Ginger Baker

AllMusic Zine, 1999

I’d been warned — specifically by my brother, publisher/editor of Drum! magazine, and by many references I’d seen in other interviews: Ginger Baker could be a nasty S.O.B. Maybe you’ve seen this documented on film, a minute into the documentary Beware of Mr. Baker, where the reclusive drummer assaults and bloodies an unwelcome reporter with his cane.

Fortunately, I would be a safe distance away when the time came for our phone chat. There were other reasons for optimism. One was our mutual acquaintance with Chip Stern, whom I knew as a consistently brilliant yet prickly and eccentric contributor to Musician magazine. Baker had tapped Stern, a drummer himself, to produce the jazz trio album Coward of the County, which was our agreed focus for the story. But also I felt that, as a nerdy school kid, I had learned that the best way to disarm bullies was to gently — gently — make fun of them in a way that they couldn’t help but laugh at themselves, at least for a moment. This, I felt, was all the preparation I needed for this assignment, along with the usual tons of research.

Guess what? I was right. From the start, it seemed like we were okay with each other. Much of that may have to do with my first question, which starts the transcript below. In a way, it was a softball. But it also opened a door through which I hoped Baker would eagerly storm. In retrospect, I was amused by his response, since I had read of interviews that ended quickly when the questioner based his or her opener with an assertion that Baker was either a rock or a jazz artist. Didn’t matter which; Baker would predictably roar back indignantly, insisting that he was in fact the opposite of whichever identity his interrogator had dared to force on him.

Not only that: Because I anticipated that Baker would be both opinionated and expressive to an extreme, my approach here was to listen carefully for where his statement ended and take that point as my cue for the next question. As a result, he pretty much guided the conversation, and in the process I think came to trust me to the point where I could begin nudging things in a direction I felt we needed to follow. By the time I was able to introduce the topic of his fascination with African rhythm, he was running easily with me, whereas had I begun there he might well have accused me of stereotyping him, snarling that “I ain’t no African” and slamming down the phone.

Or maybe not. In any event, I’m happy with what we got.

***

Even after all these years, does the music press still misunderstand what you’re doing?

Absolutely! I had a guy yesterday say to me, “Why did you go from playing rock ‘n’ roll to jazz?” But I was playing jazz in the Fifties! I was playing with big bands. I’m a musician. I write and arrange stuff. I was a jazz player when I decided, along with my dear old friend Graham Bond in 1962, that we were gonna go commercial. We were gonna play music … good music. But we were gonna try and play music that was more popular, more understandable to the general populace. We did a pretty good job of it. I think the peak of the idea was when I got Cream together. And I got Cream together, no mystery about it. I formed it. It was my idea.

What changes did you and Graham Bond embrace to make your music more accessible?

What happened was that the Alexis Korner band, which we all played in, was virtually a half-and-half mix of jazz musicians and blues musicians. It was the effect of the blues musicians on the jazz musicians and the jazz musicians on the blues musicians that produced the music. Cream was the same formula. Eric (Clapton) was a straight blues player. Jack (Bruce) and I were jazz players. That was the sort of formula that we aimed towards. The music that came out was more popular than blues and more popular than jazz. What it was, was a sort of mixture of the two.

What misperceptions of your work trace back to that period of time?

There are extraordinary stories that come out about me from that time, like Jack Bruce smashing up the drum kit I made. That is absolutely, completely untrue, as untrue as anything could be. That was when I got my Ludwig kit and I gave my old kit to a friend of mine, a guy called Chris Elkington, who’s a drummer.

Didn’t you build that original kit yourself?

I actually made the shells. I had a Vic O’Brien kit. I had this crazy notion that what you call acrylic, what we call Perspex, would make good shells. They do make a wonderful sound; the problem is that they don’t last. They tend to crack.

Anyway, I went and bought some sheets of Perspex and I figured out how long and deep I wanted them to be. For example, my tom-tom was 12-by-7 instead of 12-by-8. And I built a very narrow bass drum shell — 11 inches, a very narrow-shelled bass drum. My tom-tom was, I believe, 13 inches deep. I had some unusual shells, but those drums really sounded good. They’re on all the Graham Bond recordings.

That story about Jack trashing your kit probably persists because of the well-known tensions that existed between you and him even before Cream.

Well, you know, Jack called me some three years ago and apologized for his behavior.

His behavior during the Cream years?

No, throughout the whole thing. The problem is, you see, that no matter how right you are, if you lose your temper, you become wrong. Well, I’ve got a very short fuse, you know. I’m part Irish and I’ve got red hair — or I used to have red hair; it’s gone all white. But no matter how justified you are, when you lose your temper, you lose the argument in the eyes of the world. That has been a problem with me all my life.

What was that argument really about? Was it about giving you proper credit for composition or arrangement on certain material?

Yeah, basically. Writing.

Were things still tense between the two of you when Cream played the reunion set at your induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

No, no, no. Rehearsals for that Hall of Fame thing were absolute magic. It was really quite strange. It wasn’t as if thirty years had gone by. It was more like a week or two that we’d last played together. It was easy and beautiful.

What did you decide to play when the rehearsal began?

I don’t remember. I think we played “Born Under a Bad Sign” first. But I was late for the rehearsal. I got copped up. Everybody was worried because they didn’t think I would show up.

Because Jack still had a bone to pick with you?

Well, let me say this. All the things that came up, I was totally in the right. Jack has admitted it. Apologies are all very well. I thought about saying, “All right then, Jack. Send me a check!”

African Spirit, Primal Rhythm

How did you develop your interest in African drumming?

When I first met my all-time drum hero Phil Seamen, he heard me play in a club in London. Tubby Hayes, the tenor player, heard me playing around the road where Phil was, and he said, “Phil, go and hear this drummer.” I didn’t know he was there. When I got offstage he came up to me, which was just amazing. I suddenly felt twenty-five feet high; my feet left the ground. I was in fairyland.

He was very complimentary in his way, which was very brusque. I ended up going back to his flat, and we spent all night listening to Phil’s collection of African records, which was extensive. That was my introduction to the African thing. Phil said to me, “You’re the first guy I’ve ever played this to that’s got it.”

So he heard something in your playing that connected to some aspects of African rhythm.

Yeah. It’s very strange. I had it when I was in school. I used to bang on the desks and all the kids would start dancing. I was born a drummer. I didn’t realize it until I was about fifteen. Phil heard it. When he played me all those records, it opened too many doors and turned on so many lights within my drumming.

It wasn’t for ten years until I was finally able to get to Africa, and then I spent about six years down there. I had a wonderful time. I love Africa. I love the whole feeling of Africa. I’m a drummer, and if you’re a drummer, you’ve got to love Africa.

Were there foreshadowings of African rhythm as far back as your first traditional jazz gigs with Bob Wallis?

Well, I don’t know [laughs]. I got that gig immediately; I’d only had a drum kit for a couple of weeks. I told Bob I’d been playing for three years — and they all believed me. But, yeah, I’ve always had it. This is something I got from God Almighty, I suppose. I’ve always had it and I always will. I’m very grateful to have it.

An awareness of the sound of the drums seems characteristic of both African drumming and your own approach.

That could be. In fact, I was always getting into trouble because of that, even in the early days. When the band started tuning up, I’d start tuning my drums. They’d go, “Shut up! We’re trying to tune!” “But that’s what I’m doing!” They’d look at me like I was mad. But I’ve always tried to get my drums in tune with the band.

What is the essence of African drumming as it reflects in your music?

It’s a time thing, you know? I think the drum is the oldest instrument of all. The drum has always been involved with the human race. The extraordinary thing is that you find totally different ethnic groups playing drums that are very similar in construction and sound. I have my own views: I believe the human race didn’t come from this planet and that the first landfall they made was in Africa. I think it’s been proven that we all originated in Africa. Africa is a very special place on this planet.

Drum Solos & Other Sins

You made the drum solo a staple in rock concert performance. What do these episodes mean in the context of a complete show?

Well, let me say that in the early seventies I met Philly Joe Jones in London. He’d heard me do a drum solo on TV and he said, “Man, you tell a story when you play the drums!” I think that’s it.; The drum, to me, is as much an instrument as a horn. When I play a drum solo, what has happened to me the day before usually affects what happens in the drum solo.

As you’re playing a solo, do you consciously refer to the arrangement of the song?

No, I don’t try to do anything. When I play a solo, it’s in the hands of the Lord what comes out. I don’t think. Phil Seamen said years ago, “There’s two types of players: thinkers and feelers.” I’ve always been a feeler. I don’t think when I’m playing. I listen. I listen to myself when I’m playing a drum solo; I listen to what I’m playing.

The classic jazz solos often seem to be macho displays of speed and dexterity. Did you go through a period of playing drum solos with that exhibitionistic approach?

I always thought of them musically. You know, this word “chops” … I’ve never had wonderful technique, like the sort of technique Buddy Rich played. I don’t play that way. I don’t play to show people, “Oh, look, I can do this. Isn’t this clever?” A piece just comes out. Whatever happens, happens.

Ginger Baker plays his signature solo from “Toad,” with Cream at London’s Royal Albert Hall, May 2005.

What do you think about recent trends in drumming?

Let me say this: I don’t listen to music. I don’t! I’d rather hear birds singing and sounds like that. I really don’t listen to music, so I’m unaware of these trends. I was totally unaware that Band on the Run had been released until somebody brought it up to me a few hours ago. I don’t follow things like that.

Is this so you can focus without distraction on your own music?

Totally. That way, what I write is purer, not by listening to anybody else.

Musicians often reach a point where they’ve heard all they need to hear to begin their own development as artists.

Yeah, well, I reached that point probably thirty years ago.

No Sunshine, No Love

You’re always looking for unusual rhythm patterns. What other drummer would have reversed the backbeat pattern as you did with Cream on “Sunshine of Your Love”?

Yeah, and I got no credit for it!

When you began working out that song, how did the idea for that rhythm come to you?

Jack brought it in. It was much faster. [Baker sings frantic up-tempo version of the riff.] I said, “No, I don’t like this. Why don’t we slow it down?” I played that backward beat behind it and all of a sudden it became something else entirely. I got no credit for it at all. Again, there’s the African feel to that.

When playing in 4/4, you almost never lay down a standard backbeat pattern. Does hitting the second and fourth beat of the bar just rub you the wrong way?

I’m a jazz player! Elvin Jones’s favorite comment was, “If you don’t know where the one is, forget it!” How often does Elvin Jones play the one? But he knows where it is! I hit the one probably more often than Elvin does, in the right place. It’s not how many notes you play, it’s where you play them.

So the pulse stays there, but you don’t have to hit people in the head with the beat.

Not if you’re playing with musicians. The problem with rock ‘n’ roll is that ninety-eight percent of them are not musicians. The fact that they play musical instruments doesn’t say that they’re musicians. You’re only a musician if you’ve done your bloody homework.

“There’s only one musician in the Rolling Stones. And that’s Charlie Watts.”

Many rock drummers do little more than hit the backbeat.

That’s all they want them to do, you see. I lost my job with Terry Lightfoot after six months because I’d started listening to Big Sid Catlett, so every now and then I’d just play a bass drum beat that wasn’t on the four. When I did this, Terry would go bloody crazy because he wanted the drummer to play 4/4 on the bass drum all the time. We came to a head at a gig where my girlfriend — actually, my soon-to-be wife — was in the audience. I let a big bass drum beat go out. He turned around and said, “Don’t start practicing with my band!” And I said, “Stuff your head up your arse!” And that was me out of Terry Lightfoot’s band [laughs].

I’ve had this problem playing with people who want a certain pattern continuously, repeated over and over again. Like, they want you to play the number exactly the same way every night. I can’t do this. I never played the same two nights in a row. Nor does my band. Every night is a new adventure. Music has always been like that for me. Things change. What happens on the day before you play the gig, it affects the gig. With a lot of these people, it doesn’t. It’s awful.

I’ve been dragged to several concerts where I sit there and watch the drummer, and I go, “Wait a minute. He’s not playing what you’re hearing.” And he’s playing to tapes! This is fraudulent! They can’t play, so they’ve got a tape and they’re pretending to play it! And people are paying money to hear this!

You look at a drummer like Charlie Watts, who pretty much always plays in 4/4 with relatively simple material, yet he changes his performance from night to night.

Well, you know, there’s only one musician in the Rolling Stones. And that’s Charlie Watts.

Friends & Influences

I’ve heard that the traditional jazz drummer Baby Dodds was at one point your biggest inspiration. How did you first hear him?

That was when I got the gig with the Storyville Band, when I first started playing. I was intent on becoming a professional cyclist in those days — Tour de France type stuff. I was a very good cyclist. I spent all my time training. I was training with professionals, and I got a very good bike together with their help. They got me a lot of equipment I couldn’t afford to buy. But I had a big accident. My bike got smashed up. I couldn’t do any more training on my bike.

[Shortly afterward] one of the few school friends I had was having a party and they dragged me ’round to it. They had a band there. Now, I’d never sat behind a kit before, although I’d been banging on the desk at school. All the kids knew I was a drummer. I was totally unaware of this, but they virtually carried me onto the drum stool and sat me down. And I could play immediately because I’d been going to all the jazz clubs and all I’d watch at the jazz clubs was the drummers. So I could play! The hi-hat, bass drum, snare drum and cymbal all just came together. During the first tune I played, I saw two of the horn players exchanging looks right in front of me. One of them turned ’round and said, “Jesus, we’ve got a drummer!” That’s when I realized that I was a drummer: “Oho! Maybe that’s what I am!”

Then I went home and I went to buy a drum kit. I still hadn’t paid for my bike. My mum went, “It’s another of those crazy schemes.” But I managed to get sort of a drum kit together. Then there was an advert in the Melody Maker for a drummer. I went for the audition — this was with the Storyville Band, a week before Bob Wallis joined them — and I got the gig immediately! I told ’em I’d been playing for years and they just liked what I was doing.

“That is what a drummer does: He makes the other guys sound good.”

At that rehearsal, the clarinet gave me the complete collection of Baby Dodds’ Hear Me Talkin’ to You. It was on 78s. I took these home and studied them. It was a revelation. I mean, I’d been listening to people like Max Roach and Phil Seamen, and all of a sudden here it was, where it began. The stuff he was playing totally blew me away. It had the most enormous effect on me. Also his words, where he said, “The drummer's job is to listen to the guys.” That’s what he said! You listen to them and complement what they’re playing. Play a sound underneath them that makes what they’re playing sound good. That’s what I’ve done all my life. That is what a drummer does: He makes the other guys sound good. Of course the other guys get all the credit.

You pay homage to several more contemporary drummers in the liner notes of your Coward of the County album.

I just thanked Phil Seamen, Art Blakey, Max Roach and Elvin Jones for their encouragement and friendship. All four of them were enormous heroes to me.  All four of them, after hearing me play, became very close friends, like family. That’s why I call Phil my dad and Art, Elvin and Max my uncles, because they’re all older than me. I was taken under their wings, all of them. They treated me like I was a member of their family. It’s one of the greatest things ever in my life, that I can say Max Roach is a friend of mine, Elvin Jones is a friend of mine, and Art Blakey was and Phil Seamen was. That is the most wonderful thing.

As I say on the record, it means more to me than all the dollars in the world. Money’s not important to me. I don’t need to live in a big mansion and have helicopters and Ferraris. Things like that are not important to me at all.

How did their friendship affect your own musical growth?

Well, I was listening to Max, for example, and the first record that totally blew me away was The Quintet of the Year, with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charlie Mingus and Max Roach — the Massey Hall concert. I heard that when I was fourteen years old. I was so impressed with it that I actually stole it! It was the first time I’d ever stolen anything in my life, but I just had to have that record.

I met Art Blakey at the 1960 Munich Games Jazz Festival. In 1972 we did a two-drum thing, totally unrehearsed. It was absolutely amazing! There was one part in the middle where we both went onto the cymbals bell and tom-tom and played exactly the same pattern at exactly the same time together — bang! It was like we’d rehearsed it for a week. Art became a very good friend of mine. He came to my polo club in London several times; we had a great time in the bar. He was a wonderful man, a wonderful drummer.

Baker with Cream, Denver, 1968

You played a highly publicized drum battle with Elvin Jones during the early Seventies in London. The media played it up as a kind of hostile encounter.

Well, it started off that way. See, I first heard Elvin in 1961, with Coltrane, which was an experience. I just sat there in wonder, with my mouth and eyes wide open, just staring at Elvin because the stuff he was playing with Coltrane was unbelievable. About ten years later I was doing an interview, and I happened to mention that I didn’t think Elvin was playing as good now as he was with Coltrane. It was a silly thing to say. Elvin got word of it and, in another article in some magazine, he said, “Ginger Baker is suffering from delusions of grandeur. They ought to put him on a spaceship and shoot him off into space [laughs]!” That was how the animosity thing came out.

So we decided to do this sort of drum battle — which is something I don’t totally agree with, by the way. I think drummers should play together and complement each other, not try to blow each other off the stand by playing clever-clevers. The African way is, we all play together.

But at this one particular concert, it was adversarial.

No! Well, I mean, it was publicized that way, as a drum battle. We got together and the rehearsal was like a revelation. Both Elvin and I were looking at each other, laughing and playing our stuff. It was amazing. Unfortunately, we both got a bit out of our heads at the gig. The gig wasn’t as good as the rehearsal, which often happens. Gigs are always better if the rehearsal is a total cock-up. If the rehearsals go great, then quite often the gig isn’t as good. I’m not terribly keen on rehearsing that much.

When did you last see Elvin?

I saw Elvin last October when I was in England.  He was playing in the Ronnie Scott Club. I hadn’t been to Ronnie’s in a hundred years, but I went down there and it was just like the old days. Ronnie’s was always a wonderful place. If you were an accepted musician, you’d just walk in; nobody stops you at the door and says, “You’ve got to pay money.” If you’re a musician and they know you’re a musician, you walk in and you’re made welcome.

Elvin, as soon as he saw me, he picked me up — I mean, he is so strong for a man his age — and he’s hugging me. He nearly broke all my ribs! We went into the dressing room and we sat there, talking. Then when he went onstage, before he played anything, he gave me a wonderful build-up to the audience. When he finished the gig, I had to go up to the stage and talk. That was great, you know? In Colorado a few years before, he did the same thing. Of course, being his friend, for whom he has a lot of respect, you can’t get a higher compliance than that from someone of that stature. Elvin is just an amazing guy. So is Max; they’re wonderful people.

Beyond the community of drummers, have other instrumentalists had an impact on how you play?

Not in that way. Cyril Davies had an enormous effect on my whole life in the short time that I knew him, simply because he thought enough of me that … You know, I was really screwing up, and Cyril straight-out told me. He was someone for whom I had such respect that the words went home like [a] shot from a gun. It was like, "Wow!” It changed my whole life.

There have been several other musicians who have done that. Musically, Charlie Parker was amazing. He and Coltrane and Ornette Coleman were horn players who had an enormous effect on my music because I just love everything they’ve ever done.

Did you imagine how you would have played if you’d been around during their peak years?

I never did that. If I had been able to play with Bird, it would have been amazing. The only guy I actually played with was the clarinet player George Lewis, in 1956 or ’57. I kept the shirt I wore that night for years; it was my George Lewis shirt.

Battered But Unbeaten

How much do you practice?

I don’t practice very much at all. I practiced a bit recently, because I had a very big operation on my arm. I played this record [Coward of the County] with only seventy-five percent of my right arm. Now I’ve got it back. But I had this operation and I wasn’t able to move my arm for a month. When they took the cast off and the doctor said, “Okay, you can start moving your arm,” he actually recommended playing the drums for therapy. For a period of about ten days I did half an hour’s practice each day — mainly about twenty minutes of exercises. The extraordinary thing was that my left hand had gone to sleep; the right arm that I had the operation on worked enormously well immediately [laughs].

What exactly happened to your arm?

Well, several years ago, at one of the Polo and Jazz events [organized by Baker at his Denver polo club], I had a big polo accident. I damaged my right elbow. The ulnar nerve had become detached and was lying across a lot of damaged bone. What was happening was, the damaged area was swelling up as I was using my arm and trapping the nerve completely, so I’d get this terrible pain in my elbow and couldn’t feel the rest of my arm downwards. I could stick pins in my lower arm.

I went to various specialists and they said, “There’s no point in trying to repair the bone damage. We can’t get to it because the nerve is in the way. What we’ll do is, we’ll move the nerve.” So they opened my arm, pulled the muscle out, put the whole ulnar nerve to the other side of the muscle back in. Now my ulnar nerve goes down the middle of my arm instead of around the elbow.

Does your arm feel different?

The only odd thing now is that my elbow is dead. I’ve got no feeling around my elbow area because the nerve is gone. The nerve is now down the middle of my arm. Not having a nerve around my elbow actually helps the situation enormously.

You seem to have a history of injuries, from falling off your roof to getting tossed around by your horses.

This has been happening all my life! My mum said that I was accident-prone. I always have been.

Blissful Ignorance

How did you get into writing music?

I started writing in 1959, when I was playing with a big band. I learned to read in that band. I got the gig via a dear friend of mine, a drummer called Dave Pearson. He knew that my reading wasn’t very good. I mean, my reading had been confined solely to exercise books, so I knew the value of the notes. But one big problem I had was that I didn’t know what a repeat sign meant. After my first week, halfway through the thing, I was finishing playing the coda [laughs]. I had gotten to the end of the part and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

One of the horns in that band caught me reading. We were playing in an Irish club — you know I’m part Irish, right? Part of the big band was a ceilidh band. I’d gotten the gig because the leader of the ceilidh band, the accordion player, was totally blown away with how I played the ceilidh music. Of course the drummer didn’t get a part for the ceilidh music. It was pretty involved stuff. So one of the horn players caught me reading the part over his shoulder because he couldn’t figure out how I was playing every single note. It was all like demi-semiquavers, what you’d call sixteenth notes. I was accenting every single one.

After the gig he said to me, “Was you readin’ over my shoulder?” I said, “Yeah, I was.” He said, “Christ, your reading is very good. You have to go and get two books from the library immediately.” The two books he told me to get were Basic Harmony and [Joseph] Schillinger’s method.

That would be The Schillinger System of Musical Composition.

Yeah. I studied those two books together, you know — all the rules of harmony and how to break them, at the same time. I just studied on my own in the evening for a few months, doing all the figured basses and all the musical theory that I wish I’d done when I was in school. I could have done it in school, except at school we treated the music lessons as time to mess about. Now I can transpose for all the B-flat and E-flat instruments. I studied the ranges of instruments. If you’re going to write, you’ve got to know what the range of the instrument is. Now, I know all that. I’m a musician.

It’s like this story: six musicians and a drummer. That comes up all the time. Drummers, a lot of them, don’t become musicians. I’m lucky that I met people who encouraged me to be a musician.

Even Buddy Rich couldn’t read music.

Yeah. McCartney, in an article in the British press not too long ago, said he thought that not being able to read music helped his writing! I mean, they have to pay somebody to come run with a piano to write down what he’s doing! Now, to me, if you can write down what you’re doing yourself … I mean, that’s what I do. If I write something, I take the parts to the band. I don’t have to teach these guys the songs by playing them on the piano or something like that. I write the parts out. Like the two things I wrote for Falling Off a Roof [released in 1996]. For one of them, I came up with this thing and I thought, “Wow, this is a bit of a weird guitar part.” So I wrote it down and faxed it out to Bill [Frisell]. And Bill said, “Yeah!” I wasn’t sure whether it was feasible for a guitar player to play it.

That McCartney comment is interesting. Erroll Garner, the jazz pianist, never seemed proud of the fact that he couldn’t read music. In fact, he always seemed apologetic. To be proud of not knowing how to read is rather a perplexing attitude.

It's extraordinary! It’s just a cop-out! And I was hit with another one today that infuriated me. Band on the Run — and I’ll say this categorically — would never, ever have been recorded had it not been for me.

Paul McCartney and Wings cut that album at your studio in Nigeria.

All of it should have been recorded there; some of it was. The only reason McCartney was allowed to record in Nigeria was because of my intervention. The only way he got to Nigeria in the first place was because my partner, Mr. Bayo Akinnola, and I arranged for their visas. We arranged the accommodations. We provided them with transport.

Was McCartney having visa problems at the time?

Yeah. They couldn’t get visas into Nigeria. Also, when they decided they were gonna record at EMI, my partner refused to let their equipment go to EMI Studios! I overrode him after Paul phoned me up. So now, to have the record come out [i.e., be reissued] and say that I was angry that they wouldn’t record in my studios? Bullshit! They contracted to record the whole album at our studio. That’s how we got them their visas and their houses and their transport. They could have said, “Thank you, Ginj, for helping us get a record together.” But what he said was absolutely annoying. He thinks I’m dead, you know?

Old Rock Stars

Many of the rock artists who attained fame in the Sixties are pretty much doing nostalgia shows these days …

It’s putting money in the bank.

A lot of these guys are talented, though.

Like who?

Well, like your former colleague, Eric Clapton. He’s playing very clean, tight shows these days, but he isn’t exactly pushing any envelopes, as he did with you and Jack.

There again, it depends on what you’ve got behind you. I have the ability, with anyone I play with, to push them into places they didn’t know they were going.

Maybe that’s why you don’t get called for these types of gigs.

They don’t like it! They really don’t. They get worried about it. Eric, in the middle of a solo, would come up to me and say [whispering], “Where’s the beat?” I’d have to go, “There it is.” He’d go, “Oh, okay.” And he was off again. He’d lost it!

So Clapton needs to hear that second and fourth beat.

I’m afraid so, yeah. A lot of these people need that.

How do you keep yourself open to challenges, where other artists of your generation prefer staying in the comfort zone with things they’d done decades earlier?

Um, I have no idea. I wouldn’t get enjoyment from playing gigs where they want you to do the same thing every night. Playing with Gary Moore and Jack Bruce [in BBM, 1994] was one of those. They had these little syncopated things that we’d do every night. That’s so contrived!

I think some of it may be to do with the fact that money’s not the most important thing in my life. 

Just because something is making a lot of money doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get artistic enjoyment out of it.

There are three things I like doing: I like playing music, obviously, but if I’m not enjoying the other musicians, then it’s difficult, you know what I’m saying? If it’s not fun, then why do it? It’s the same with polo: If I’m not playing with guys who are fun to play with, I don’t enjoy it. And the other thing I like doing is building. I’m a builder, a master builder in my own right. I’m a bricklayer, a carpenter, the whole nine yards. When I do something, it has to be done right, properly. I get enjoyment from that.

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