Moore 'finished rock' for Ginger Baker
Cream drummer Ginger Baker says his 1994 experience with Gary Moore in BBM was enough to make him decide never to play rock'n'roll again.
Baker reunited with long-time collaborator and arch-enemy Bruce to record the album Around the Next Dream with Irish guitar hero Moore under the band name BBM (Bruce-Baker-Moore).
The recording went so well that a lucrative tour was arranged – and that's when Baker says things started to go wrong.
He tells Classic Rock Magazine: "The sessions we did delighted everyone - even though Jack Bruce was acting as my boss again and treating me as a session player.
"A tour was suggested. I'd get £50,000 a gig. What I didn't realise was that Gary Moore was playing so loud that he blew his ears - just as Jack had done to me.
"More gigs were cancelled than played. They were awful anyway. Everything with Gary Moore was contrived. Every solo was the same. I like to improvise.
"They organised a rehearsal and we played it note-perfect, as usual. Next day his manager phones me and says Gary's blown his ears again and they've taken him to a doctor.
"I said, 'Why don't you take him to a psychiatrist - that's what he needs'."
Baker, celebrated for being a grumpy eccentric character throughout his career, describes the entire BBM experience as "terrible."
He says: "It was so loud I had to have baffle boards on either side. I hate volume - why does rock music have to be so loud?
"That was rock'n'roll finished for me."
Cream last reconvened in 2005, but Baker and guitarist Eric Clapton have both said they won't do it again. Baker says Bruce's behaviour during those shows "killed the magic". But Bruce, who was most recently in the press for receiving death threats after saying Cream was "ten times the band" Led Zeppelin ever were, maintains the trio might get together again in the future.
Baker recently published his autobiography, Hellraiser.
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