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Cinema Speculation, by Quentin Tarantino

Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino

Back in 1993, I rented the movie Reservoir Dogs from my local Blockbuster based on nothing more than the fact that it had a really good cast and I was going through something of a Harvey Keitel phase at the time. In my head now I can see Quentin Tarantino, the director of Reservoir Dogs, nodding his head briskly and winding himself up to tell me about all the movies he discovered the exact same way, by taking a chance on an unknown film with a favorite actor. I’d never heard of the director.

I also was struck by the title. What were “reservoir dogs”? It was an evocative title, but I couldn’t fathom what it was evoking. Now, having read Tarantino’s ode to genre movies, I understand. It means absolutely nothing. It was just a title that he thought sounded cool.

And that’s the thing with Tarantino. The movies he’s made all have one thing in common: the director thought they were cool. Cool plots, cool stars, cool camera tricks. Cool like Fonzie. Cool like Steve McQueen in Bullitt, the first film that Tarantino discusses in Cinema Speculation. This book is not any kind of history of cinema in the 1970s…that would be handled definitively by Peter Biskind in his massive tome Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. This book is the equivalent of one of Tarantino’s movies. The movies written about in its pages are ones that Tarantino would describe as “cool”.

Anyone who’s seen an interview with Tarantino knows what he’s like. He’s a hyped-up motormouth who can go on for hours, or maybe days, when it comes to discussing movies. With the possible exception of Martin Scorcese, he likely knows more about movies than anybody alive. But unlike so many of his fellow cinephiles, Tarantino doesn’t put on any airs. He likes what he likes, and doesn’t like the rest. He’s more in his element watching a movie like Humanoids From the Deep than he would be watching The 400 Blows or La Dolce Vita. He’s refreshingly unpretentious for a Hollywood doyen.

And that’s how the book reads. It reads at times more like a transcript of a monologue than something he’s carefully considered and written down. He fills the book with personal anecdotes about the movies he’s discussing, and goes off on tangents about other movies that are directly or indirectly related to the main topic of the chapter. It’s as if somebody turned on a tape recorder and asked, “So what are your impressions of Deliverance?” and then just let Tarantino joyfully and effortlessly spiel.

Tarantino has kept notes about every movie he’s ever seen, going back to when he was a child and his mother took him to some very adult films (e.g., M*A*S*H). He can thus recall not only when he saw the movies, but where, and with whom. In the book he writes about the “Movie Brats” like Scorcese, Spielberg, and DePalma…directors who grew up obsessed with the movies, and how they differed from their forerunners who looked at the movies as a job to be done on time and on budget. The earlier directors tried everything they could think of to get rid of solar lens flare in their outdoor scenes, and now J.J. Abrams, one of the more recent movie brats and something of a hack at it, is known for inserting lens flare into his movies. Why? Because he grew up watching the older movies and accepted it as an effect he thought was marvelous.

Tarantino largely ignores the tent pole movies of the 1970s. He skips The Sting, The Exorcist, Jaws, and Star Wars, although each of those movies gets a mention or two. He skips Viet Nam-centered movies like The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now in favor of Rolling Thunder. He makes the case, convincingly, that the violence and mayhem of Rolling Thunder makes for a better movie about veterans coming home from the war than the maudlin and overly dramatic “serious” film, Coming Home. He writes glowingly about movies termed “Revengeamatics” like Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder, and Hardcore (which he tears to pieces for the second half of the movie). He doesn’t mention it, but I’ll go out on a limb and say he hated Best Picture Oscar winner Ordinary People…with good reason.

Rather than belabor the much-discussed and analyzed Rocky, he focuses on Sylvester Stallone’s long-forgotten directorial debut, Paradise Alley. It’s an odd choice, and Tarantino writes about the experience of seeing Rocky in the theater and the reaction of the audience, an experience that mirrors my own almost exactly. Instead of Brian DePalma’s masterworks Carrie or Dressed to Kill, he writes about the early effort Sisters, a pretty pedestrian thriller. Clint Eastwood gets the royal treatment with a chapter about Dirty Harry and another about Escape from Alcatraz.

Even The Funhouse, a pretty standard slasher movie from 1981, gets a chapter.

Mixed in with these film discussions are personal anecdotes of a lifetime spent watching movies, and one chapter that gives the book its title, wondering what Taxi Driver would have been like if Brian DePalma had directed it instead of Martin Scorcese. There’s also a somewhat out of place chapter about Peter Bogdanovich’s Daisy Miller that, I suspect, was included because he wanted to write a chapter about that particular movie brat without falling back on The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, or What’s Up, Doc?

Throughout the book, Tarantino’s love for movies shines through on every page. It’s almost impossible not to ride the wave of his sheer enthusiasm. I read the ebook version and there are some formatting issues that may or may not be in the print edition. Names of characters, and anything between quotation marks are all italicized for some bizarre reason. Tarantino also has a tendency to be all over the place in his storytelling as talking about one movie will remind him of others that he feels the need to discuss, sometimes at length. This is where that feeling that the book is a transcript comes in. It’s fun, it’s interesting and at times fascinating, it’s opinionated, and you can get dizzy trying to keep up.

Quentin Tarantino, along with Christopher Nolan, is one of the most interesting writer/directors working today. He has said repeatedly that his next movie will be his last so he can focus on writing about the movies. As a fan of his work from Reservoir Dogs to Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and including everything in between, I would wish for both. Hanging up his director shoes is the equivalent of Daniel Day-Lewis retiring from acting. It seems like a crime against cinema. But if the downside is more books like Cinema Speculation, that will at least be something to tide his fans over and keep his gonzo spirit alive.

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Buried Treasure: The Monkees, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones It’s an easy mistake to make, to judge The Monkees by their hit singles without ever diving any deeper. After all, it’s not like they were a real band driven to make artistic statements over the course of an LP. But easy or not, it’s a mistake. In fact, the Monkees albums are a virtual treasure trove of potential hits; with a band constructed to be a hit machine, virtually all of the songs that were given to them were viewed as potential singles, and the songs written by the band members were their attempts to break the stranglehold the producers held over their product.

It’s well known that the Monkees were not an organic musical entity. In the Monkees’ musical suicide note, the elegiac “Porpoise Song” by Carole King, Mickey Dolenz’s beautiful tenor describes the band as “a face/a voice/an overdub has no choice/and it cannot rejoice.” For their second album, the appropriately named More of the Monkees, the band was not even aware that the album had been released until they saw it in a record store. On their third album, Headquarters, the Monkees seized creative control. They chose the songs and they played all the instruments on the album. It was a very good album, with several songs written by various band members. From an instrumental perspective nobody will ever mistake it for a Mahavishnu Orchestra album, but the songs were well-served by their arrangements. The group was rightfully proud of the album which shot to number one for a week or so before the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and turned Headquarters into a footnote.

Wisely, the pre-Fab Four decided to split the difference with their next album. They played most of the typical rock instruments with the exception of bass and drums, but left the majority to studio musicians. They also relied on professional songwriters more than they had on the previous album. The result was their best, and only truly cohesive, album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. For thirteen songs (well, twelve songs and Peter’s plosive palaver “Peter Percival Patterson’s Pet Pig Porky”), the Monkees sing their usual assortment of love songs, but mixed in are odes to a traveling salesman who seems to be selling something quite illegal (“Salesman”), an oblique lyric about the Sunset Strip riots set to a way-ahead-of-its-time Moog synthesizer backing (“Daily Nightly”), and not one, but two(!) not-particularly-subtle songs about using and losing an underage groupie (“Cuddly Toy”, “Star Collector”).

Elsewhere on the album the songs range from Davy Jones’s “Hard to Believe,” a slice of Dionne Warwick-style pop, to “What Am I Doing Hangin’ ‘Round?”, one of the earliest examples of what would later be known as country rock, to “She Hangs Out,” a tough mid-tempo rocker sung convincingly by Jones, to the soft-rock stylings of “Don’t Call On Me.” Of particular note are the Nesmith-sung “The Door Into Summer” and “Love Is Only Sleeping,” a vaguely psychedelic song that has aged extremely well, and “Words” which features an impassioned vocal from Dolenz and a driving bass line courtesy of the album’s producer Chip Douglas.

Mixed in with all this is the ultimate Monkees track, the withering look at suburbia’s status symbol culture, “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and sung beautifully by Mickey Dolenz (was there ever a more sheerly listenable singer?), this is the definitive Monkees song, an insanely catchy ear worm that casts a cynical eye on the band’s own audience.

The year 1967 was an incredible one for rock music, largely considered one of the best. The Beatles released their “Strawberry Fields Forever”/”Penny Lane” single along with Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour. The Doors released their first two albums, and Jimi Hendrix changed the world for guitar players everywhere with Are You Experienced? and Axis: Bold As Love. Jefferson Airplane hit big with Surrealistic Pillow. Bob Dylan laid the cornerstone of Americana music with John Wesley Harding.

It would be silly to lump the Monkees in with the titans of the rock music world. Their two 1967 albums broke no new ground, and have been largely forgotten by all but the most dedicated fans. The casual listener is satisfied with a solid Greatest Hits album from the group. But that doesn’t mean the albums aren’t good, and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd is the best they ever released. In a world of streaming music, where all of these albums still live and wait to be heard, the casual fan would be well-served to listen. The Monkees may have been a pre-fabricated group built for television, but they were gifted with gold in their song choices and in their voices. They were much more than the hit singles.

Grade: A-

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Here Comes Everybody: The Story of The Pogues, by James Fearnley

Here Comes Everybody: The Story of the PoguesDissolution never sounded better than The Pogues. It seems almost churlish to ask how good the band would have been if they had tempered their wildly self-destructive tendencies and concentrated on the music. In his new memoir, Pogues accordionist and multi-instrumentalist James Fearnley asks the question whether it was Shane MacGowan’s headlong pursuit of oblivion that made him such a great artist. He doesn’t answer because there is no answer. Shane MacGowan was who he was, and never changed. The fact that he made it to the age of 65 before succumbing to his lifestyle is testament to the man’s constitution.

Just as any biography of The Doors quickly becomes a book about Jim Morrison, there’s no getting around the fact that the story of the Pogues is the story of Shane. Even though Fearnley gives plenty of ink to the other band members, MacGowan is the North Star. Even the cover of the book features Shane standing at the forefront while the rest of the band is in the background with their faces turned away from the camera.

The story here starts with MacGowan’s and Fearnley’s pre-Pogues band, the tastefully named Nipple Erectors (or The Nips, for short). MacGowan had discovered punk rock in mid-1970s England, quickly becoming one of the main faces on the scene. You can see a young MacGowan in dozens of film clips and photographs documenting the rise of bands like the Sex Pistols. The Nips were a very generic pub rock band with punk aspirations. There was nothing particularly interesting about them, as can be heard in what few recordings there are. There was certainly no indication of what MacGowan and Fearnley would do next.

By synthesizing traditional Irish folk music with the intensity and drive of punk rock, MacGowan and Fearnley created something entirely new. It was a recipe that later bands like the Dropkick Murphys and Black 47 would take up, though none of those bands came close to the gorgeous lyricism of the Pogues. The later bands took the wrong lessons, substituting ham-fisted party anthems and rebel songs for the more literate poetry that the Pogues, at their best, provided.

Fearnley is an excellent writer. It’s clear that he had literary ambitions before music took him down a different path. He sometimes gets a little precious with the language (e.g., the weather isn’t mild, it’s “clement”), but he seems at times to be downplaying the role MacGowan has in the story. Every member of the band drinks an enormous amount, but the death spiral of MacGowan seems to come out of nowhere. He’s a heavy drinker one minute and completely out of control the next, as if there were no linear progression of his illness. The singer they fired in a Japanese hotel room while on tour seems to be a different animal than he had been up to that point. (His response to being fired: “What took you so long?”) There is some discussion about Shane’s degraded vocals as time went on, but the final album with Shane, Hell’s Ditch, is almost completely ignored as is the fact that the vocals on the album are slurred and sloppy. MacGowan’s strong, if not very pretty, tenor was gone by that time. Whether this was a conscious choice to downplay the band’s notoriety in place of the sublimity of the music is a question only Fearnley can answer, but the effect is somewhat jarring.

The Pogues were almost a living stereotype of an Irish band. Profane, hard-drinking, boisterous, but with the soul of poets and the blood of their ancestors coursing through their veins. They sang songs about drinking, and fighting, and of Ireland’s oppression by the English. Anyone who’s ever been to an Irish wake will recognize the setting of “The Body of An American”. They sang love songs that bordered on inexpressible beauty. It’s almost impossible to believe that lyrics for songs like “The Broad Majestic Shannon” or the simply beautiful “Lullaby of London” came out of a man who claimed to have not been completely sober since the age of fourteen. Impossible, at least, until you’re more familiar with some of the great Irish literature.

The Pogues continued after Shane was kicked out, including a stint with Clash frontman Joe Strummer leading the band, but it wasn’t the same and Fearnley skips that time entirely. This is really a memoir of his time with Shane, of the great music on Red Roses for Me, Rum Sodomy and the Lash, and If I Can Fall From Grace with God. It’s a sad story, as the final years of Shane’s life are. He died in 2023, after being confined to a wheelchair for eight years when a fall broke his pelvis. He was an unrepentant drunk right up until the end. But now that the drinks are gone what remains are the lyrics, and they are timeless…despite the profanity.

Fearnley’s book has its shortcomings, but it’s a great story told well. The Pogues story in all its rambunctious glory may be best told by someone not so heavily invested in the story. But until that book comes, this is a worthy addition to the bookshelf.

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The Rolling Stones: A Bigger Bang

A_bigger_band_album_cover_(Wikipedia)After Bridges to Babylon, the Stones became an almost endless touring machine. In 1998 they released the live No Security album, and followed that up with a double CD Live Licks in 2004. They also started repackaging their older material. The singles from their early years until 1971 were issued as multi-CD sets replicating the original vinyl releases, and the compilation Forty Licks was the first career-spanning set the Stones had ever released and included four new songs that don’t belong within a mile of a best of The Rolling Stones.

The longest the Stones had ever gone without releasing an album was the four years between Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge. But now, raking in the bucks as a touring jukebox, regurgitating old songs and performances from new tours as product, it seemed like the band had run out of gas as a creative unit. It took eight years for the Stones to release the follow-up to Bridges to Babylon, and it was what many assumed would be their recorded swan song.

To say that A Bigger Bang fails to live up to vintage Stones albums like Sticky Fingers or Exile On Main Street is an understatement. Nevertheless, the intention of the album was to strip away a lot of the excess that had been part of the band’s sound and get back to basics. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards collaborated more closely than they had in years, writing the songs while Charlie Watts was battling throat cancer. The horn players and backing vocalists (with the exception of multi-talented Blondie Chaplin, who appears on only two songs) were absent, leaving only Chuck Leavell’s organ and Daryl Jones’s bass as the only prominent instruments outside the core of the band.

The result was that this was the most stripped down album they’d released in decades. You’ve got to go back to Some Girls and Emotional Rescue to find the Stones this scaled back. This is their version of the Beatles’ Get Back concept and the good news is that a very large part of it is successful. The album was widely praised, probably over-praised, when it was released. It was hailed as a complete return to form by critics.

It’s not a complete return to form. As raw as the band sounds, the production is still somewhat glossy, and there are a couple of songs that miss their mark as much as anything they ever did. It lacks the sonic experimentation of albums like Undercover and Bridges to Babylon, preferring to be as close as the 2005 Rolling Stones could get to a White Stripes album (i.e., not really all that close). At over 64 minutes, it’s just a shade shorter than Exile on Main Street, which would make this another double album that should have been a single (see also Voodoo Lounge).

The album kicks off with a pummeling rocker called “Rough Justice”, their best opening salvo since “Start Me Up”. This is the band playing like garage rockers, with vicious slide guitar from Ron Wood while Keith grinds out the rhythm guitar. Keith’s guitar has rarely sounded so distorted, and Charlie Watts barrels through the song like a steam train. Even Jagger is in fine form, kicking off the album with a fun play on words that could sound convincing coming only from him. He may have been in his early 60s when the band recorded the album, but Mick’s gonna Mick.

The intensity drops for the mid-tempo rockers “Let Me Down Slow” and “It Won’t Take Long”, but what a pleasure it is to hear Jagger singing lead and joined on the harmonies by Keith…and only Keith. Ron Wood plays a stinging slide solo on “Let Me Down” and offers supple rhythm support on “Long.” On both songs, Daryl Jones plays intricate bass lines that lock in nicely with the ever-reliable Charlie Watts. Of the two songs, “Let Me Down Slow” is the dirtier, raunchier effort. Charlie’s drums are too clean on “It Won’t Take Long” and the bass is lower in the mix.

The Stones step back into the Seventies with “Rain Fall Down,” a tough funk track that could have fit on Black and Blue or even It’s Only Rock & Roll. Jagger is in fine voice, tipping his hat to rap by singing most of the song in a speak/sing voice. Daryl Jones’s bass is more prominent in the mix, as befits a funk song, but the ending drags too long. It’s a very good song that would have benefited from some judicious pruning.

The tempos drop for the ballad “Streets of Love.” Jagger’s over-enunciating but the acoustic guitars from Wood and Richards are solid, weaving together and building to an anthemic, electric, chorus. Charlie’s playing is understated and subtle, wisely resisting the urge to overplay in that arena-ready chorus. Ron Wood plays a great solo, aided by Keith on acoustic and Jagger on electric guitar. Chuck Leavell’s piano provides a stately backdrop. However, once again the song is too long, suffering from the same bloat that dogged many of the band’s songs since Voodoo Lounge.

The same can not be said of the delightful “Back of My Hand.” Talk about getting back to your roots! With the exception of some B-sides like “Fancy Man Blues” or “Cook Cook Blues,” the Stones had largely relegated traditional blues to being a strong influence on their brand of rock and roll, but this is what God intended the Stones to sound like back in 1963 (and by God I mean Brian Jones). It isn’t too dissimilar to song like “You Got to Move” (Sticky Fingers) or “Casino Boogie” (Exile). Charlie thumps like Meg White, Keef plays a terrific slide solo, and Jagger breaks out his best blues voice while also playing bass guitar and absolutely terrific harmonica. This is the Stones going so far back that even Ronnie Wood wasn’t invited tp appear on the track.

All of this makes the next track sound worse than it is. Once again it’s Mick on bass for “She Saw Me Coming” but the addition of Blondie Chaplin on backing vocals makes the difference between this song and most of the album very obvious. Suddenly the garage band album sounds very professional. Charlie’s great, of course, but the track with it’s shout along title refrain, is an otherwise unremarkable piece of album filler that would have been better off as a B-side or a track on some future rarities album.

This is the point where the wheels start to get a little wobbly on the album. “Biggest Mistake,” also without Ronnie’s input, is more filler. It’s not a bad track, but it’s forgettable. Jagger is again over-singing, and Chuck Leavell’s organ is so subtle it’s barely there which raises the question of why they would bother. Keith’s guitar is good, with Jagger providing the rhythm.

“This Place is Empty” is a Keith ballad, that sounds remarkably like every other Keith ballad since Dirty Work‘s “Sleep Tonight.” A dusky vocal from Keith, complete with cracked notes, is not helped by cringeworthy lyrics like “Come on and bare your breasts/And make me feel at home.” It’s yet more filler. In some ways it’s good that the band answered eight years of silence with a double LP’s worth of music, but this middle section drags the whole effort down and can easily be skipped to provide a better listening experience.

Fortunately the band recovers some of its mojo on “Oh No, Not You Again,” another rocker played by the core original band of Mick, Keith, and Charlie with some help from Daryl Jones on bass. The band sounds charged up again, like they’re having fun. The Stones always had a sense of humor and it comes through in the fun and funny lyrics here. Charlie swings and throws in great fills, and Keith plays a great guitar solo.

Jagger takes over bass duty on “Dangerous Beauty,” another track featuring only the original Stones. Over slashing guitar chords, Jagger shout sings the lyrics and there’s a nice, tight, guitar solo from Keith. It’s otherwise an unremarkable track that probably could have been left off without harming the listening experience. This is in contrast to “Laugh, I Nearly Died,” an intense torch song that bears a familial resemblance to “Always Suffering” from Bridges to Babylon, but with much better production. Jagger’s vocals are layered, including a falsetto in the harmoney, culminating in an a capella  climax of multi-tracked voices.

“Sweet Neo Con.” Then there’s this mess. Lyrically it’s a mash note to Condoleeza Rice, but the song’s an embarrassment. Musically it’s uninteresting. Keith is credited with guitar but he apparently wanted little to do with the song. Although he stood by Jagger’s desire to make a political statement, he also called it “cheap publicity” adding, correctly, “Nobody will know what it means in 10 years.” Charlie shows up for work and lays down a click track-worthy drum pattern. Lyrically it’s atrocious, managing to rhyme “certain” with “Halliburton” and even Jagger seems like he’s ashamed of what he’s singing. “Sweet Neo Con” is one of the most embarrassingly bad songs the Stones have ever done, and have I mentioned that this is the band that recorded “Gomper”?

Things pick up considerably with “Look What the Cat Dragged In,” a solid rocker. Ronnie Wood is back and plays a ferociously great guitar solo. Lyrically there’s even a really cryptic shout out to the Beatles with the lines “You look like a fucker, Sergeant Pepper/Are you going to throw up all over my face?” Hey, I didn’t say it was a good lyric.

One of the best songs on the album is hidden here, near the end. “Driving Too Fast” should have become a live favorite. Jagger sounds great, and Charlie swings like a beast. Chuck Leavell is again on piano and again barely audible. Ronnie and Keith play powerful rock and roll guitars, and the whole thing steams along like a Ferrari on the Autobahn.

Keith again closes the ceremonies, for the fourth time in five albums, with “Infamy”, but at least it’s not one of his typically sleepy ballads. It’s a mid-tempo number with a nice pun in the lyrics (“you got in infamy”). For the second time on the album, Blondie Chaplin sings backing vocals and makes the track sound more like a Keith solo song. Keith’s voice is more convincing on the uptempo numbers than on the ballads these days when the flaws in his cigarette/booze/drug-addled throat stand out.

A Bigger Bang is the album that sounds the most like the Rolling Stones since the Eighties. Much of it was recorded live as a trio with Keith, Mick, and Charlie. Overdubs were done later and the songs were fleshed out. Ronnie Wood appears on only nine tracks, roughly half the album, one song fewer than Daryl Jones on bass. For the first time in a long time, the remaining original members play on every song, supporting each other as they’re supposed to do. That gives the album more of a band feeling than anything they’ve done since when? Dirty Work? Undercover? Tattoo You, maybe?.

There are issues with the album. It was over-hyped on release because it starts so well and ends so well, but the middle of the album is clogged with filler and “Sweet Neo Con” should have never been recorded. Once again the Stones are victims of excess. Cut the filler, shorten a couple of songs, banish “Neo Con” into the cornfield and A Bigger Bang is the best album they’ve done in a very long time.

Grade: B

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Hell’s Drummer: Ginger Baker, RIP

Ginger Baker burst onto the music scene with Cream in 1966, the only drummer on the circuit who could go toe-to-toe with Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton. He was a jazz drummer, heavily influenced by the great Phil Seamen, whose technical expertise was unmatched, but his ego and bad temper led to a nearly constant conflict with Jack Bruce. They admired each other greatly as musicians, and hated each other with a passion as people. Cream was simply not built to last.

Neither was Blind Faith, the band formed by Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood. Baker showed up at Winwood’s house and told them that he was joining the band. Clapton and Winwood were glad to have such an incredible drummer, and too scared of Baker to say they didn’t really want him.

Being the drummer in a band was never enough for Baker. His ego wouldn’t let him take a back seat to anyone. He formed Ginger Baker’s Air Force, a largely ad hoc ensemble, and released two albums. Air Force was an interesting band, a pioneer in what is now called “World Music”. But how many extended drum solos can you put on an album before you realize that commercial success isn’t going to be there? Their very little-known second album was more interesting than the first, double live, album, and included a version of Cream’s “Sweet Wine” that featured Baker at his frenetic best.

After that, Baker drifted. He moved to Africa and opened a recording studio (Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run was recorded there). He played with several different outfits over the decades, from the Baker-Gurvitz Army to Masters of Reality. He even hooked up with Jack Bruce again in a trio called BBM, with Gary Moore stepping in for Clapton. He did session work, even joining former Sex Pistol John Lydon (nee Rotten) on PiL’s Album (yes, that’s the name).

He moved from Africa, to Italy, to America. His studio in Africa failed. He lost almost all of his money through bad management and worse investments.

I had the great fortune to see Baker playing with Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton in one of the Cream reunion shows at Madison Square Garden in 2005. Baker was in poor health at the time, but you would never know it. His playing was extraordinary, from the rolling toms of “We’re Going Wrong” to an extended drum solo in his showcase, “Toad”. It should be noted that I hate drum solos, and have always hated “Toad” (Cream), “Do What You Like” (Blind Faith), and “Toady” (Air Force). Seeing him live, that all went away. Midway through the solo, my friend who also hated drum solos turned to me and said, “That’s a different drummer”. And it was. The Ginger Baker of 2006 was incorporating African rhythms, world music, jazz, rock, blues, and everything else he could think of into his playing. It was a far cry from the technically amazing, but monotonous, solos he’d done as a young man. Amazingly enough, Ginger Baker in 2006 was actually better than Ginger Baker in 1966, when he was considered the best drummer in the world.

bakerUnfortunately for himself, his bandmates, his family, his friends, and anyone who got in his way, Ginger Baker was an absolutely monstrous human being. Angry, violent, short-tempered, arrogant, abusive to everyone around him. It was why he could never stay in a band for long, and why bands he created splintered just as quickly as those he joined. Every musician wanted Ginger Baker on drums; nobody wanted Ginger Baker in the band. Even in his dotage, it didn’t change. A documentary called Beware of Mr. Baker begins with an elderly Baker insulting almost every musician he ever played with, culminating in Baker hitting the director in the face, breaking his nose,  with his cane because the director mentioned, casually, that as part of the project he would also be interviewing Baker’s musical associates and family. The documentary gets darker from there, and is a fascinating viewing experience. The only people who escaped Baker’s vitriol were Phil Seamen, Charlie Watts, and Eric Clapton, whom Baker called his best friend. The reaction shot of a genuinely shocked Clapton saying, “He said that?” before damning Baker with very faint praise is worth the price of admission alone.

But at the end of the day, the documentary is both harrowing and heartbreaking. He abandoned his family, only to reconcile many years later, and then abandoned them again, but not until he told his son, a gifted musician in his own right, in his parting words, “You’re a lousy drummer.” It’s hard to imagine living with as much hate in your heart as Ginger Baker.

Ginger Baker was one of the greatest drummers who ever lived. His playing at times was almost supernaturally good. Neil Peart, the Rush drummer largely looked at as a God by drummers everywhere, once said “His [Baker’s] playing was revolutionary, extrovert, primal, and inventive. He set the bar for what rock drumming could be. Every rock drummer since has been influenced in some way by Ginger—even if they don’t know it.” Drummers from John Bonham to Stewart Copeland to Alex Van Halen to Chad Smith have sung Baker’s praises, even if Baker would never return the favor (“Bonham couldn’t swing a sack of shit”).

He is gone now, and I sincerely hope he found peace and redemption in his final years, when he was ill and out of the spotlight. If not, Rock and Roll Hell just got its drummer. RIP.