Although the dream of celebrity is pervasive, few people stop to think about the impact that fame has on those around them. Part of the reason for this is that the memoirs of the famous are written from their own perspective (or the perspective of an admiring critic), with assorted family members and friends reduced to the role of a bit part – someone who appears briefly but is rarely studied or developed into a full-blown character.
However, Nettie Baker is set to change all that, as her latest book Tales of a rock star’s daughter (she also ghost wrote Ginger Baker’s Hellraiser), lifts the lid upon what it means to be caught in the tail wind of a major celebrity. Narrating a series of exploits dictated by a family that saw both dizzying highs and teeth-curling lows, Nettie takes the reader on a tour of the rock world of the ’70s and ’80s, detailing the wild hedonism of an era long gone with considerable humour and humanity. What could have been, in the wrong hands, a bitter take on a complex figure, is a laugh-out-loud tale of rock and redemption and we have long waited for a chance to sit down with Nettie and discuss the book’s genesis, her experiences with punk and her journey to becoming an established author.
The first question is to do with your journey into writing. I know that you ghost-wrote Ginger’s biography, and I know you did a degree in English, but at what point did you become interested in writing biographies?
Well, I’ve always done writing, I’ve always been a writer, but as the book shows, I never wanted to do horses. That wasn’t really where I was planning on going. So, I was always writing – from the age of ten. And I was good at English at school, but when my dad dragged me out to look after his horses for free, I didn’t do it until much later and I didn’t realise I could do it. But then I got a first at Queen Mary and then I did a Masters. So, I was writing and I did this book first and, while I was looking for publishers, my dad asked me if I could do his. So, that’s how it came about and that knocked mine right off because, obviously, everyone wanted Ginger Baker(!) so it didn’t do me too many favours. But it’s well received and everyone likes it, so that’s the best thing.
You said you’ve always written and the diaries informed this book heavily – how did you get into writing diaries and collecting all your memories in that way?
Well, I’ve got a suitcase full of all the diaries, so they’re still there. My daughter still writes a hand-written diary and she’s twenty-six, so people do still do it, but it’s just… you know, to me, it used to amuse me and my mum used to say it was like Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde – when you want something sensational to read on the train, you read your diary. It was written in purple, smoking ink, so it was wild. I had some wild times and I made sure I wrote them down for entertainment’s sake.
So, when you started writing this book and you had to go through all this material, I guess it must have been a tough choice to decide what to use and what to leave out; what was accessible and would open up a world without being too personal…
I think my degree really helped, because they really pushed you into getting these writing tools and some of them I didn’t have. The writing was already there and, also, there were a lot of different pieces that I’d done earlier. So, at the beginning, I cobbled bits in from bits of writing I’d done in ’76 and ’98 and that’s how I did it. I went through the diaries, obviously putting a lot in, and I probably edited it ten or more times. Just changing and cutting bits out and thinking “no one cares about that!”
I think it’s challenging when you’re doing something like this; that is so personal; to be able to look at it in a critical way and be able to find your own voice but, at the same time, keep it interesting.
I think making you laugh and writing something… I love reading biographies, and I love that sort of thing, so every time I edited it, even though I knew it so well, I was still laughing at my own jokes and that gave me an indication that people were going to laugh at it and that’s what people are saying – they’re laughing out loud on the train, and that’s the main thing. Making people laugh and that’s what I wanted.
There’s a lot of interesting elements to relate – because of the nature of Ginger’s fame- you had a turbulent upbringing – you moved a lot and came out of education at young age as well…
Well, yeah, it was, but I try to make it… I didn’t want a misery memoir. I didn’t want everyone to be crying and going “oh dear!” I wanted them to see the world as I see it. You have to make your challenges into something positive and you have to see life as absolutely absurd… and life with my dad was certainly very absurd in many ways!
When you approached this – is there an element of unpicking the myth of the great rock star – humanising someone who, for many people is seen as this giant of music? Because although, obviously, it’s your journey and your life experiences; he’s a key figure within it…
I think the important thing with him is and, what I do with the website and everything that we do, is to keep the legacy alive and not degrade what is the amazing talent and the icon that he is. Which, I think, is very, very important. But, obviously, the other side… you can enjoy a lot of art and you don’t have to know the people. You can put a record on, sit and listen to the music and think “that’s great” and then go, sit down and be quiet. But, it wasn’t like that for us because we had this maniac in our lives. So, I’m just trying to say how that impacted on everything, but I think it is important (and I think I have done) to say that the talent was certainly there and the shame that mismanagement and drugs caused… problems which I’m still trying to address. To bring the name back up where it belongs.
Drugs feature quite a lot in the book and the way your describe your experiences – it seems that they were approached in a very naïve and innocent way, which is slightly unexpected.
Well, it’s innocence from me – in the 70s we were innocent! Most of us were. But I don’t think I had innocence from… my dad warned me off heroin and I never, you know, took hard drugs.
It’s a funny book because people who have taken drugs say to me “well, you didn’t take many drugs!” and then people who’ve never taken drugs say “ooh, there are a lot of drugs in it!”
In the second book, which is all part of one book (they’ve just divided it), it’s punk in London and that’s very different – very fueled by Amyl nitrate and amphetamine. That’s a bit of a different story with squats and White City and Westway to the World sort of thing. So, that’s a bit of a different one but, again, yes! Naivety in the beginning… but that’s the journey that I wanted to show – the juxtaposition of how you get from innocence to becoming quite cynical.
You were very much a part of the punk scene – is that right?
Well, very much so but much later. When punk came along, I was going out with the Royal Family! So, it wasn’t really happening correctly for me, but it was as things went wrong with the money and everything – we had nothing. It was a search for identity and I dropped into that scene because I belonged there – that’s how I felt.
And yet the iconoclastic nature of punk was to sweep away the old guard – how did Ginger react to your journey into that sort of music?
Well, apart from the fact that he never mentioned that he played on John Lydon’s ‘Rise’ (from PiL’s album) in 1986 – he went off and got paid for that. He never mentioned it to us. He thought it was awful. The Sex Pistols can’t play, and we all looked terrible! But, you know, he’d also looked terrible!
This is covered, really fully, in the second book so there’s more to find out about that. But, at the time, he thought punk was terrible!
It’s a good teaser for the next book as well!
Yes it is!
So, again, I’m really interested in the journey of writing – how long did it take to get the book to a standard of writing with which you were happy?
Well, I suppose it must have taken me eight months. Six or eight months really. I can’t remember. It was that long ago. I finished in about 2007-8, so I’ve had this sitting there for ten years and then, when I knew I was going to have it published, I hit it again hard.
But it wasn’t that difficult. The editorial is all me – I have to have editorial control, which I also had to have over Hellraiser, because they messed that up badly before it went to print and that would never have come out if I hadn’t fought back for editorial control. They had just written their own version, which was unbelievable and bad, so I had to have that control and I was so lucky to find a publisher who let me have it.
It’s surprising. You think about music and you hear horror stories about record labels changing track listings and stuff, but you don’t really think about that so much in books, but it sounds like it was really difficult putting Hellraiser together if there was that kind of editorial oversight at the beginning.
Well, there was and I think my dad had had that with the previous attempts to write his book, but he didn’t realise. But, you know, he writes very well himself and the middle 20,000 words of Hellraiser are all his and I didn’t have to edit very much because he writes very similarly to me and he wrote well. There’s a knack to editing and I fought for the electronic copy back and when I went through how they edited, I learned to edit as I went, so that’s another tool that I‘ve got that I learned by accident. You have to do it, and therefore I can do editing now, thank you very much, so I don’t need anyone to do it for me.
I guess the ghost-writing… did that help to bring your skills to publishers to pitch your own book?
Well, you might think that mightn’t you! But it didn’t! At all! It didn’t help in the slightest.
I thought, you know, you get one book out… but now I’m hoping that I’ve got three out, I’ll be able to go on from there, but it’s a tough world. Even though our publisher said that my book was a better book than Hellraiser, they were like: “Oh you’re not famous enough, you’re not famous enough, you’re not famous enough, you’re not famous enough!” And, to be honest, I don’t think any of them ever read it because it’s a terrible world for people who’ve got sky-high egos and they just think it’s a silly rock star’s daughter – a middle-aged woman who spoke… You know. But I have managed to get past that now. There’s a lot of misogyny; sexism… it’s not a nice place really.
It’s so surprising to hear that it’s still the case…
It’s very much so.
So, you didn’t consider the self-publishing route?
It’s just too much effort really. I’m not driven or wildly ambitious. I’m not that sort of person. I just kept on and on, every year, approaching people and at some point, someone said yes, so really – don’t give up!
The world you describe – there’s your personal journey and the characters that populate the surroundings… not least a meeting with Hendrix…
Well that’s in book 2 and I don’t want to jump the gun with that too much. We got evicted from our house in 1985 and I sort of drop back and tell these stories. But in book one, the story I tell, is when I was on stage with Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck. They asked me to introduce Hi Ho Silver Lining and when I was at Eric’s wedding in 1979… those were pretty bizarre times!
It comes across as almost surreal. It’s so different from the life that most people lead and it’s surprising that more children of musicians have not chosen to go down this route…
I think there’s (well maybe they will now!) but it’s about how you tell the story. There are a lot of great stories out there, but it’s how you tell it. There are some potentially great biographies by interesting people that are still really boring… if you’ve got a story to tell, you’ve got to tell it so people are engaged! They need to come on the journey with you and you’ve got to do it right. You’ve got to have the skill (the writing skill) and I just don’t think… I think everyone who wants anything, they should ask me because with my dad’s book, they think it’s him speaking, but it’s not. It’s me, speaking as him, and that’s what you want if you’re going to have someone writing for you. A lot of the kids have been supportive and they’ve said they recognise a lot of the things, but maybe they have a different sort of relationship with their families. Maybe they don’t want to upset their fathers, I don’t know.
Did you talk to Ginger at all about what was going to go into the book?
Well, no. He’s not at all, even remotely interested in anything whatsoever that his children do, and if you asked him what our interests were he would not have a clue. So, when I was writing his book (he knew I’d already written mine), and I’d say “oh, you forgot to say this…” he’d say: “Oh, put it in your book!” That’s really where it went. Don’t confuse him with a person who’s like a normal father.
Yet, you’re keeping the legacy alive through the books and the website and then you’ve got Kofi who’s keeping the legacy alive through the Music of Cream.
Well, that’s right and he ought to be doing much bigger stuff than that. I think he should be on the Jason Bonham level and more people should know about him. He has done a lot of sessions for big people and he really needs… Again, like my dad, he’s got into very low level management and low people and he needs to be up at the top. It’s hard for me to help him because he’s in a different country. He’s in America, so if he was here it would be a lot easier for me to get some sort of control over him.
But he’s like my dad, he’s a bit wayward and they tend to believe everybody and agree to everything. So, you say “I’m going to do this…” and they say “yeah” and five minutes later they’re doing something else with someone else and then something else with someone else again. So, it’s difficult and without a doubt, dad’s never really helped him, which he should have done, I think, and so did my mum. But let’s see…. He’s nearly fifty now, and it’s a shame. More people need to know about him, but you’ve got to make the effort. We do, on the website, we send everyone who wants live music – I send them to Kofi.
I hope that he will – we saw the recent tour and he was phenomenal and the nice thing about it was that he was telling stories that gave a bit of background to the music…
Well, that’s right and you know, it’s fun to do, but he doesn’t want to be doing that for ever. He wants to move on with it and, you know, why can’t he be in some of the bigger bands that need a drummer? The Who should have had him and people like that. He would have been great.
He was very powerful – hopefully it will be a good platform for him…
Well that’s right – I’m thinking how could he get into more clinics and drum battles. He did a thing, I think it was with Vinny Appice and Corky Laing (from Mountain), so that’s the sort of thing he should be doing. On that level. That kind of thing.
Were you never tempted to do something musical?
Hahahaha! I’ve got no musical talent! Sadly, I can’t sing. I can’t do anything.
It sounds very much like going to University (which I think you did when you were about thirty), was a real turning point for you…
Well, I was a bit older than thirty but thank you for saying I was thirty. I am quite happy to say I went when I was thirty, but no, I was much older than thirty when I went.
Yes, it just gives you confidence and, obviously, having a dominant parent who tells you you’re rubbish all the time, it’s quite difficult to then get confidence, so being put in that sort of… Book one and two tell you how you can get to the bottom of the pile and how it takes a lot of time and effort to get yourself out. Also, being female is a lot more difficult because you haven’t got that sense of entitlement, which men are given and therefore don’t feel so… they don’t have such low self-esteem. I’m hoping the books show how all that happens but making everyone laugh at the same time.
You mentioned earlier the misogyny of the publishers and it’s sad to note that the rock world has also had many issues with the same thing – it must have been difficult to break out of that mould as well?
Well, yeah, but going into punk… that was the answer. I still go – I’m off out tonight to see a band called the The Cesarians who are with me everywhere because they’re absolutely fantastic. I met them… our dad’s knew each other. I didn’t know that when we met each other but she’s in my book. She writes and composes and arranges and it’s all new stuff and it’s really different and it’s really good, but it’s not completely white male… .white heterosexual male dominated. I think it’s nice to have some other things and punk brought that in. Punk brought equality into the world and it seems to have disappeared again – I don’t know where – but that’s what punk did and I think it’s very, very important.
So, you’re currently doing a lot to support the book – I know you did a launch recently – what else are you doing to get the word out there?
Well, I’ve had loads of people coming to me! We’re doing a little signing on the 30th Dec at the Half Moon, Putney – with the Who’s Who tribute band (check out the event page here). They invited me to go along and do a signing. Then, we’ve got a big, huge one at the Dublin Castle Rock ‘n’ Roll book club that’s on March 6th with the Cesarians and a Cream DJ set. The Cesarians are playing, so that’s a big one (check out the event page here). Then we’ve got loads of… we’ve just had a great review in Classic Rock Magazine. Universal did a whole big piece and they keep putting it up on their site. So, as we go, it’s online only at the moment (because you make better money that way) and as it drops into the shops in March, there’ll be another big boost. The Daily Mail were all over it. The Gutter Press loved it, so, that’s what we’re doing. As much as we can.
So, the next book is written…
Yeah – it is all one book. It’s one book, so this is book one and book two is already under contract and that should come out and, I don’t know, that should be out (online) in April, I suppose… I’ve got people asking about it already. They’ve asked where the next one is and it’s on its way!
Are you planning on more writing – you sound so enthused – so have you got plans?
Well, it’s something I’ve been planning for twenty-odd years – it’s a completely different genre, but I wanted to do a screenplay of the last few years of Thomas Chatterton, who I did my dissertation on. He was an eighteenth Century poet who died before he was 18. He was the James Dean to the Romantic poets and he was their influence. He arrived in London in April and was dead by August. London ate him, so it’s going to be a fast, eighteenth century romp and it would make a marvellous film, so I’ll be living in the British Library for a while whilst I get to grips with that. It’s a bit of a challenge, but I’ve wanted to do it for a long time and, you know, the Happy Prince – what Everett did for Wilde, I’d like to do for Chatterton.
Nettie Baker’s book is available now, direct from Wymer Publishing: https://www.wymeruk.co.uk/webshop/books/rock/various/tales-of-a-rock-star-s-daughter-by-nettie-baker/
Nettie also runs the official Ginger Baker web page – www.gingerbaker.com and his social media presence (here).
