Reconstructing a life—notably one which’s gone off the rails—is an train in chasing ghosts. Such ghosts seem all through Drums and Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon, veteran music journalist Joel Selvin’s biography of the legendary rock drummer who backed up frontline stars like John Lennon, the Seaside Boys, and Joe Cocker earlier than a voice in his head compelled him to homicide his mom, Osa. It’s a chilling piece of labor.
Raised in Sherman Oaks in a conventionally dysfunctional household, Gordon took refuge in his musical abilities, which, Selvin notes, “despatched a direct electrical shock wave by his physique.” By highschool, he was gigging on the Condor, the topless membership in San Francisco’s North Seaside, earlier than taking to the highway with the Everly Brothers. He hit the Los Angeles music scene on the precise second when document labels caught within the crooner previous of Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole have been searching for to regulate to the Sixties period of singer-songwriters—and, not coincidentally, money in on their reputation.
Selvin, a former music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle (the place, full disclosure, he and I have been colleagues for a time), has discovered his métier as a author of books about, amongst different topics, the Grateful Useless, the Rolling Stones’ notorious 1969 live performance at Altamont Speedway, and Bay Space roots label Arhoolie Information (that title coauthored with the corporate’s founder, Chris Strachwitz). Right here, he’s on residence turf, utilizing interviews with collaborators and relations to hint Gordon’s profession.
Within the course of, Selvin makes assertions—some controversial—concerning the drummer’s hitmaking position on recordings similar to Glen Campbell’s “Mild on My Thoughts” and Carly Simon’s “You’re So Useless.” Definitely, Gordon was famend for his contributions, however it’s uncertain that his beat alone is what put these songs, or the numerous different pop hits referenced in Drums and Demons (the discography is formidable), excessive.
The case for Gordon’s impression on Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Quantity,” to which he added a tasty jazz intro that quotes Horace Silver’s “Music for My Father,” is extra convincing, as is the argument on behalf of his sterling work on the Derek and the Dominos monitor “Layla”—though that legacy is compromised by the sordid historical past of the track’s well-known piano coda, which Gordon claimed to have composed however apparently lifted with out credit score from his then-girlfriend, Rita Coolidge.
Nonetheless, the center and soul of Drums and Demons is the drummer’s descent into psychological sickness, which Selvin recounts in understated, police reporter prose whereas additionally indicting a damaged psychological well being system and its frequent failures, then and now, to diagnose and deal with victims in a well timed and efficient vogue. When Gordon was handled at a facility within the San Fernando Valley, the medical director concluded that his “main issues have been psychological, and that drug and alcohol points have been secondary,” Selvin asserts.
That mentioned, dosing on tabs of Owsley’s acid and bingeing on speedballs whereas holed up at Eric Clapton’s aptly named Hurtwood Edge property was hardly a highway map to restoration, because the deaths of too many rockers can attest. Being shuttled out and in of psychiatric facilities and rehab services that he was in a position to depart at will made issues significantly worse.
Gordon’s slow-motion decline was horrific. He punched Coolidge exterior a resort room and went on to assault different girlfriends in addition to his second partner. As his life spiraled into chaos, he tried to maintain issues collectively by taking part in with a bar band, the Blue Monkeys, in Santa Monica dives.
His auditory hallucinations, nonetheless, led him to activate his mom, a registered nurse who tried to assist him. In 1983, he attacked her with a hammer, then stabbed her to dying with a butcher knife. He was convicted of second-degree homicide, and he died final yr on the California Medical Facility in Vacaville at age 77, by no means having recovered absolutely from his delusions.
Gordon tried to avoid wasting his life by music—and succeeded, for some time. In the end, nonetheless, he may solely go to this point. Selvin’s knowledgeably reported and researched e book portrays a musician who hid his fears within the shadows behind his drum equipment; it additionally reminds us that it’s harmful and willfully ignorant to think about that being gifted or profitable robotically interprets to contentment or emotional stability.•
Paul Wilner is a longtime journalist, poet, and critic who lives in Monterey County. He’s the previous editor of the San Francisco Examiner Journal, San Francisco Chronicle Model part and managing editor of the Hollywood Reporter. His work has been printed within the Paris Overview, New York Occasions, ZYZZYVA journal, Barnes and Noble Overview, Los Angeles Occasions and lots of different publications.