Oct 11, 1968: Ginger at the New Haven Arena [Photos: Steve Potter]
Baker
Rock eats its young. Ginger Baker is like a beast from another world, a world of pressed rats, warthogs and toads. The controlled madness of his rhythm is responsible for the group's incessant drive. Ginger Baker must have the world's fastest right hand, left hand, right foot and left foot. The mind-bending accuracy with which he clouts the dozen or so drums and cymbals around him seems impossible when one looks at his scarecrow body. His physique provides the reason for Cream's demise. If Baker lives another year it will be a miracle. His whole nervous system is so wracked by amphetamines that he literally has to be carried off the stage after a performance. His speech is an alternating pattern of comments followed by ghastly croaks that begin somewhere down within his sinewy frame and emerge through a crooked row of half rotten teeth. When I asked him why they called themselves "Cream," he emitted the type of lecherous laugh that would turn anyone with an unmarried daughter into a life-long advocate of the police state: "It was a joke...a dirty joke."
Baker's explanation for the miracle of Cream was "just a matter of luck. We happened to get together at the right time. I was with Graham Bond, Jack was with Manfred (Mann) and Eric was with the Yardbirds. At that time we were all up for something new. It was luck."
Both he and Clapton spoke highly of The Band ("Music from Big Pink"). Baker said "The reason they are so loose is 'cause they've been just sitting around digging themselves for so long, not performing all the time like us. You know...the music you play is like the life you live."
~ Interview by John C. Adams for 'The Harvard Crimson', Oct 18, 1968
