Sesso droga e rock’n’roll

L’Independent ha intervistato Ginger Baker (leggendario-ex-batterista-dei-Cream-eccetera) che ha scritto un libro (aiutato da sua figlia) e ne ha per tutti.

He cites Charlie Watts and Pete Townshend as “proper musicians,” but doesn’t mention The Beatles. Hadn’t he admired Ringo Starr’s drum style? “HAH!” Baker lets out a roar of delight, or possibly pain, at the idea. “They weren’t musicians!” he says, drying his eyes. “I worked with George Harrison and he was a musical moron. He didn’t understand music at all. He tried to explain what he wanted, and I couldn’t understand a word. The only musician was George Martin, he was The Beatles. Paul McCartney boasts that he can’t read music. How can a musician boast that he can’t read music?” Baker’s rant is delivered with the certainty of a man who put in the hours studying Bach and Mozart. He is just as dismissive of other sacred monsters of the time. “Mick Jagger and Brian Jones were playing at the Ealing Club, and Alexis asked us to play behind them for the interval. We weren’t very happy, so we played complicated time things to throw Mick off the beat. He would lose it completely and Brian would have to get him back on. Mick Jagger got everything from him. The original sound of the Stones was Brian Jones leaping about and doing all the showmanship. Jagger just stood there at the microphone.”
And when they became the world’s greatest rock band? “I never could stand the Stones,” said Baker. “They were like a load of little kids trying to play black blues music and playing it very badly – but that’s what people went for, because it was naive and banal. The lack of technique and musicianship was its appeal, from the start. It was extremely commercial, musically. The guitarist, Keith, sometimes has a go at Eric [Clapton]. but Eric is 150,000 times better a musician than he’ll ever be. But because of their fame and fortune, they believe they’re special.”
Even the sainted Jimi Hendrix gets a telling-off. He sat in at a gig at London Polytechnic in 1966 and greatly impressed Clapton. Sounding distinctly Scrooge-like, Baker reports: “Hendrix could play okay. But he started doing all this showman shit when he sat in with us. If I had to choose a guitarist from history, I’d pick Eric over Jimi every time. Jimi was good but he was too interested in that… stuff. His big thing was pulling chicks, which he was very good at.”

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