and in 1999 he moved to a ranch in the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa.

He was married four times, and had two daughters and a son. –

He had firm opinions on other artists: ‘‘The Beatles? I was never a fan’’; ‘‘Elvis Presley? One of the biggest berks that ever lived.’’