Motus Mentis

I note with sadness, if not surprise, the death of drummer Ginger Baker. As celebrity deaths go, this is for me a pretty big one: Ginger Baker was my first drum hero, and a big part of why, about fifty years ago, I took up the instrument myself.

Mr. Baker was not, by any account, a likable person. (Apparently Jack Bruce, his bandmate in Cream, once told an interviewer years after Cream broke up that although Bruce was then living in Britain, and Baker in South Africa, he’d written to Baker asking him to move farther away.) He was, however, one of rock music’s all-time greats.

Baker was probably rock’s first “superdrummer”. (Ringo Starr was surely more famous, but he was famous as a Beatle, not for his drumming.) There were two others — Keith Moon and John Bonham — but in my opinion Ginger Baker towered over them both. This opinion was shared by Baker himself, who once said that what distinguished good drummers was the ability to swing, and that John Bonham “couldn’t swing a bag of shit.”

Nobody played like Ginger Baker. Nobody thought about the role of the drum-kit in rock music the way he did. Nobody else brought such rhythmic innovation and complexity to the Top 40, and to the ears (and opening minds) of millions of young listeners. Nobody else would have thought, for example, to invert the standard backbeat the way Ginger Baker did in “Sunshine of Your Love”, and make it seem so obviously correct that most people don’t even realize he did so. (Did you? Go and have a listen.)

Nobody sounded like Ginger Baker — the beautiful thunder of that booming Ludwig kit made every record he played on sound huge, and he understood, in contrast to the hyperactive Keith Moon, the importance of empty space and of stately, simple fills.

Thank you, sir, for all that great music, and for a lifetime of inspiration. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. (Which might not be how things work out, but…)