Meeting Ginger Baker: an experience to forget
How an onstage Q&A with the great drummer turned into a professional horror show
Video Link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/vide...er-baker-video
The video above doesn't really capture the full horror of my thankfully brief time with Ginger Baker. It was an onstage Q&A at the Curzon Soho cinema in London, after a screening of the excellent documentary Beware of Mr Baker, and the best that can be said is that – having already seen the film – I knew what to expect.
The title alone tells you pretty much all you need to know – but in the course of the film scores of collaborators and family members outline that while he may be one of the greatest musicians these shores have ever produced, Baker isn't all that much of a pleasure to be around. Mind you, you don't need other people to tell you that; the evidence is there in the interviews with him, in which scorn is poured on more or less everyone. I recall him being nice about his stepdaughter by his fourth marriage, about his American jazz drumming heroes, about Eric Clapton – who's rather more guarded in return – and pretty much no one else. It is uncomfortable viewing.
We were introduced, briefly, before the Q&A. Baker was reclining, eyes closed, in an armchair in the cinema's bar. A man from the film's distributor attempted to introduce me – so we could get the measure of each other – and received the barest twitch of an eyelid. I sat down next to him and said I would be doing the Q&A with him. No response – he's hard of hearing these days – so I repeated myself. Eventually I got the response: "No you're fucking not. The audience is." OK.
I wasn't surprised. This, I was later told, is a man who not long ago reduced one veteran rock writer – famed as the nicest, most equable man in the business – to expressing his desire to hit Baker, after one particularly fruitless encounter. A man secure in his contempt for those he doesn't believe to be his equal – and when you're the greatest ever British drummer, you don't have many equals.
It was all downhill from the introduction. Our video omits most of the times Baker dismissed my questions, or raised his eyebrows in disgust. It omits the one-word answers, by and large. It omits his more withering reponses to questions from the audience. It leaves out the 15-second pause where I simply sat in silence, wishing the earth would swallow me whole. It leaves out Baker deciding he's had enough with the words "I want to go home now." You may able to note the one point where I have just about had enough, and my voice tightens and quickens while I ask another "silly question". It doesn't sound much on the video, but it was an effort of will to get a question out instead of telling him what I thought of his rudeness.
I'm told it made good viewing. And afterwards several audience members told me that at least I should consider it a success not to have turned into a gibbering wreck. I'm reminded of Simon Hattenstone's interview with Lou Reed for the Guardian a decade ago, where Simon – under the Lou death glare – finally cracked: "Why are you so aggressive to me? What have I done to you? Why are you being so horrible." The difference for me is that Ginger Baker was never my hero, so he couldn't disappoint me. But the single question I'd most like to have asked Ginger Baker – and which should have been asked in the film – is a variant on Simon's: Why are you such an unpleasant man? What possible benefit does it bring you? After all, you don't watch Beware of Mr Baker and think: he might be a tosser, but at least he's happy. In fact, he just seems filled with anger and bitterness.
I've had peculiar interviews before. I once sat on the floor in the dressing rooms at Spurs' training ground to talk to Sol Campbell, while John Scales stood just to my right, listening in. He was naked. His penis kept dangling in and out of my eyeline at disconcertingly close range. But I've never had any interview experience quite so unsettling as half an hour with Ginger Baker in front of a couple of hundred people. It's not something I want to repeat.
Right. Who's got Lou Reed's phone number?
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Originally Posted by chefcraig
