Rick Rubin Wanted Ginger Baker To Be Black Sabbath’s Drummer

(Tim Whitby/Gareth Cattermole – Getty Images)

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Legendary Cream drummer Ginger Baker playing for Black Sabbath? It’s not a classic rock version of fantasy football – it was an actual suggestion floated by Sabbath’s producer, Rick Rubin. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, guitarist Tony Iommi revealed that, when Bill Ward parted ways with the band, Rubin thought Baker would be a good replacement.

Iommi told the magazine, “I thought, ‘Bloody hell?’ I just couldn’t see that.” They ended up going with former Rage Against The Machine/Audioslave drummer, Brad Wilk (currently playing shows as part of Dave Grohl’s Sound City Players collective).

But clearly, Rubin hadn’t seen the recent documentary Beware Of Mr. Baker when he made the suggestion. In that film, Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich says, “If Cream did not invent heavy metal, they certainly were… very instrumental in facilitating it.” To which Baker says: “The birth of heavy metal? It should have been aborted!” (Ironically, Bill Ward is also interviewed in the documentary, and notes that Cream “were at the beginning of many, many things.”

MORE: Ten Unanswered Questions From Beware Of Mr. Baker

Black Sabbath’s upcoming Rick Rubin produced album, 13, is due out in June and features founding members Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne and bassist Geezer Butler together for the first time in over thirty years. The band just posted a quick promo video to their official YouTube page. In it, Ozzy says, “This Black Sabbath album is quite possibly the most important album of my career.” Watch it below.