Ginger Baker

Especially our drummer.

He had a double bass drum, and his favorite drummer was Ginger Baker from The Queen.

His other favorite drummer was Billy Cobham.

And he sort of tried to mix the two styles up.

And I remember going in to sit down with Bob.

I was crap at French, but I used to get on well with him because he had taught Ginger Baker, who had gone to Shooters Hill Grammar some 20-odd years before.

And he said, oh, we used to have a drummer that used to go here, you know, Peter Ginger Baker, who was born in Lewisham.

And he said, I'm going to see if I can track him down, see if his parents or, you know, his dad had died in the war, but his mum or his aunt.

And he managed to get hold of a contact.

Nick Menza did not feel like a passenger in the classic Megadeth lineup.

Ginger Baker and Cream founder, band leader, so to speak.

But everybody had a pretty strong personality in that band.

Um, that's why it was so implosive, explosive Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, but Ginger Baker was super important in that band.

And he goes on to have air force in that.

So he leads band.

And so I recorded a version.

However, I alluded to the fact that Ginger had a proclivity, and I rhymed something with hot.

And the next thing we knew, I got a letter from Sheldon Schwartz saying, Never do that.

Cease and desist.

The Yardbirds, their drummer is...

Okay.

Okay, that's Ginger Baker.

cream.

He was an inspiration.

So was Ginger Baker.

Now, some people don't care for his drumming.

I always thought the way he just hammered on those rack toms was brilliant.

Maybe I'm off base with their influences, but I hear Jefferson Airplane and Early Grateful Dead here, who, I mean, were still fairly new bands themselves by this point.

Like the first Grateful Dead album was only three years old by the time they recorded this.

You know, like I said in the interview, I definitely hear that Mitch Mitchell influence in Lawrence's drumming and Ginger Baker also.

And there again, Cream had only been around for like four years or so at the time this was recorded.