Crème de la Cream

first person Crème Cream de la

I SUPPOSE IT WAS THE UNLIKELY combination of accidentally falling asleep in Lord Rothschild’s bed after a gig for the Duke of Edinburgh, and snapping the f ront axle of a Range Rover on a potholed track in a motor rally that got me into polo. e fact that these two incidents happened almost ten years apart has absolutely no bearing on my ability to hit a ball f rom a galloping pony or play the drums better than anyone – well, almost anyone – on earth. e fi rst happened back in my pre-Cream days when I was playing with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated at a party organised in honour of an entire team of Argentinian polo players. We were playing wonderful music when a man jumped on stage tooting his hunting horn very out of tune. I wasn’t impressed. Others present recollect that I was, well, a little bit out of it and I dozed off on his lordship’s bed. But I can’t have been too out of it – the encounter with some of the world’s most famous high goal players must have triggered some subliminal urge in me to have a go at what I had always judged to be a sport for Hoorays. Of course, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Polo is a great leveller. It has a lot in common with football, but it took me the best part of another decade to discover this. Up until then my only encounter with my four-legged f riends had been confi ned to riding as a small child in my retired grandfather’s horse and cart around the streets of Knowstone in Devon. e second incident, the one that put me in the saddle and fi red up a lifelong passion for the sport that brought me a two-goal handicap at the age of 56, came in 1974 during the Argdungu Rally in West Af rica. I was living in Nigeria at the time, where I had invested my life’s savings in a worldclass recording studio. How does a jazz and rock star end up here? Simple. Af rica is the spiritual home of the drum. It may be a long way f rom my native Neasden in West London, but the odyssey was as natural as it was essential to my musical development. Away f rom my studio – we’d just recorded Band On e Run for Paul McCartney and Wings – I had achieved a bit of a reputation as a rally driver. Indeed, Sideways Baker and his Dancing Range Rover were known to perform with the kind of uninhibited gusto otherwise reserved for my drum kit.

As I executed an unexpected 180 degree turn at a checkpoint on the fi rst day of the rally, a voice yelled f rom somewhere inside the cloud of dust I had created: “Bloody Hell. e way you drive you should play polo!” e voice belonged to Colin Edwards, who was then best polo player in Nigeria, with a fi ve-goal handicap. He was also extremely amusing, totally mad, and had f riends in high places – as I was to discover over the next few days. Edwards had been brought up as one of the children of the Emir of Katsina, also an outstanding player. He spoke fl uent Hausa with the exclusive royal accent. I was leading that rally on the fi nal night stage when I became the only person to ever snap the f ront axle of a Range Rover. e backup vehicle mysteriously failed to materialise and my navigator and I were forced to spend the night stranded in the desert. e next morning we managed to borrow a couple of bicycles to take us to the nearest village, f rom where we got a ride on an Af rican bus to Kano. We went to the Kano Club in search of Edwards and a more permanent form of transport. If it hadn’t been for a broken axle on an African rally, Ginger Baker might never have discovered the joys of polo. Here, as he prepares for an historic reunion with Cream, the legendary drummer recalls the outrageous origins of his love for the sport

“Mr Edwards is not here,” the barman confi ded, “but he is driving a Range Rover and will be along in a few minutes.” And so he was. A very battered and cathedral-shaped model, with no glass in any window, skidded to a halt in the car park in another cloud of Af rican dust. is was our missing back-up vehicle which Colin had managed to roll in the desert the day before. e whole day that followed was an amazing experience and formed the start of a fi rm f riendship.

At the time, in the early Seventies, I had a few worries on my mind. ings weren’t going well with the studio. I’d fallen out with my partner, who happened to be the regional Minister for Trade, and I had just survived a bust for arms and drugs. I’d also been arrested and put under armed guard at a business meeting. My whole investment, as it transpired, was doomed. Anyway, I fl ew

down to Lagos, picked up a f ront axle, and fl ew back to Kano. By the time I had driven the 700 miles back to my studio, the proverbial had really hit the fan. e locks on the whole building – including those on my fl at above it – had been changed. My ashen-faced and trembling sound engineer informed me that, thanks to my broken axle, I had missed a posse of armed police who had come to arrest me the day before. Just at that moment, two Nigerian police Peugeots with blue lights fl ashing tore up the single track leading to the studio ere was nothing for it but to go for the bush. I heard gunfi re and ricochets as I hurtled in the Range Rover through the six-foot high grass behind the studio, leapt the drainage ditch and landed hard on the main road. Fortunately, marksmanship was not their strong point and I was unscathed. I drove the 14 miles to Lagos at record speed and did another of my signature 180s in Colin’s backyard. I felt that if there was anyone in Nigeria who could help me out of this crisis it was him – and I was right. We drove to Lagos Polo Club where he introduced me to Umaru Shinkafe, assistant commissioner of the Nigerian Special Branch and a fi ne player with a three-goal handicap. Phone calls were made and for the moment, at least, my liberty was assured. But I had nowhere to live and spent the next few days at the club.

‘Right, Baker. It’s time you got on a horse,’ declared Colin after we had consumed several large Bacardi and Cokes. Without further ado, he led me outside to where two grooms were holding an Argy mare all tacked up and ready to go. I climbed on board. Colin adjusted the stirrups and put the reins in my hand. ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ he asked. I nodded. e grooms let go and Colin produced a whip and gave the mare’s backside a massive whack.

We were off at a full gallop, with me clinging on for dear life. e exercise track went right round the polo fi eld and between all the stables. Blimey! is horse was shifting! At one point we came up behind a groom riding at a hand canter and gave him an enormous bump. On and on we fl ew, out through the entrance gate, across the road, and back up to Colin’s stables where, thankfully, the mare stopped. She was home. My beard was on one side of my face and my sunglasses on the other but I was still on board – and Colin had won a lot of money on a side-bet.

‘Well, how was that, Baker?’ he beamed.

‘You never told me where to fi nd the bloody brakes!’ I complained.

‘OK, Baker, report here for duty at 8am tomorrow!’ he ordered.

I spent the following days riding around

and around the sand exercise area as Colin taught me how to use the brakes and the accelerator. On the morning of the tenth day he announced: ‘Right Baker, you’ll do. I’ve put you down for four chukkas this afternoon.’ A battered old polo hat and a pair of worn-out boots were produced, a stick was put in my hand and before I knew it I was on the fi eld. Something very extraordinary happened. I swung the stick and actually hit the ball. Cool! en I fell off . I must have come off half a dozen times during my four chukkas and found that I was much better at falling off than hitting the ball.

Polo had the same eff ect on me as when I fi rst discovered I was a drummer at the age of 15. I sat in with the band and played the bollocks off their drummer. I thought: ‘Hello, this is something I can do.’ Later, I made my own drum kit out of Perspex. I bent the shells and shaped them over my mum’s gas stove and they were an integral part of my life for fi ve years until 1966 and the formation of Cream, when I got my fi rst Ludwig kit. You can’t make horses out of Perspex but relationships can be just as strong – as I learned during those halcyon days at the Lagos Polo Club. I remember Colin had a sick horse called Je T’aime that he used to refer to as ‘that bloody ballet dancer’. She was a chestnut Argy and the grooms were terrifi ed of her. I volunteered to look after her and soon found that she responded to kindness. We became very close f riends. To Colin’s amazement I successfully played her, and thus began my aff air with diffi cult horses. Every weekend I’d get four chukkas on Je T’aime and three other crazies that Colin and Umaru, the police chief, didn’t like. I’d spend the rest

CAMERA PRESS/DAVID WHITE Left: Ginger Baker (far left) in action on the polo fi eld. Above: Beating the drum with Cream and, below, the cover of Cream’s defi nitive album Disraeli Gears

LFI

of the afternoon umpiring. I always did this with an experienced umpire, one of whom was a certain Captain Arthur Douglas-Nugent, who was the British Military Attache at the time. e atmosphere on the polo fi eld was one of total enjoyment and good sportsmanship. I had lost my Nigerian studio and with it my fortune but I had found a new passion that down the turbulent years that followed has grown rather than diminished. My life took me briefl y back to Britain in 1976 where I was fl oored by a massive telephone-number tax bill and went broke. I lived in Italy before moving to California, taking my dogs and horses with me. I made my comeback on the polo fi eld there, but my nine years in the sun were blighted by immigration problems and I eventually moved to South Af rica six years ago.

Polo in England is unique, unequalled anywhere else in the world, except perhaps Argentina. ere are now two diff erent games being played, “the English game” which is also played in Argentina, and the “American game”. I’m pleased the HPA hasn’t been infl uenced by America. e Hurlingham Polo Association has got it right and with the enormous amount of young players coming up through the pony clubs, England should overtake Argentina. e polo f raternity here in South Af rica is, without a doubt, the most charming and hospitable on earth. But a typical tournament begins at 9am and continues until late afternoon with fi ve or six games taking place each day on one fi eld for three days. By the fi nal day the fi eld is totally destroyed and extremely dangerous.

Similarly, behaviour at practice chukkas is nothing short of disgraceful. ey are approached like a major tournament: winning at all costs is the predominant aim. Players thunder around like headless chickens, senselessly whacking the ball in any direction, with bone-juddering bumps usually accompanied by a protruding elbow. e most basic and dangerous fouls occur frequently – as do angry disputes with the umpire. I have met in polo some of the coolest people. Conversely I have also met many, many absolute pricks. Polo is a gentleman’s game. I count myself extremely fortunate to have partaken in many gloriously enjoyable chukkas on four continents. Leaving the ground with a permanent grin fi xed on my face… not knowing, or even caring, what the score was. I have had enormous fun and stacked up a host of wonderful memories that will stay with me forever.

Despite the onset of debilitating osteoarthritis and the fact that I’m now 65 years old, I am building my very own Field of Dreams – a private polo fi eld. Here, I can invite my f riends to come and play. I am creating a full-sized fi eld where just one game of polo will be played no more than once a week. is year fi nds me doing a little drumming out of Af rica for a brief revival of Cream. At heart I am and always will be a jazz musician, but Cream was the culmination of a lot of hard work and study to form a popular band, playing good music and making some money. e reunion was Eric’s idea and should be a blast musically, but I’d just like to point out that I founded Cream and Eric is the fi rst to admit it. I’d like to be remembered for that, not as “Clapton’s drummer” – it’s very f rustrating when people call me that. I’d like to be remembered as a drummer who was up there among the greats alongside Phil Seamen, Art Blakey, Philly Jo Jones, Elvin Jones and Max Roach. All fi ve were my heroes when I was a kid and all became my close f riends. But I’d also like to be remembered as a good – and always sporting – polo player. ■