The drummer was diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the spine several years ago, but has been forced to continue touring because of financial problems.

Nowadays Ginger can barely walk or sit, and spends long hours lying down.

Explains the chain-smoking 72-year-old musician to Britain's newspaper Daily Mirror:

"Sometimes, I wonder if the pain is God's way of punishing me. To be in constant pain but not terminally ill. Drumming is agony. (...) I just think about putting a grenade in my back. I also have COPD, a lung condition. I find smoking helps with the pain of the arthritis. But it is killing my chest."

This weekend, his band, Ginger Baker's Jazz Confusion, starts a new tour of the UK. Ginger says he doesn't play his drum kit, except at gigs:

"I don't need to rehearse, have never needed to. But mainly, it's just too painful. It kills me."