A story from around 1980 in Vienna: Baker gave a concert there. After the concert a young woman asked Baker if he could make a short visit to the birthday party of her boyfried who was the biggest Ginger Baker Fan of all time and started drumming lessons some months ago only because of him. The boyfriend could not attend the concert because he had to work and was only living 5 minutes from the concert hall. Baker appeared at the birthday party and congratulated the guy, played a 15 minutes solo on a cheap drum set and left after 10 minutes smalltalk with the guy.
Being almost 70 and having grown up in the Los Angeles area, I’ve seen live, hundreds of bands and musicians. Including GB with Cream and everyone on his list. The Jazz-fusion shows I attended were on another level completely. Peter Baker was okay, but NOT as good as he thinks he was. Ian Paice with Deep Purple was humble, and far more impressive for playing early metal-rock in my book. GB’s narcissistic ego driven commentary revealed much about his very real insecurities.
@@YesterdaysPapersI prefer your version. KC’s is so sombre/ doom laden as though something terrible is about to happen Yours is more subtle, intriguing and draws you in - where can we hear the full track and more?
been a while since a blind date, glad they back ! The amount of tunes I’ve added from blind dates in 67’ and 68’ is ridiculous… if there’s any you haven’t covered from those years I beg you to do more 😤
Ehh, he didn’t seem to be into most rock of the time (besides what he was playing) anyway. He seemed much more into jazz, blues and around this time Afrobeat like Fela Kuti and other Nigerian musicians. Even if it’s all very impressive to all of us, Mr. Baker would’ve probably found any way to shit on it, lol.
I couldn't understand why it stalled at No.10 in the the UK charts. The previous three singles were at Numbers 1 and 2. Each of the singles were a different style and GM certainly was progressive. The vinyl had to be played loud to hear all the modes, so I guess Ginger's hearing was going down hill even at this stage. I still play it loud, and there was nothing like it in 1970.
Best "Blind Date" of many I've seen. But then again that was a guarantee when I saw that they actually let Ginger Baker loose to speak his mind. He's not lacking in self-awareness - more like trying to live up to his reputation with cute little apologies thrown in to humanize himself. To not have known this man personally, is to love him profoundly as a musician. Ginger, RIP!
I did not enjoy the docu. The film-maker was lousy doing his job and disrespectful. For instance how could he order Baker - an old man in his own home - to remove his sunglasses???!!! This was no real docu about Ginger Baker but more of a documentary of a failure to interview Baker.
@@2009framat Fair enough. In the end, the man with the power of editing wins. Look at the crap put out by that POS Michael Moore. I don't recall the disrespect of the sunglasses etc. The most vivid memory from the film was of Baker attacking the film maker with a stick at the end.
@@lib556 If the most vivid memory from a documentary about a drummer who wrote history in music is his attacking of an unknown and not very talented film-maker then it is more or less the proof of the total fail of this docu. The ego of that filmmaker was much bigger than that of Ginger Baker, Jerry Lee Lewis and James Brown combined together imo. The difference between that three musicians and this filmaker is that they had - in a way - the "right" to act the way they did. I wanted to know something about Ginger Baker and not that filmmaker.
@@2009framat As I said, fair enough. One has to wonder if the film maker set out with righteous intentions and then, when it didn't go his way... possibly due to his own inexperience/incompetence, he tried to spin it into a hit piece. Justified or not, the stick attack was memorable... if nothing else. On reflection, it reminds me a bit of the afore-mentioned scumbag Michael Moore. He ambushed Chuck Heston (suffering from Alzheimer's at the time) at his home and badgered him mercilessly. He then edited the scene in such a way to try and make out that Heston was a racist. (Heston marched with MLK in 63 when it wasn't yet fashionable). These days, anybody can grab a camera (whether or not they have any business or talent to do so).
@@lib556 I wanted to see a docu about Ginger Baker _ his life, his impact in music, his views etc. - but I was not and I am still not interested in the intensions of this filmmaker. The difference to someone like Michael Moore is that if you going to see a film from him you know that this guy is involved in the film. Even if someone does not know him he can get an idea what kind of film he will exspect from infos and descriptions. But someone who is exspecting to see a Ginger Baker docu will be disappointed. It looks more like the making of a Ginger Baker docu. or a long youtube-video and the interviewer has a youtube-channel. There is simple too much footage of this guy in a docu about Baker. There was (or still is) a docu about organist Jimmy Smith from the 1960s. That is how a good docu could be made. The camera-team & interviewers are more or less invisible.
Pete Johnson's "627 Stomp" was recorded November 11, 1940 with Johnson (piano), Oran "Hot Lips" Page (trumpet), Eddie Barefield (clarinet, alto sax), Don Stovall (alto sax), Don Byas (tenor sax), John Collins (guitar), Abe Bolar (bass) and A. G. Godley (drums). Also, what Elvin Jones really had to say about Ginger Baker RE his solo on "Toad" from Cream was, "They ought to make him an astronaut and lose his ass!" Jones had much nicer things to say about Keith Moon's playing on The Who's "Underture" to "Tommy": "Everything they play, he contains it."
Eddie Barefield had a regular gig at my neighborhood tavern in Greenpoint Brooklyn in the late 80's. A good player, but not in the best of health. Most of the time he sat while playing. Died of a heart attack in January '91.
Well he was objectively correct about one thing, the remark about Thunderclap Neman sounding like kids, Jimmy McCulloch the guitarist for the group was only 16 at this point, a true guitar prodigy that went on to play with Wings later in the 70s.
Jimmy was at his best with Maggie Bell and Stone the Crows, after joining Wings, he died aged 26 from an overdose soon after. McCartney, who recruited him said he was one of the best guitarists he'd heard, but also pointed out that he wouldn't listen to anyone about what he was doing to himself, and his demise was sadly inevitable.
😅 I think they only met on a "few occasions". Baker only played on one album, and couldn't even remember which songs. From what I can tell that album "Album" was a scam really. Turns out that it was mostly other musicians, because the band was "too young" to be in a studio, according to Lydon. Couldn't play in other words. So they hired anyone that would come in. And apparently Ginger and Tony Williams played drums on it. Steve Vai also offered services on that one
@@yinoveryang4246good thing it was only a few times. It probably wouldn’t have taken long at they’d be at each other’s throats … Verbally and probably physically
@@richardgrant418 Yup. I suspect no one in the management was dumb enough, even in those days, to allow that to happen. By that stage Mr Baker had red flags practically tattooed onto his forehead.
It certainly was a crazy era in music, when you can you have Tom Jones and Andy Williams sharing the album charts with King Crimson and Zappa! 😆 …and btw, Ginger is a hoot!!
You have to keep in mind that 1970 represents the approximate crossroads of chart relevance between the "greatest" generation and the maturing baby boomers. The old guard were having their last hurrahs at that point.
Ginger delivered precisely what I watch these videos for: a completely honest evaluation of what he thinks about what he is hearing and it's what I find to be very humorous about Blind Date. Seriously, there is no hurt feelings among real professionals so everyone please lighten up.
May 1970 was the start of the UK general election that ended in a surprise and in the USA Cambodia Kent State and Jackson State were in the news and to match the theme of dreadfulness that month was the songs Ginger Baker had to review and Baker responded with a grouchy response which I loved. I like when you post at the end of the video the charts of the week and there were some great songs on those charts but not the songs Baker had to review and his grumpy response was a source of humor and I think Ginger Baker has a great sense of humor which made this video enjoyable to watch.
Poor Ol' Eric was a nervous wreck after 2 years of Cream😵...then Ginger turns up,and says to Eric,l hear you're looking for a Drummer for Blind Faith! Oh' Christ says Eric!!🥴
I remember Ray Ennis of The Swinging Blue Jeans getting interviewed . He said he was on one of those 1960s package tours and Ginger Baker was the drummer with ( l think?) Graham Bond . Ennis said Ginger was so obnoxious that he decided to give him a smack on the nose!
Ginger actually made some good points about that time period I can respect. Especially about singers trying to be who they're not. Vis a vis - Black. The good ones found their own voice later on (Paul Rodgers, Rod Stewart etc.,) but too many carried on way too long. Mick Jagger tried to sound like he was from the ghetto on a few Stones records. Still makes me chuckle every time I hear it.
It's funny because the drums on East of Eden jig a jig are phenomenal and in places totally contemporary. Good old Ginger... his story at the beginning was hilarious. He was right about Tony Williams' lifetime, though.
Ginger Baker is probably one of the most underrated drummers in Rock and Roll history.Without him,there wouldn’t be any other drummers that were influenced by him…RIP Ginger!!!…Karlido😢🥁😢🥁😢🥁
Ginger also provided the perfect drum beat along with the guitar and bass playing along with the vocals provided by both Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce in order to make up the super group Cream…RIP Ginger Baker 😢🥁😢🥁😢🥁
I really love this video I love hearing Ginger talk about some of the acts and artists 1970 s some that I’ve heard some of it I haven’t, but he doesn’t hold back at dig it
Wow, only one "the drummer cant keep time" comment, i was expecting the majority would be inaccurate time keepers for whatever band from mean Mr. Baker, haha. Even dissed Fleetwood Mac Green Manalishi, liked it when i was a kid but i'm glad they didnt go in that direction that Greenie (who i love) seemed to want them maybe to go next and instead went with Kirwin's ideas and added Christine also Welch. Future Games and Bare Trees are brilliant albums and the Kirwin - Welch guitar play was excellent along with Chritines soulful singing and keywork on piano, organ. Well Ginger is brutally honest and you cant ask for more than that i guess maybe mercy, yeah mercy. Thanks again Yesterday's Papers for the video and all the work you or you all put into them (which is a lot). Peace out, Hammer!!!
I hadn't quite realised that there were 6 albums and 5 years between Peter Green leaving and Nicks/Buckingham joining, mainly because I prefer the Peter Green iteration of the group. I shall have to check out those albums you mention.
@@obbor4 - just my opinion but i think Pete was well leaving the band even before his meltdown and with rock getting harder in sound and fury that greenie was leaning in that direction with Manilishi, just a feeling but they were moving away from being a blues only band into something more them. They couldnt go on just playing old blues tunes without people getting burnt out on hearing it over and over. Gotta present your own art and they did.
😂 savage review. I am a fan of TYA. I had 1st row early bought tickets for me and my family for Lee and Johnny Winters at the Olympia april 2013, I was so exited to see these 2 legends (and Lee's guitar) for the first time in my life in top notch conditions ... then he died one month before the gig 😭
Love your channel. Have a suggestion. With today's AI you could literally use Ginger Baker's actual voice, or John Lennon's or whomever to read that quotes you have. It would lend such a level of authenticity that your channel would become HUGE (as it should) : )
I'm not sure you understand. There are websites with celebrity voice patterns, you write in the text, and the voice of whomever you choose says the words. The technology is so rampant that scams are being perpetrated. A criminal will call you several times (for contrived reasons) and record your voice pattern, and once they have it they will call your parents with YOUR voice stating that you are in jail and need bail money! @@obbor4
I like how to voice sounds more emotionaly expressive than before. And that little Harrison/Baker animation. I can't imagine Baker and Harrison getting along well, by the way. 😂
It’s been a while but welcome back to Blind Date! I get a kick out of Ginger Baker. Loved GBs Air Force. My one and only time that I’ve seen him in concert was in San Diego in 1972. He was touring with Buddy Miles in what was billed as The Battle of the Drummers. On that tour with them was Nazareth.
@@YesterdaysPapers What was interesting to me about that concert was that I went going in knowing about the talents Ginger Baker and Buddy Miles. The year before in 71, Miles releases the album We’ve Got To Live together, which I really enjoyed. The revelation to me was the group Nazareth. Here in the states, they weren’t really known in 72. I think it was in 1975 when they released Hair of the Dog and their cover of Love Hurts becomes a hit in early ‘76. I’m glad I got to see what the UK, some of the commonwealth, and the Europeans saw before striking gold here in the U.S.
@@boomtownrat5106 I too saw Nazareth, once along with Alice Cooper, The Kinks, and The Tubes (Anaheim Stadium, summer of 1978) and opening for Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush, in Tampa, 1979. The only time that I saw Ginger was with Jack Bruce, at The Coach House, a club in Southern California, on Ginger's 50th birthday, in August, of 1989. They played lots of Cream songs with a young shredder type of guitarist, a then 18-year-old called Blues Saraceno. Not Cream, and not Eric, but still a great show! Jack gave away a brand-new fretless bass to one lucky audience member.
Ginger , was always a man who said what he thought, ( and was not , scared to say it ) ! Its a funny thing , ginger , was in a rehearsal studio , in Acton west , london , near where he , lived and heard , one of my old bands , Clear blue sky , and said to john simms , the guitarist ,would you , like to ,do some work , a few gigs with me in europe , next week , so john said yes , of course , and when he came back , ginger kept his connection with the band and his son , Kofi , joined Clear blue sky on drums ,and his lady done the album cover , art work , for the new album . Its a strange but true thing , , ginger came from Wembley , the same as charlie watts / keith moon , it must have been something in the air ! ha . ha .and all class guys ! cheers ritchie .
The music at the end really blew me away. I love the mellotron sound. It sounded like "In The Court of The Crimson King" at first, but then morphed in the song "Black Sabbath." Fantastic! Are you ever likely to release a collection of this music?
I like how musical stars at that time used to comment on the technical aspects of production and guitar sounds etc. It was only a few years later, that all anyone cared about was sociology, fashion sense and image.
Two of those tracks were brilliant - Green Manalishi (what is a manalishi?) and Jig A Jig by East of Eden. The latter was guaranteed to get everyone up and rocking at parties. It is superb. Ginger Baker was a sad misanthrope.
@@tupkorhajar No, it's not. I looked it up after I wrote that. The word was made up by Peter Green. Maybe that was what he meant by it, but nobody had heard the word until he wrote the song.
@@Pwecko peter green was interviewed by journalist petar luković (deceased last week) in 1981. journalist asked green what manalishi meant. the answer was: manalishi=devil.
Ginger nailed the Tony Williams track. "Anti-people music"...and having no starting and finishing point. Baker may have been hostile, but sometimes things have to be said, and it's refreshing to hear opinions by someone who isn't bothered by the consequences.
Baker's acerbic observation on the "Ten Years After" track is interesting ("I like people to sing and be themselves"....) - I always thought Mick Jagger's affected Southern States' drawl (on many Stones' songs) had a false quality to it - but look at the standing of the Rolling Stones in rock music history (and of many of those particular songs) 🤠 Funny ol' business rock n' roll !!!!
I remember watching a short documentary about Cream. They interviewed each member separately, and Ginger Baker trashed Jack Bruce a lot, said they couldn't get along, but that he and Eric Clapton were good friends. The next clip the interviewer told Eric what Ginger had said, and he replied "really?" in astonishment. It was a hysterical. I give Baker credit for forming Cream, but I'm not expert enough to judge his drumming. But everybody said he was a colossal ass, and this piece supports that assessment.
Baker and Bruce hated each other and fought all the time. It's a wonder Cream was able to put out anything at all, never mind the great music they did make!
baker and bruce had a love hate relationship, and you should be able to judge somebody's drumming by listening to it. if all you know about him is that he hated a lot, why have an opnion?
@@plasticweapon I like drumming. But I couldn't tell you whether John Bonham or Keith Moon was the greatest drummer. My point wasn't that I don't have an opinion, but that I wasn't commenting about the quality of his work, merely about his character. This video shows you that he didn't care who was on these records, and just trashed most of them, only to talk about himself quite a bit. I've watched many of these "so and so reviews the records" videos, and the artists are almost always generous and considerate of other artists work. Baker is none of that, and earns whatever scorn he gets. But he wasn't drumming in this video, so nothing about that for me to criticize.
I've read that "Ginger" became Peter Baker's (the current chief White House correspondent of The New York Times shares the name) nickname not so much for his crimson-tinged locks as for his fiery temperament. Well-known for the long-standing myriad difficulties in his relationship with Jack Bruce, which long preceded Cream and contributed substantially to that band's demise after little more than two years, Baker was never reticent in expressing his opinions, sometimes even violently, going so far as to assault physically the documentarian working respectfully with him near the end of Baker's life (Baker was well past 70 at the time). I hope it is not too arch to say that that documentarian, Jay Bulger, developed a very gingerly approach to Baker, not knowing what sort of mean spirits he might be in on any given day, and that this did not spare him from Baker's wrath. Is it a surprise Baker vents so much vitriol in this interview? Is it a surprise when a bear relieves herself in the woods? There is no denying Baker's talent, though for my money there are dozens if not hundreds of drummers across multiple genres of music to whom I would prefer to listen (including Tony Williams and others he disses herein), and I demur in the assessment of many (including, I suppose, Baker himself) that he was "the greatest drummer of all time." All I can say is that I am glad I didn't read this particular bitch-fest when it was first published, spring 1970. I was a lad of 14 going on 15 trying desperately to cling to some sense of the promise and idealism of the '60s, already fading fast in the wake of Altamont, the Manson family murders, Nixon/Kissinger's burgeoning war crimes in Southeast Asia (now expanded into Cambodia), the egregious massacres at Jackson State and Kent State, and the bitter remarks of my three-years-older sister's friends that it was all over, whatever "it" was, as they took their last high school acid trips and headed off to college. The last thing I'd've needed was reading Ginger's diatribe. Anyway, still an excellent vid and an excellent sense of where music was heading, not to mention into the vinegary and bilious mind of post-Graham Bond Organization, post-Cream, post-Blind Faith Ginger Baker. Thank you again, YP!
This was enjoyable for this Yank. He gave his honest opinions and didn't beat around the bush. So what if he hardly liked anything. That month didn't seem to be anything to write home about. Thanks YP, as always. BTW, not acquainted with Steve Ellis. Could you fill me in about him? Any good, in your opinion?
@@YesterdaysPapers Ah yes, I seem to remember you referencing it in a previous video. I didn't think that version was much of an improvement over Knight's or Carlton's, but we all have our own opinions. Thank heaven.
@@YesterdaysPapers YP, agreed that is a great single. Steve has a great voice and used to do some of those Golden Hits of the 60s tours. He ended up working on the docks in London, where he sustained a bad foot injury... I know he is a massive collector of old vinyl records . In a newspaper interview he said he has to hide his latest plastic bag full of old vinyl from his missus😀
Thank you, Y.T.! The guvner, Ginger Baker, and I wish more people could "act" like he did on the drums these days! There were some good records amongst these, but, I respect Ginger's opinion, and can laugh at his generally sarky, nasty mood!
