In one interview, he explained: ‘When Kudzai and I first got together, Nettie caused trouble and they had a really big row. The situation is so dire that Nettie and her siblings – Leda, 51, and Kofi, 50, Ginger’s only children from his first marriage to Liz Finch – have no idea where her father’s ashes are.What followed was a series of emails from Kudzai, many of them cruel and abusive.‘We felt that we had been so mucked about that we just gave up,’ says Nettie. Having started out in a pretty sheltered environment in private schools, suddenly they had to go to the local comprehensives.’It was only later that she realised just how damaging that chaotic upbringing was. ‘It was much worse for Leda and Kofi, because they were eight and nine years younger than me. Baker's second daughter, Leda, was born 20 February 1968. But I think he’s quite chippy, he thinks he should be a millionaire and that everyone should recognise him.
]’For his eldest daughter, there is particular sadness given the great loyalty she has shown her famously wayward father as the custodian and chronicler of his legacy.For all Ginger’s stardom, it remains the sort of tragic domestic drama all-too frequently played out when a parent remarries later in life. “One minute you’re on the bus and the next there’s a limousine at the door,” she says. Jimi was just sitting in the chair, by the window, and he saw me and said ‘Come here, come and sit on my lap.’ So I sat on his lap for half an hour or whatever. “I wanted it to be funny, and I love a romance,” she concludes. ‘It wasn’t consistent parenting – you never knew whether the two of them were going to be OK,’ she says.
Everyone that’s read it says they’ve laughed, and that’s what I wanted. And in 2016 he had heart bypass surgery.‘She rang me at work about it and I was so exasperated that I asked her to leave me alone. But you know, an artist is an artist.”uDiscover Music talks to Ginger Baker’s daughter about her life and her memoir, ‘Tales Of A Rock Star’s Daughter.’Much of the early reaction to her memoir has concerned characters in her story from everyday life.
And then to claim that his family wanted nothing to do with him – that’s absolutely, unequivocally not true.‘Mum wouldn’t have allowed this treatment of Dad in his old age to happen.’That tender memory is now all the more precious to his daughter, because it was one of the last moments of affection that they shared.Success: Ginger Baker with Cream bandmates Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton. ‘When I was a toddler, Dad would hand me a spliff and say to me, “Take a puff of this, it’s much better than cigarettes”. Baker was married four times and fathered three children, Nettie, Leda, and Kofi. He was lovely.
‘I don’t regard Kudzai Machokoto as a member of my family.’Relations were so bad that the family did not even feel able to attend the funeral.Ginger's family 'weren't invited to the wedding,’ says Nettie (pictured, holding a photograph of her drummer father). Ginger Baker's eldest daughter Nettie has accused the drummer's fourth wife of isolating his family. “They’d known each other a long time, but they became very friendly, and he came round to dinner,” she recalls. The situation is so dire that Nettie and her siblings – Leda, 51, and Kofi, 50, Ginger’s only children from his first marriage to Liz Finch – have no idea where her father’s ashes areHe had been in hospital for three weeks before any of the family were told, she claims.Still, Ginger and Liz were able to afford a lavish mansion, the loftily named Camelot, in Harrow on the Hill, North-West London. They married in Cape Town in 2010 when he was 70 and she was 28 in a ceremony witnessed by only two people and none of his family.‘He was really, really sick,’ recalls Nettie Baker. My [younger] sister and brother started off in nice schools and ended up in rough schools, so that was much worse for them.Discussing the volume in an entertaining conversation over tea with uDiscover Music, she describes the encounters that strangers have had with her notorious parent, who died in October 2019 aged 80.