Former Cream drummer Ginger Baker talks about his battle with heroin, how he was the original Rolling Stones drummer and being the subject of new documentary Beware of Mr Baker

In the 60s, when rock musicians bestrode the world like demigods, no one embodied the wildness of the job description more completely than Peter "Ginger" Baker. A jazz drummer by calling, Baker gained a reputation as the most uncontrollable musician on the scene – a cadaverous, red-headed giant with a reputation for belligerence, a heroin addict like his jazz heroes, a man with strings of girlfriends, a neglected wife, father of the rock drum solo and several children, and driver of a custom-built Jensen FF.

But Baker's natural musicality on the kit was a match for any musician. Jimi Hendrix came to Britain to pay tribute to Cream, comprising Baker, Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce. With the addition of Steve Winwood and Ric Grech, Baker and Clapton formed the short-lived Blind Faith; then came Baker's own Air Force, before he split for the home of the drum, west Africa, and into a musical partnership with the great Fela Kuti.

But after nearly four decades of wandering, from Hawaii to Jamaica, Italy to Colorado and South Africa to set up a polo school, the 73-year-old, Lewisham-born drummer – and the man once voted the rock star least likely to survive the 60s – is back in Britain and living in Kent. A recent tour of Japan with Ginger Baker's Jazz Confusion left him hospitalised with a serious respiratory infection and he's dogged by painful degenerative osteoarthiritis that has been aggravated by riding accidents. "I couldn't breathe. For a moment I thought I was dying," Baker, who is recuperating, told the Observer last week.

If it's grim in Kent, across the Atlantic Baker's fame is again in the ascendant. A new documentary, Beware of Mr Baker, is packing arthouse cinemas in New York and Los Angeles. It's been hailed as one of the most compelling rock documentary of recent years, and will be seen in the UK in the coming months.

Baker, who has been married four times, says he enjoyed the film in parts. "I've only seen it once. Some of it was okay, some wasn't. But I didn't make it," he says. But he reflects: "It's been an amazing rollercoaster ride. I've lost everything many times. A lot of people would have just given up." His most recent incarnation in the polo business collapsed after Baker sued the First National Bank of South Africa. "I won the case but it caused my financial ruin."

Baker may have found a worthy adversary in Jay Bulger, a novice documentary maker who visited him in South Africa under the pretence of being a reporter for Rolling Stone a decade ago. Baker is filmed clocking Bulger on the nose with his walking cane. "I had no choice," Baker says. "That was after a month of interviews, and I hate interviews. He was coming up with silly, stupid things I didn't want to do, like teaching some African kids how to play." For Bulger, the idea of capturing the drummer in a documentary was irresistible. "I was advised to stay clear of Ginger," he said recently. "I'd heard he was manic, dangerous, unapproachable. He sounded like Grendel from Beowulf."

Old bandmates, such as Jack Bruce – whom Baker physically attacked, precipitating the breakup of Cream – and Clapton contribute to the documentary. Asked if contemporaries such as John Bonham or Keith Moon ever measured up to Baker, Clapton is emphatic: "No. No. No. Different league. Completely."

Instead, Baker sought the recognition of heroes such as Elvin Jones, Max Roach, Phil Seamen and Art Blakey. Not Bonham or Moon? "Don't make me laugh," he says. "If it doesn't swing, it doesn't swing. There's lots of drummers with lots of technique. It doesn't matter how many beats you play, it's where you play them, and a lot of it is what you don't play." So what would have happened if Cream had stayed together?

"Cream only lasted as long as it did because it was successful," Baker says. "I was lucky to be part of a movement in which I was one of the major players."

"If truth be known," he continues, "I was the Stones' first drummer. We used to do the interval for Alexis Korner with Mick Jagger, who was like Korner's protege, and Brian Jones. I got on very well with Brian, so we formed a band. Then Charlie [Watts] left Alexis Korner so I could join, and I got Charlie into the Stones. But it was Brian who set the Stones on its path."

But Baker was never destined to stay in one place, or one band, for long. In retrospect, the foreign adventuring was largely a result of the heroin addiction he'd acquired as a jazz drummer in the London clubs of the late 1950s and early 1960s. "I don't have fond memories of it at all. To find you have to do something just to feel normal is not a good road. I got involved in 1960 when people were getting more than they were using on prescription and selling it. It was called a 'jack', one sixth of a gram of heroin in one tiny white pill." While others were dabbling – "Clapton was heading in that direction, but Eric's problem was alcohol, not heroin" – Baker was deep in the throes of addiction.

"Every time I went to Africa I got off," he recalls. "You have to get a good two years clear, and those two years are the most difficult. You reach a point where you can say 'no'. Then you say 'no' again. The third time a little thing goes off in your brain, 'I wish I'd said yes.' Then on the fourth time you just say 'yes' and you're back on it again. I came off something like 29 times." It wasn't until 1981, when he moved to Italy, that Baker kicked the drug for good. "That's when I got clear of it all. I moved to a little village in the middle of nowhere, where nobody spoke English. I got into olive farming. It was very rewarding, very hard work but very good therapy."

Perhaps it would have been easier to go to rehab? "No, no, no, no! There's only one person who can help an addict and that's an addict himself. The whole rehab thing is just a bloody con to make money and take advantage. The whole thing is nonsense." Baker has lost some of his physical power to age and infirmity, but he says: "With all my disabilities it's a miracle I can play at all, and I'm playing as well as ever. If I'm enjoying the music, that overrides everything. The pain goes away. But when I stop after a gig, having played an hour and a half, I'm thoroughly exhausted."