Quotes

People always put me as the drummer in the Dead Band with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. What people didn't know was that until 1964, I was getting high and thinking it was wonderful. After that, I was trying to quit.

I've used speed occasionally but never liked the effect.

We were very poor. My mother worked in a tobacco shop to support my sister and me. I didn't get my first drum kit until I was 16.

I got involved with drugs for the music. I took some smack, and people told me, 'You play incredible.' So I took smack before every gig. Soon I was having trouble making enough money to feed my wife and baby. I'd turn up to a gig stoned and they'd say, 'What are you doing?' I'd tell them, 'I'm taking smack,' and they'd fire me. I used to think they were idiots. And this happened continually.

God is punishing me for my past wickedness by keeping me alive and in as much pain as he can.

[on his days with Blind Faith]: I got messed up with drugs again and had a long holiday to get straight. When I got back to England, Steve Winwood told me Eric Clapton had run off to form Derek and the Dominos.

[on his second marriage in 1982]: She got bored with farming [in Italy] and me being straight. Without drugs, I guess I'm not as exciting.

If you have a drug problem, Los Angeles is not the place to be. It used to be that I would hit L.A. straight and in 24 hours somebody would lay something on me.

People say Cream gave birth to heavy metal. If that's so, we should have had an abortion.

One day [while drumming with Blues Incorporated in 1962] this effeminate little kid [Mick Jagger] showed up, and I hated him. He was a musical moron! Alexis Korner asked me to give Jagger a chance to sing during the interval. But the interval was when I would go and have my fix! Me and Jack Bruce picked on him, throwing in jazz licks to confuse him.

Cream was doomed three months after it started [in 1966.] It was my band, and Jack Bruce tried to fire me! I didn't get any of the writing credits. It will piss me off for the rest of my life.

Living in L.A. [in the 1980s] was quite hard for a former heroin addict. It's the smack capital of the world!

[About Cream's first single] 'Wrapping Paper' is the most appalling piece of shit I've ever heard in my life.

A really good band with a bad drummer is not a good band. A really bad band with a good drummer sounds better.

I was once a guest on a radio show and some callers were getting me to put down Ringo. I mean, Ringo doesn't have much technique at all, but what Ringo did with the Beatles was just right, and you can't knock that. He was one fourth of the band.

[on The Beatles] All they can do is go bish-bosh diddy-bop, bish-bosh diddy-bop. They can't read music. Even Paul McCartney needs someone to write it down for him. And he thinks that's good. There was an article where he said that if he learned to read music, he might not be able to write as well. We used to say about the Beatles in 1963: 'They don't know a hatchet from a crotchet.'

[on George Harrison] He didn't know what the fuck he was talking about. His way of explaining an idea was to wave his arms about. He'd be going: 'Y'know, Ginger, play it like this,' flailing his arms. What the fuck are you talking about! Write it down so I can see what you mean. He couldn't.