Beware of Mr. Baker

Ginger Baker is known for playing in Cream and Blind Faith, but the world's greatest drummer didn’t hit his stride until 1972, when he arrived in Nigeria and discovered Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. After leaving Nigeria, Ginger returned to his pattern of drug-induced self-destruction, and countless groundbreaking musical works, eventually settling in South Africa, where the 73-year-old lives with his young bride and 39 polo ponies. This documentary includes interviews with Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Carlos Santana and more. Beware of Mr. Baker! With every smash of the drum is a man smashing his way through life.

This is a 2012 documentary of Ginger Baker by Jay Bulger, a journalist who wrote a Rolling Stone article of the legendary English rock drummer and later was able to interview him at length on his South African estate. Centered around Baker's recollections, the documentary proceeds through his life chronologically. We start his discovery of jazz records as a child, his early career as a musician and then the acclaimed groups of the 1960s that cemented his reputation (Cream, Blind Faith and Ginger Baker's Air Force). Much time is spent on his time in Nigeria in the early 1970s, when he played with Fela Kuti and ran a state-of-the-art recording studio in Lagos. The documentary pretty much declares the mid-1970s on as the downhill period of Ginger Baker's life. From then on, tax problems, failed marriages and being deported overshadow what little musical productivity he had left. Even before then, he is painted as a fantastic drummer but a very flawed human being. Some of the rock musicians here (Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Neil Peart, Stewart Copeland, Steve Winwood and many others) praise his technical skills, but there's just as much complaint that he is impossible to work with. Interviews with his ex-wives, sister and son depict a man who was always prepared to unroot himself and abandon his loved ones. The greatest example of Ginger Baker's unlikeability is the opening scene of the documentary: when Jay Bulger tells him that he now intends to go off and interview others for their side of the story, Baker strikes him in the face with his cane. This is generally a well-rounded documentary that covers all the bases. In spite of the filmmaker's wish to exaggerate the poignant nature of Baker's career arc, the drummer himself admirably refuses to go along. However, I had a few minor complaints while watching the documentary. One is that Jay Bulger is a young American man of the "bro" type, which sorely jives with the Britain-Nigeria axis that is the foundation of Baker's career. Happily, he stays out of the way for the most part. Some of the animations that were made just for the documentary are silly, and there is such an abundance of archival footage that there was arguably no need for something extra.