(Jay Bulger/Insurgent)

The rolling beat at the heart of much modern rock drumming can sound a lot like a pounding heart. The heart and the drum beat race with equal parts passion and violence. You wonder if that’s why so many of the time-keepers of rock have led short and brutish lives, their hearts flailing away like their arms, creating a sound and fury that consumes them. But one of the wildest of all rock drummers is still ticking and still as cantankerous as ever. Ginger Baker, star of Beware of Mr. Baker, is the kind of august rogue who threatens to put his director in hospital and punches him in the face with a cane—and makes him like it.

Friends and family alike saw plenty to beware of in this gangly, mercurial ginger. Nobody whitewashes his flaws. But Cream bandmate Eric Clapton calls Baker a lovable rogue, and Jack Bruce, whom Baker was ready to beat to death before firing him from one pre-Cream band, admits that he loves him.

Director Jay Bulger, a graduate of Bethesda Chevy Chase High School, is no exception. That he opens this affectionate portrait with a scene of his subject clocking him shows how far his affection goes. Baker frequently curses at Bulger, but the filmmaker was so determined to record this larger-than-life character that he spent months living with him on his ranch in South Africa. Bulger’s first documentary is framed in that all-too familiar documentary trope of The Quest for his Subject. When Bulger introduces his quest, you can appreciate why Baker caned him. But his interaction with Baker sets up his subject’s character. Fortunately Bulger sits out most of the film, the better to let Baker and his personality out of its wiry cage.

It’s easy to see Baker as a bastard, but it’s also not hard to love the guy. Baker was only four years old when his father died in World War II and dad left behind a letter that he was not to open until he was 14. This missive from the dead instructed young Ginger to use his fists, which he did in violence and in music. Bulger juxtaposes the violence of the blitz that marked Baker’s childhood with the explosive percussion that is Baker’s musical signature.

Baker is best known for stints with Cream and Blind Faith, two of the most notable but short-lived groups of the 1960s. Baker’s commitment to his loved ones was about as strong as that with his band mates. He admitted to his first of four wives that if he had to choose between her and drums, he’d go with the drums, and go he did, again and again. The filmmaker redeems this fear of commitment, devoting itself to documenting lesser known eras of Baker’s work. I had some familiarity with Baker’s major groups, but the Graham Bond Organisation was a revelation, and will send fans of 60s pop movies in search of the 1965 film Gonks go Beat, vividly excerpted here.

(David Pearcy)

Though his drum work is given a lot of credit for the rise of heavy metal, Baker came from a jazz background, and used his rock cachet to stage drum kit battles with some of the great jazz drummers like Max Roach and Elvin Jones. Baker was at least a decade ahead of the curve when he made a musical pilgrimage to Africa, sitting in with Fela Kuti in the early 1970s, years before African pop music was “discovered” by Western pop musicians in the 1980s.

Jay Bulger cleverly weaves animated stills and grotesque drawings along with interviews and film footage from all eras of Baker’s career. The title card Beware of Mr. Baker is based on a sign at the entrance to Ginger Baker’s ranch in South Africa, and there’s plenty to beware. Like the musicians and women who have been drawn to him over the years, the bad boy has a charisma that makes him one of the great documentary subjects. Beware of Mr. Baker tells a fascinating musical story that even viewers unfamiliar with the music will find entertaining.

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Beware of Mr. Baker
Written and directed by Jay Bulger
Not rated: contains drug use, sexual situations, violence, profanity, blinding vintage fashions, and long frizzy hair.
Opens today at West End Cinema