Author Joel Selvin On the Tragic Career of Rock Drummer Jim Gordon
In his brand new book, author Joel Selvin tells the tragic career story of Jim Gordon, one of the most famous drummers in rock history. Gordon’s legacy would take a horrific turn due to schizophrenia.
Touring with the Everly Brothers right out of high school, he would go on to become an integral member of the legendary Wrecking Crew, playing on countless hit records.
That’s Gordon on “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys, as well as Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.”
And it’s Gordon who, along with bassist Carl Radle, formed the foundation of Eric Clapton’s Layla album under the name Derek and the Dominos.
Joel Selvin background
Joel Selvin is a San Francisco-based music critic and author known for his weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle, which ran from 1972 to 2009. Selvin has written more than 20 books covering various aspects of pop music-including the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock with Sammy Hagar.
His most recent books are Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History and Hollywood Eden: Electric Guitars, Fast Cars and the Myth of the California Paradise.
Joel’s book chronicles Jim Gordon’s incredible career which came to a tragic end when he murdered his own mother.
Interview Excerpts
Jim Gordon – Schizophrenia
JIM MONAGHAN – As you were going through the research for this book. Joel, what surprised you most about Jim Gordon?
JOEL SELVIN – How about how common schizophrenia is? Schizophrenia exists in one in 100 in the general population.
Multiple sclerosis is one in 10,000, but one in 100, that’s 1% of our country is hearing voices. And of all those diagnosed schizophrenics, only half respond to treatment at all.
So it’s just a very dangerous, poisonous condition that affects a broad swath of people. And one of the important things about this book is that it is a detailed account of how mental illness can make your life a disaster.
Jim Gordon’s life history
JM – If you look back at his life history, though, growing up with an alcoholic father, he had his own battles with alcohol and drugs. And, that was what they initially diagnosed him at, not as schizophrenic, but, you know, it was due to alcohol. And I could see why that would be, Joel, based on his drug consumption alone.
JS – A massive amount of intake, everybody that was around him commented on his metabolism being able to just absorb alcohol and drugs. But frankly, I think those were the best coping mechanisms he had available to himself at that time.
The kind of psychiatric drugs that they were giving him, which he took too, were sledgehammer kind of drugs.
Today we have more surgical approach to pharmaceuticals, but, you know, Haldol was an anti-psychotic that they gave him. One of the side effects was making his ribs feel constricted. Can you imagine playing drums in a chemical straight jacket?
Well, he did.
And yeah, his mother was a longtime member of Alcoholics Anonymous as was his father, and his mother was also a medical professional, but she was convinced that Jim’s problems were only drugs and alcohol.
She didn’t see that he was mentally ill and the psychiatrists that he saw didn’t weren’t able to properly diagnose him because he was so high-functioning. He was making a lot of money was incredibly successful in a highly competitive field.
Jim Gordon’s Los Angeles music recording career
JM – In addition to being the story of Jim Gordon, this book is also kind of the story of that whole Los Angeles music scene in the 60s and 70s that he was such a huge part of.
And while I knew he had played on a bunch of different sessions, Joel, I had no idea the amount of different artists that he had played with from the Beach Boys to the Monkees to Frank Zappa to Carly Simon, just an amazing roster of artists that he played with.
JS – Jim had an incredible sense of drums as a musical instrument, and he could find a place for himself, a important musical place in many, many people’s music. He was Merle Haggard’s favorite drummer, and then he played on all those Gary Puckett records and those Gary Puckett records (sessions) were huge with 26-28 session players, and one drummer.
He’s all over the catalog of recordings out of Los Angeles and late 60s and of course that was just an explosive time for Southern California.
That’s Jim on the kit on “The Beat Goes On.”
JM – I went deep down the Jim Gordon Rabbit Hole over the weekend with different YouTube clips and the thing that got me most Joel was, he reminds me a little bit of a Mark Knopfler or a BB King. It’s not necessarily what he played, but what he didn’t play.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, maybe Keith Moon, John Bonham, those kinds of drummers, Ginger Baker, who really made their presence felt on a record. What Jim did to me was kind of lay back and again, what he didn’t play was as important as what he did play.
JS – Well, that’s a always true of musicians. I mean jazz guys are well aware of like the space around the music is more important than the music in many ways.
But Jim, like I said, was this compositional drummer. And, he used his drums as a way to serve the record.
Those sessions were all dedicated to one ideal, which was to make hit records.
So collaborating with another 30 or 40 guys that floated in and out of these sessions, they sharpened their skills to a kind of surgical scientific level. And they were playing on a level that just was unmatched in the rest of the world.
JM – Listening to the way you just described it and then in reading the book, the line that comes to mind is Joni Mitchell’s “stoking the star making machinery behind the popular song” because Jim was right in the thick of it.
JS – That was his job. He was there to make money. He was there to make hit records.
It was like a gunslinger kind of mentality. And, and that was the, the aesthetic, the ethic, the pride of the session player was that was their job and they were good at it.
Jim Gordon – Layla
JM – What he did on Layla, I thought was just extraordinary. And that song alone, the way he goes and changes the beat from one-two-three-four to just the traditional two and four just made the song and again, without overplaying.
JS – I was blown away by his playing on that track and that entire record, as a matter of fact. You’re so perceptive to notice that because, of course, the guitars are so dynamic in that piece.
It’s really hard to get down to where the drums are. The YouTube, the internet world has a bunch of isolated drum tracks of Jim playing on “Layla.”
And it’s truly revelatory, how brilliant, how nuanced, how incredibly subtle the drumming is on that. He braids the drum part around those guitar parts and in doing so is able to propel the whole track.
In doing so is able to propel the whole track. It’s really marvelous. And, and that’s Jim’s trick trick that’s Jim’s thing.
Jim Gordon – Tom Petty
JM – There’s another great story in the book of him with a young Tom Petty and a young Mike Campbell on a session. That’s a great story.
JS – The people that were in that room that day still like remember it like a car crash they were in it was just astonishing to all involved but Tom Petty’s band had broken up and there was not a Heartbreakers yet.
So they ran a couple of Tom Petty solo sessions and use session musicians. They brought in Al Kooper to play piano. They brought in Emory Gordy from Emmylou Harris’s band to play bass.
And then Tom and Mike played guitars.
Jim was the drummer and I’ve seen the union contract and everybody got scale except Jim.
Jim came in at triple scale.
But that didn’t bother anybody they were all like whoa this is the guy from Layla!
They were pumped right and they cut their first track. They go into the studio they listen back and Jim says to the engineer, do you have any room left because I could double my drums.
Petty and Campbell looked at each other like they’ve never heard of somebody doubling their drums.
You’ve got to imagine that’s just an incredibly impossible task because you’ve got to hit the same place on the drums with the same strength at the same time.
It’s got to match volume, value, timing because all you do is slip once on the cymbal and it’s going to smear the track.
All right, he goes out and does it in one take like a magic trick or something. And these people who I’m talked to guy just last week who was there is going like he just couldn’t believe it.
He had a supernatural talent. And he was he was the drums he didn’t play the drums he was the drums and the drums were his safe place.
He could play drums and his disease went away.
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