Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon

by Joel Selvin

The blazing rock opera of the greatest drummer of all-time, Jim Gordon, from the legendary Wrecking Crew to redefining the genre on the Seventies’ biggest hits and outrageous tours, and ultimately to the most shocking crime in rock history—a story of musical genius, uncontrollable madness, and the big fill

Jim Gordon was the greatest rock drummer of all-time. Just ask the world-famous musicians who played with him—John Lennon, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Frank Zappa, Steely Dan, Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, Joe Cocker, and many more. They knew him for his superior playing, extraordinary training and technique, preternatural intuition, perfect sense of time, and his “big fill”—the mathematically-precise clatter that exploded like detonating fireworks on his drum breaks. But as best-selling author and award-winning journalist Joel Selvin reveals in Drums & Demons, the story of Jim Gordon is the most brilliant, turbulent, and wrenching rock opera ever.

Drums& Demons follows Gordon as the very chemicals in his brain that gifted him also destroyed him. His head crowded with a hellish gang of voices screaming at him, demanding obedience, Gordon descended from the absolute heights of the rock world—playing with the most famous musicians of his generation—to working with a Santa Monica dive-bar band for $30 a night. And then he committed the most shocking crime in rock history.

Based on his trademark extensive, detailed research, Joel Selvin’s Drums & Demons is at once an epic journey through an artist’s monumental musical contributions, a rollicking history of rock drumming, and a terrifying downward spiral into unimaginable madness that Gordon fought a valiant but losing battle against. One of the great untold stories of rock is finally being told.

Genres: Music, Biography, Audiobook, Nonfiction, True Crime, Crime

304 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 27, 2024

About the author

San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin started covering rock shows for the paper shortly after the end of the Civil War. His writing has appeared in a surprising number of other publications that you would think should have known better.

Reviews

[Char · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boy, the word “tragic” in this title is no joke.

How does one go from co-writing Layla with Eric Clapton, touring with Clapton as a Domino, and playing as a top notch studio drummer for the likes of The Beach Boys, Streisand, George Harrison, Tom Petty, and hundreds of others, to a man that commits matricide? This book shows us exactly how and it is so very sad.

One of the things that spurred me to ask for an ARC of this book was its focus on mental illness. (There's plenty of drugs and alcohol too, but we'll set that aside for the moment.) I have close relatives with mental illnesses of one type or another. My husband's best friend growing up developed schizophrenia around the age of 18, and it stole him away. I wanted to learn more about it and how it works.

On to Jim Gordon. The son of an alcoholic, strict father and a somewhat checked-out mom, (at first), Jim led a normal, quiet life, (unless his dad was in the midst of an alcoholic rage.) Then, Jim discovered drumming. And not only that, he was very, VERY, good at it. There is a bit of discussion about techniques and what Jim did that made him stand out and I must admit, some of that talk was a bit over my head as a non-musician. However, the gist of it came across for sure, Jim was phenomenal.

He went from making very little money with this band or that, until recording studios in Hollywood really got going, and then he was in high demand. Once other musicians and record producers started hearing what Jim could do, all hell broke loose. He was playing with musicians on the road, he was working in the studio, he was always employed.

What no one really knew at the time was that Jim was struggling internally. He heard voices. Drumming drowned them out for a while, but soon enough the drumming wasn't enough to calm those voices. He began drinking and drugging to drown those voices out, but soon after, those weren't enough to quiet the voices either. Many thought it was the alcohol and drugs causing the problems, but in fact, it was the voices that caused the addictions. (And perhaps a genetic leaning as well, since both his brother and his father became sober after years of alcoholism.)

As the drugs and alcohol became even larger problems for him, Jim started to become violent. As time went along, the voices got louder and louder and started urging him to violent acts. He fought them for so long, but they began to take over. After dating Rita Coolidge for a long time, one day in the studio he asked her to come out into the hallway. Rita, thinking he might propose, eagerly followed him out at which point he punched her in the face so hard she slammed into a wall and crumpled into a heap. She had a black eye for the rest of their tour. (Another thing regarding Rita that was a terrible surprise-she wrote the piano piece at the end of Derek and the Domino's song "Layla." When she heard the song on the radio and recognized her work, she went to Eric Clapton's manager, she was basically told "You're just a girl singer. What are you going to do about it?" When the song was released, the credits stated written by Jim Gordon and Eric Clapton.)

By that point Jim was a mess. He began having loud arguments with people no one else could see. He was beginning to experience great physical pain if he ignored the voices. They would say "throw all your gold records out," he'd take them down, truck them out to the dumpster, go inside, drink and drug till the voices went away, at which point he went and got his records and hung them back up again. Imagine day after day of this mental torture and physical pain. His mom tried to get him help, and indeed, Jim tried. Hospital after hospital, doctor after doctor, and in and out of drug rehabs numerous times. He was put on all kinds of different medications, but none of them quelled the voices. They tortured him, they never left him alone, and they eventually spurred him into an act so violent, that society never forgave him for it.

Jim Gordon's story is magnificent and tragic all at the same time. I am here to say, from a more modern standpoint, that the treatment of mental illness has not come that far since then. My family members have dealt with bipolar disease, among others, and I've seen them struggle with meds that do not work, or have such awful side effects that they can't take them. It sometimes seems to me that creative people like Jim, and a few members of my family even, often pay for their creativeness in the form of mental illnesses or issues.

In today's world we like to think that the term "mental illness" is no longer taboo and that we have removed the stigma associated with the term. We have not. Even today, people can be fired for being open and honest about their mental health. They can be shunned. They can be shamed. None of which helps to treat the actual problem. We should be working, and working hard, on new treatments, on public opinion, and on the opinions of employers-why should someone be ashamed of mental illness? They are not ashamed to say they have cancer. These are diseases, and just because they often show no outward signs, they are diseases just the same.

This book left me feeling so sad. Not only for Jim and what happened to him, but for the world of music as well. We lost a good human being, and perhaps, one of the greatest drummers of all time to a disease, ab0ut which we still don't know a lot. I will never hear Layla again in quite the same way.

Drums & Demons was narrated by David Bendena and he did a decent job, it took a while but his performance grew on me.

I enjoyed this tragic story, (as much as one can enjoy the tale of someone else's mental downward spiral.) I learned about the music industry at the time, and to be honest, I liked reading about the debauchery of some of these bands back in their heyday. This book brings plenty of that. In the end though, it was my interest in the psychology of it all that kept me reading/listening. It is my hope that someday, we will have a better handle on mental illness and how to treat it. I'm just sorry that we will be too late to save Jim.

Highly recommended, especially for fans of rock music, musicians, and those fascinated by the psychology of it all.

*Audio ARC from publisher, via NetGalley. Thank you.*

[Michael Burke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hearing What No One Else Could

You can’t make this stuff up– and it is heartbreaking that this isn’t fiction.

Jim Gordon played drums on so many important hit songs it was ridiculous. He was a member of Derek and the Dominoes and was even credited for co-writing “Layla.” one of rock’s seminal pieces. He was the most in-demand studio drummer, he was well connected, he was good looking– he was on top of the world.

On June 3, 1983, he took a hammer and butcher knife and brutally murdered his 71-year-old-mother.

This is a gut-wrenching story. Jim appeared to be the nicest guy in the world, a little shy, and blessed with an intuitive talent that had the greatest drummers in the world, including Hal Blaine and Jim Keltner, shaking their heads in astonishment. There is a playlist at the back of the book showing work with the Beach Boys, Phil Spector, Neil Young, John Lennon, George Harrison, Tom Petty… the beat goes on and on.

And then the voices came. The lone way to keep the voices at bay was to smother them with increasing amounts of drugs and alcohol. As his behavior slowly became more erratic, people chalked it up to another rock star’s tango with drugs– just an occupational hazard. No one was aware of the voices he heard in his head, not his girlfriends, not his coworkers, not even the psychiatrists he eventually turned to.

Rita Coolidge, at one time his girlfriend, tells of the time they were part of Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, and Jim asked her to step out into the hallway with him. Things had been going so well with the two that she guessed he might be asking her to marry him. Instead, he punched her in the face so hard she hit the wall and lost consciousness. He nonchalantly walked into the next room and told people, “I hit Rita.”

Later, as the voices became louder and more frequent, Jim would suffer unbearable pain if he tried to ignore them… a “white hot cruelty pain” encircling his head. His career started collapsing as his performance and dependability became increasingly unstable. The self-medicating with liquor and drugs only masked his condition to friends and doctors. Complaints of depression, anxiety and fatigue were never linked to schizophrenia. No one knew about the voices.

The voices came from many people, with his mother’s becoming more prevalent. He believed she “...was a truly evil person who had a hand in the deaths of Karen Carpenter and Paul Lynde.”

Joel Selvin has written a captivating account flowing as quickly as the best of novels. While it is hard to have any sympathy for someone responsible for such a gruesome act, the overwhelming perception is that Jim Gordon was doomed, a victim tormented by his own illness. A tragic tale.

A couple side notes: This book opened my eyes (or ears) to so many details going into drum performances I was never sensitive to– I will listen with enlightenment now. The other note is it seems, although Layla is credited to Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon, the piano portion was composed by Rita Coolidge who was never recognized creatively or financially. When she confronted Clapton’s manager, Robert Stigwood, he slammed her with, “Who do you think you are? You’re a girl singer– what are you going to do?”

Thank you to Diversion Books and Edelweiss for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Earlier this year I read the Lou Reed bio by Will Hermes and abandoned ship fairly early on. The problem was not that it was not well researched or that Hermes could not write a sentence, it was and he could. The problem was that Hermes is a fanboy, and he is apparently unable to discard any scrap of information in writing about his celebrity crush. The number of pages in that book showing Lou being an asshat while in high school and at Syracuse University was astonishing. The number of readers who want that level of detail about a surly teen Lou has got to be pretty darn small. This book suffers from precisely the same problem. So much of this was just a litany of mundane activites. I mean, if you want the inside scoop on the dissolution of Delaney and Bonnie, or long to know that Jim Gordon's average lunch cost while on one tour was $1.06, or care that Jim played drums on Brand New Key and Midnight at the Oasis you may disagree with my assessment. I am happy this book exists for you.

Perhaps ironically, there is often too little information about the things I found interesting. Selvin includes the guest lists for most every gathering and recording session but shares little about the goings-on. I have read about some of those gatherings related by other people in the room and I found them quite intriguing. I would have enjoyed some more dirt. All Selvin does is state without detail that it was the 70's sex drugs and rock and roll bacchanal we all expect. I would also have liked to hear more about what made Gordon's drumming so good, especially from the perspective of the musicians who hired him. Why was it so different from what others were doing? Another missing ingredient was a detailed account about the writing of Layla since Gordon's writing credit (and the fight for it) is mentioned a lot. I will say I was astonished to learn that neither Duane Allman nor Eric Clapton was the most wasted musician on the amazing track.

Of course this is not just a book about music, it is a true tragedy. A prodigiously talented and very sick man could not get the help he needed, despite having resources. His illness led him to murder and before that to commit brutal acts against women (it is never indicated he felt bad about those attacks when he again became lucid.) We learn a bit about the progression of Gordon's illness and a great deal about his self-medication. And we learn that this very sick man played drums on the majority of great and/or fondly remembered tracks of the 60's, 70's, and very early 80's, If you think that is hyperbole the list includes the aforementioned Layla, Here Come Those Tears Again, God Only Knows. Sarah Smile, Gentle On My Mind, These Boots (Are Made For Walking), River Deep/Mountain High, Imagine, Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, School's Out (voted Senior Song my year but the principal changed it to the Theme from Mahogany), and hundreds of others. This is all interesting, it makes for a great book pitch, but there is not much of a unifying story. Insult to injury, I started out with the audiobook, and the reader droned on endlessly. I found it impossible to focus owing both to the only very occasionally gripping story and the monotone. I got the Kindle version and it was much better.

An additional note, I think Selvin hates women. He is entirely dismissive of women throughout the book, though admittedly he acknowledges how often they were screwed out of credit for their work by male artists. Most of the women are described only in terms of physical comeliness. When other attributes are raised they are generally negative. Carly Simon was a brat, Rita Cooledge went off with her friends and left Jim alone rather than staying by his side every moment like a good woman, etc. Women are punched and beaten and it is all reported dispassionately except where the violent acts are cited as evidence of Jim's declining mental health. Selvin is almost derisive about Jim's second wife's decision to immediately leave him after he beat her into unconsciousness. He celebrates Rita Cooledge giving Jim another chance after he left her unconscious and bleeding. He writes almost sneeringly about Jim's daughter whom Jim largely abandoned her entire life. He seems appalled that she would not respond to Jim's letters from prison after he murdered his mother/her grandmother. How cruel of her, when after all he always paid child support. I understand that Jim was sick and that some of his behavior came from that but I would hope that reasonable people would understand and support the healthy boundaries set by this young woman whom he traumatized repeatedly. Those boundaries are for her not an offense against him, and she owes him nothing.

Most of the Goodreads reviews of the book have been very positive so look at those. I was not interested in the complete and unabridged compendium of Jim Gordon trivia. I was hoping Selvin would dive into the thin line between genius and madness (which he mentions at the start and never again pursues) and/or the relationship between Gordon and his mother. Maybe the fault is with this reader, but even if it is a user error I think a lot of other readers would feel the same.

[*TUDOR^QUEEN* · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was drawn to read this book because I had heard a lot about this controversial musical figure while reading other musical biographies, most recently a great one about Leon Russell. Jim Gordon was a massively talented drummer who could perform miracles as a session drummer on scores of famous hits. He also is credited as co-writer of the Eric Clapton song "Layla", as Jim wrote and performed the iconic piano coda that ends the song- a controversy as his ex-girlfriend Rita Coolidge swears that they wrote this together during their relationship. Jim played on recordings by The Beach Boys, Derek and the Dominos, Harry Nilsson, Helen Reddy, Steely Dan...and many others. He also was part of the "Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen" tour in 1970. He killed his mother in 1983 and was incarcerated ever since. He was psychotic and persecuted by voices that told him what to do. He also experienced excruciating phantom pains associated with these psychotic incidents. The voices told him to stop eating, stop drumming, etc. At one point he repeatedly would remove his gold records off his wall and carry them out to the refuse bins, then bring them back in....over and over again in supplication to these voices.

While Jim and his then girlfriend Rita Coolidge were part of the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, out of nowhere he punched Rita in the face so hard she fell to the floor. During another aborted psychotic escapade, he chased after Chris O'Dell (former Leon Russell girlfriend who had also worked for The Beatles at Apple Corp) with a butcher knife. These two women were very lucky to escape with their lives, but his mother wasn't so lucky. Jim died in prison in 2023.

I listened to the audiobook. It was very informative and chock full of details. On the one hand, there was the happy story of an incredibly gifted drummer who enjoyed great success, tempered by intermittent mental lapses into madness. I loved hearing tangentially about the other famous musical artists Jim interacted with. As the years went by and his mental condition worsened, it was like a crescendo building and quite disturbing to hear about. These persistent voices in Jim's head were mainly dominated by that of his mother, which instructed him to kill her. This was a fascinating deep dive into a masterful drummer whose career stardom was cancelled by matricide.

The audiobook was narrated by David Bendena. He did a pretty good job, but he kind of reminded me of an actor on the show "Chicago Fire" whose voice already disturbs me. They have someone with a sort of unsettling voice narrating a very unsettling story. I think I would have preferred reading the ebook because the story was so intricate and full of juicy music industry details that I would have preferred to savor it more by reading it.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media for providing an advance reader copy via NetGalley.

[Trio · Rating 5 out of 5]

I completely devoured Joel Selvin's Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon. What an amazing biorgraphy!

Chock full of incredible stories about the trials and challenges of this super talented drummer, I'm stunned by the amount of research Selvin did to pull this book together.

Beautifully narrated by David Bendena, I highly recommend the audio version of this info-packed story. Great for fans of rock music, '70's history, and biographies!

an audiobook copy of Drums & Demons was provided by Dreamscape Media, via NetGalley, for the purpose of my honest review, all opinions are my own

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely talented on the drums, Jim Gordon played on songs like “Marrakesh Express” to “Different Drum” to “Layla” and tons of other hits, session work, and number one singles. Unfortunately, he struggled with mental illness exacerbated by drugs and alcohol and a voice in his head telling him to kill his mother. Talented but disturbed.

[KarnagesMistress · Rating 5 out of 5]

Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon is more than just a biography of Jim Gordon. It is the biography of an entire group of musicians during a particular time period. Jim just happens to be the focal point. Along the way, I learned more about artists ranging from Bonnie Bramlett (I will never watch Roseanne reruns the same way again!) to Joe Cocker (TMI, brah), and the session musician system. For these details alone I highly recommend Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon to any rock aficionado.

Joel Selvin's treatment of Jim and his mental illness was fair. Schizophrenia is a serious thing, and I believe strongly that the public deserves to be protected from those with violent symptoms. I also think the psych industry deserves the dressing-down that Joel Selvin gave it for (1) its inability to deal with the dual diagnosis of use disorder (addiction) and mental illness; and (2) even today, the US psych industry largely ignores medications like acamprosate, disulfiram, and naltrexone in favor of 12-step programs (see the article The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous in the April 2015 issue of The Atlantic). If things are still so bad today, looking back 40 years, is it any wonder that poor Osa Gordon was murdered?

I would love to see Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon turned into a biopic or streaming series. I wish all available closure for Jim Gordon's surviving family. I believe Joel Selvin's treatment of Jim's professional reputation was rehabilitative and no less than deserved. I would like to thank Dreamscape Media. for allowing me to experience this NetGalley audiobook.

[G · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a review of the audio version of this book; unfortunately Goodreads, true to form, doesn't offer a proper listing for this one.

This book is for you if you're really, really into the 60's/70's music scene. All the main players are here. Everything is explained, shown, and talked about in excrutiating detail. There's lots of behind-the-scenes stuff and rock music history and a whole section on drums and drumming and the history of drumming in recorded music.

Also, we hear about genius drummer, Jim Gordon.

This, to me, was the main problem with this book -- Gordon's biography gets drowned out by all this other super important stuff the author thought had to go into his narrative as well. I get that Gordon in a lot of ways was very much of his time, a product of and willing participant in all kinds of drug use and the so-called rock'n roll lifestyle (i.e. testosterone-driven self-centered young white males with a lot of disposable income and no purpose in life behaving badly; not all that glamorous in my opinion, but hey), so of course that kind of thing is just to be expected, but. At a certain point, "Drums & Demons" veers off its rails and decides to embrace all of that era's rock music, so we get treated to all this completely superfluous detail of Famous Other Rock Star doing this or that with that Legendary Producer or this Other Famous Rock Star, and wouldn't you know it, some years down the line, they would tour with Rock Star X while Rock Star Y would end up with that other dude's producer sprucing up his new album, and so on and so on and so ON. It got EXHAUSTING. Also, like I said, the person who was ostensibly the reason for this book getting written tends to fall out of view completely every now and then.
There's also precious little about Jim Gordon the man. We get to hear everything and then some about his professional exploits (and that dude was on EVERYTHING from that period; he played drums on the "Rockford Files" theme music, for crying out loud), but things like his marriage(s), the birth of his only child, his private life and thoughts and all that take a definite backseat to the circus that was his career. Yes, he was a genius drummer. But there's only so much musical fawning I can take before it gets painfully tedious (and repetitive). In a way I was glad when the narrative reached the point when he finally dropped out of professional music because of his worsening mental state; at least that meant I didn't have to suffer through another American Psycho-style Steely Dan or Derek & the Dominos or Bachman Turner Overdrive career recap. (Then again, the author, never one to miss a chance to cram some more Redundant Music History 101 into his book, uses the final chapter, set in a medical prison facility, to give us a quick yet in-depth rundown of the 1993 Grammys. You know, just in case you couldn't recall who were that year's presenters for Best Song, for instance, or what funny quip Garry Shandling came up with, or how Eric Clapton styled his hair.)

I guess I would have gotten more out of this book if that era's music meant more to me. As it is, I often felt the urge to just swat whole passages away when listening to the audiobook, with the author going on yet another tangent with (to me) useless info filling the air like pesky auditory insects. (Admittedly, I'm not really an audiobook person. I would have much preferred the print version; I only requested the audiobook because I was so interested in Jim Gordon. Oh, the irony.) Still, this is billed as a specific person's biography, not a treatise on a certain era's rock music and all its key players, so being forced to sit through yet another detour into Classic Rock City was not exactly what I came for.
Also, it felt weird that I was listening to some person telling me about this track or that incredible piece of drumming in words, without providing an actual sound snippet. I know this is probably down to rights and somesuch, but still, I thought it less than ideal that in the audio (!) version of a musician's biography, which just by virtue of its format surely lends itself to adding audio "illustration" the same way a printed book uses photos, there was no actual music.
I liked the narrator, though. He had a nice voice that even held its shape when I (through sheer desperation and "And what Eric Clapton did next" overload) turned up the playback speed.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ALC (I guess?) in exchange for an honest review.

[Slagle Rock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joel Selvin is a great writer. I've read a number of his titles and enjoyed them all. I wasn't sure if I had enough interest in Jim Gordon to read an entire book about the famous drummer but the author turned his story into a fascinating read. Gordon played on many major hits of the 60s and 70s as a much sought after studio musician. His career was challenged and ultimately destroyed by mental illness and inner demons that also resulted in the drummer murdering his mother. The highs and lows of the drummer's life are explored in equal measures in this book, which also contains a lot of related rock and roll history from the era.

[Daniel Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible rock and roll events take place in here involving Jim Gordon. However, the schizophrenia that he dealt with was awful. This was very eye opening.

[David Wasley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of this book has a lot of meandering filler on musicians that Gordon worked with. The second half starts to focus more on Gordon and becomes more interesting. It was truly a tragic life.

[Robert Reeve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another entertaining and informative foray from Joel Selvin into the music and cultural scene of the late 60's through the 70's focusing on Jim Gordon. Gordon was the most sought-after session/studio/concert drummer of his time. He helped fashion hit after hit and played with some of the best artists of the era. Unfortunately, Jim was plagued by voices in his head that he tried to dull with drugs and alcohol. This ultimately led to the tragic murder of his own mother in 1983. Sad and disturbing at times, the story and insights are also thrilling for those of us who remember the flower power years. This author's books are gems.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super sad read. ARC audio copy (although I didn't finish this before it was released officially) meant that it took me forever to get through this. Gordon's story is an absolute tragedy, but Selvin does a nice job of chronicling Gordon as a musician and his resume is insane, but Gordon's abusive behavior towards the women in his life was really upsetting to read about. He played on some of my favorite albums, many I didn't know about (Smiley Smile?! The Muppet Movie?!), but his struggles with substance abuse clearly didn't help and, famously, he murdered his mother in a schizophrenic daze. Selvin really excelled at balancing this book as an appreciation of Gordon's sizable talent as a drummer and telling Gordon's life story as a cautionary tale about the dangers of an unchecked mental health crisis coupled with substance abuse - terrifying at times.

[Melanie Lafortune · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible story of a talented but tormented studio drummer who played with more musicians than you can even imagine during the 1960s and 1970s. Just about any singer you can think of during that era he recorded with including Eric Clapton , Beach Boys , Everly Brothers, Carly Simon and so many others. His talent was beyond belief but so were the voices in his which lead him to kill his mother. Thank you to Dreamscape Media and Net Galley for the advanced copy of the audiobook

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing, humane treatment of a fascinating, tragic story. Wonderfully written.

[David Berlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most drummers know the story of Jim Gordon becoming the top dog studio drummer in Hollywood who was later tortured by schizophrenia and the voices in his head that told him to kill his mother when he was 38.

Joel Selvin’s book, Drums and Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon chronicles the drummer’s rise as a gifted young musician and it is an attempt to restore his standing. Only in the book’s final three chapters does the biographer dive into the musician’s tragic final days, when his undiagnosed schizophrenia finally consumed him.

Selvin is the author of more than 20 works including a book I loved and learned a lot from, “Altamont,” which chronicles the tragic 1969 Woodstock West rock festival headed by the Rolling Stones. I’ve seen him in documentaries and Selvin is a classic rock historian.

As recounted by Selvin, Gordon heard voices that would only grow more hostile and dangerous over time, even causing him intense physical pain if he dared to disobey them. Years later, Gordon would commit one of the most horrific acts in the annals of rock history: On June 3, 1983, he murdered his 71-year-old mother by bludgeoning her with a hammer and stabbing her repeatedly in the chest. Gordon said her voice had ordered him to commit the grisly act.

In “Drums and Demons,” Selvin aims to restore Gordon’s humanity and reputation by showing his professional triumphs in the context of his struggles with addiction and mental illness. The same electrochemical system in his brain that gave him the extraordinary gift at drumming also made him ill.

Drums were a place of self-worth and calm and the burgeoning music scene of L.A. in the 60’s & 70’s was advantageous to a dedicated, hard-working young musician. Music remained medicinal throughout his most troubled days.

Gordon epitomizes what a great drummer can do for a song. They sit at the back of the stage out of the limelight, keeping the beat and driving the rhythm. The great drummers are collaborators, artisans building the foundation that other musicians elaborate. They are the engine room of the rock band. Without the drummer, it wouldn’t be rock and roll.

Before he was out of high school, Gordon was spotted playing at a small club by the Everly Brothers’ music director, Frankie Knight, who saw that Gordon had, as Selvin describes it, “a bounce, a lilt, a boiling undercurrent, and an instinct to drop bombs and when to hold back that couldn’t be learned.” Gordon was an excellent sight reader; he also had a solid musical understanding of where to push and when to leave space.

Gordon had been drumming in recording studios for years. Locked in rooms without windows playing drums. He had done everything from television pre-records, and movie soundtracks to radio jingles and TV commercials. He seemed at his best when it came to making hit records with superstar artists.

Gordon would go on to play drums for Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominos, adding the song’s indelible piano coda to “Layla,” and record with John Lennon and George Harrison. Clapton and Ringo Starr considered him the best drummer in rock.

Gordon’s work with Clapton, claims the author, “had a rhythm section operating on almost telepathic levels, and Jim, freed from the microscopic intensity of the recording studio, was unchained and unbound, exploding on the drums in all directions at once.” Gordon was no longer a session drummer but part of an elite circle of world-famous musicians. Clapton, at this time, had a severe drug problem, and Gordon was also taking harder drugs. Probably both for pleasure and medicinally.

Jim was in the era where alcohol, cocaine and heroin were pervasive, but that brought out a lot of bad behavior in a lot of drug induced behavior. There was no small irony that, amid all the depravity and debauchery, nobody could distinguish authentic psychotic behavior.

In the beginning, drummer Jim Gordon, was on part of Joe Cocker’s infamous Mad Dogs and Englishmen revue, a traveling circus of sex, drugs and legendary music, featuring bandleader and keyboardist-guitarist Leon Russell; saxophonist Bobby Keys, a sideman for the Rolling Stones; and singer Rita Coolidge. The drunken troupe astonished audiences with their transcendent performances, leaving fans wanting more. Gordon who was described as a handsome California looking guy with sandy hair and demure personality would go on to have a relationship with Coolidge.

One night after a Mad Dogs and Englishmen show, Gordon was hanging out in a hotel room with his girlfriend Coolidge and bassist Carl Radle, his future Derek and the Dominos bandmate. After drinking and snorting coke, Gordon asked Coolidge if he could speak to her in the hall. Given how close they had become, she thought he might propose. Instead, he punched her in the face, knocking her unconscious. That was the end of that relationship. Coolidge would go on to marry Kris Kristofferson.

Jim moved through his life like a ghost. He was friendly but had no real friends. He hid himself from any close observation. He was not threatening, so he went unchallenged. As long as he could play drums, he was all right. He kept it a secret from everyone that he was hearing violent voices in his head.

The music scene throughout the ’70s was awash in drugs of all kinds. On top of that, Gordon’s appetite for liquor was also enormous. The drummer was now snorting cocaine and shooting heroin as well as drinking quarts of liquor. His volatile temper could flare up at unexpected moments. Some of these stories are frightening. Yet, when he was recording, Gordon’s skill never faltered. Despite the drummer’s mental health issues and substance abuse, Gordon’s work with these bands feature some of his finest and best-known accomplishments.

Selvin vividly charts Gordon’s decline in harrowing detail, including his alarming violence toward women, myriad psychotic episodes and banishment from rock royalty because of his increasing unreliability and frightening behavior. Jim was capable at times of living in the real world, he also inhabited a delusional world where he did not know the difference between right and wrong, nor could he understand the nature of his acts.

By the early ’80s Gordon’s auditory hallucinations were growing louder and more vehement. The drummer became increasingly unpredictable and delusional, to the point of becoming suicidal. The details Selvin supplies of his subject’s final demise are heartbreaking.

In October 1982, Jim checked into Pathways rehab for the 14th time. He did try to get help, concealing the voices he heard in his head and he seemed like he was never ever to stay clean from drugs and alcohol for very long. When Jim was arrested, he was intoxicated and registered a .33 on the sobriety test.

Gordon worked with most of them: The Everly Brothers, Bobby Darin, Sonny and Cher, Delaney and Bonnie, Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, Stevie Winwood, Richard Perry, Jack Nitzsche, Frank Zappa, Leon Russell, The Beach Boys, and Glen Campbell, to name just a few.

When he died om March 13. 2023 at age 77 in a California Medical facility he had served almost 40 years in prison. He was 38 years old when he was arrested for killing his mother. His professional musical career lasted only 15 years, but he left his marks on dozens of records that will last lifetimes.

Jim Gordon was a fantastic drummer whose inner demons tried to kill his passion for the drums; this is the story we ultimately get. But before that journey came to an end, some of my favorites he played on “Layla,” “You’re So Vain,” “The Letter,” “After Midnight,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” “God Only Knows,” “The Beat Goes On” and “Everybody’s Talkin’” – songs that will remain in our consciousness long after we’ve forgotten the name Jim Gordon.

Society in Jim Gordon's time turned a blind eye when it came to mental illness. They say 1 in 100 people have schizophrenia in the United States. Today there is much better treatment for it than Gordon’s time.

[Marc Ballon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is my review from the Los Angeles Times:


By Marc Ballon
May 31, 2024 5:01 PM PT

Book Review

Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon

By Joel Selvin
Diversion Books: 288 pages, $29

If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.

The year was 1970, and Jim Gordon was in rock ‘n’ roll heaven.

The drummer was a part of Joe Cocker’s infamous Mad Dogs and Englishmen revue, a traveling circus of sex, drugs and legendary music, featuring bandleader and keyboardist-guitarist Leon Russell; saxophonist Bobby Keys, a sideman for the Rolling Stones; and singer Rita Coolidge. The bacchanalian troupe astonished audiences with their transcendent performances, leaving fans wanting more.

For Gordon, not yet 25, the moment was particularly sweet. A well-known session musician whose inventive percussion helped propel songs by the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Paul Revere and the Raiders and Glen Campbell to the top of the charts, he relished stepping out of the studio’s shadows onto a larger stage. Gordon would go on to play drums for Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominos, adding the song’s indelible piano coda to “Layla,” and record with John Lennon and George Harrison. Clapton and Ringo Starr considered him the best drummer in rock.

But beneath the sunshine, storm clouds lurked.


One night after a Mad Dogs and Englishmen show, Gordon was hanging out in a hotel room with his girlfriend Coolidge and bassist Carl Radle, his future Derek and the Dominos bandmate. After drinking and snorting coke, Gordon asked Coolidge if he could speak to her in the hall. Given how close they had become, she thought he might propose. Instead, he punched her in the face, knocking her unconscious.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen members chalked up Gordon’s erratic behavior to the craziness surrounding the tour. But there was more to it. “For Jim, it was a crack in the mask he wore,” writes Joel Selvin, the former San Francisco Chronicle music critic, in his deeply reported and well-written book “Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon.” “His herculean self-control had failed him, letting the dark forces he had kept under tight wraps peek out, dark forces that would have shocked anyone who knew sunny Jim.”

As recounted by Selvin, Gordon heard voices that would only grow more hostile and dangerous over time, even causing him intense physical pain if he dared to disobey them. Years later, Gordon would commit one of the most horrific acts in the annals of rock history: On June 3, 1983, he murdered his 71-year-old mother by bludgeoning her with a hammer and stabbing her repeatedly in the chest. Gordon said her voice had ordered him to commit the grisly act.

Gordon died in 2023 at 77 after nearly four decades in prison, still haunted by voices, still harboring resentment toward his long-deceased mother for her “controlling” behavior.

In “Drums & Demons,” Selvin aims to restore Gordon’s humanity and reputation by showing his professional triumphs in the context of his struggles with addiction and mental illness.

Selvin largely succeeds by adding flesh, blood and soul to the Gordon story. He does an especially nice job of capturing the optimism and creative explosion of the Southern California pop scene in the 1960s and Gordon’s role in it. Selvin shows the handsome, blond, 6-foot, 4-inch drummer in the studio playing on Brian Wilson’s masterpiece “Good Vibrations” and driving the beat of a 24-piece orchestra on the Mason Williams 1968 instrumental hit “Classical Gas.”

In one memorable scene, producer Richard Perry tapped Gordon to play drums on Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” after two other drummers failed to give him the sound he wanted. “The drum kit was an extension of his being, and he danced all over it,” Selvin writes. Gordon “made the track sound like a big, juicy hit record on the first take, and at the end of the evening, he left no doubt in the minds of everyone in the room that was exactly what they now had.”

Selvin vividly charts Gordon’s decline in harrowing detail, including his alarming violence toward women, myriad psychotic episodes and banishment from rock royalty because of his increasing unreliability and frightening behavior. In the months before murdering his mother, for instance, a bloated, dull-eyed Gordon had been reduced to playing four sets a night for $30 with a faceless outfit called the Blue Monkeys in a gritty Santa Monica bar. The voices in his head continued to torment him.

The biggest problem with the book is that despite Selvin’s laudable efforts to make Gordon whole, the drummer just wasn’t that interesting, especially compared with the artists he worked with.

“Jim moved through life like a ghost. He was friendly, but he had no friends,” Selvin writes. “He hid himself from close observation. His smile served him; it kept him safe and unchallenged. Nobody really knew him.”

That this is such a strong book reflects Selvin’s prodigious journalistic talents. The author of more than 20 works including “Altamont,” which chronicles the ill-fated 1969 rock festival headed by the Stones, he is one of the best rock writers out there. Still, I’m not convinced that session-man Gordon merits a 250-page biography. John Bonham, the thundering soul of Led Zeppelin, certainly does. So too does Starr, the heartbeat of the Beatles. But Jim Gordon? Perhaps a long magazine piece.

Ballon, a former Times and Forbes reporter, teaches an advanced writing class at USC. He lives in Fullerton.

[A Mac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual Rating 3.5

This work is a biography of Jim Gordon, a studio drummer who was featured on an astounding amount of records during the 1950s to 1970s in the U.S. and who tragically murdered his mother in 1983. The book quickly becomes situated into Jim Gordon’s life story, with a heavy focus on his musical career. The author touched lightly on the tensions and stress of his home life growing up but focused much more on his drive, his time in the studio, and his time jumping between studio projects.

The author mentioned that Jim Gordon the man is usually lost behind the murder and his trial. I felt that in this book Jim Gordon the man was somewhat lost behind the music. The author did an amazing job creating a cohesive story from the studio time, hopping from band to band, and touring. I learned quite a lot about rock & roll coming into its own and how studio bands were often the real musicians playing on the studio albums of famous bands. But there were so many instances where I wanted to know much more about the man than all this information about sliding in and out of studios for famous musicians.

Gordon had a few mental breaks earlier on, especially after intense drug use started, and while they were briefly presented, it felt like more time should have been spent on examining Jim’s mental health and state. The same thing happened with the presentation of his first marriage, the birth of his daughter, and his early home life. These events all felt like afterthoughts that were included, instead of pivotal life moments that might have contributed to his mental state or at least made him feel like more than just a drummer. It’s possible including all of this would have made the book much longer than the author wanted, but I think it would have contributed greatly to painting a meaningful portrait of Jim.

If you’re interested in American/British music (generally rock & roll) during the ‘60s and ‘70s, you’ll likely really enjoy this one. I’m generally not interested in that topic, but still found this to be an interesting but tragic read and a reminder of how far we’ve come and yet to come in the world of mental health. My thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography of the late, great drummer Jim Gordon. It is a real whirlwind as the hard-working journeyman musician does sessions, tours, and events bridging the jazz era into rock and even to be their for the founding of the disco sound. Jim Gordon began as a professional drummer with the Everly Brothers in 1963 and was a popular session drummer in Los Angeles, recording with Mason Williams on the hit "Classical Gas", "Pet Sounds" with The Beach Boys, "Gene Clark With The Gosdin Brothers" and "The Notorious Byrd Brothers" with The Byrds in 1968. He was a member of Delaney & Bonnie & Friends during their 1969 tour, along with Eric Clapton. Gordon became widely known for his drumming in Eric Clapton's Derek & The Dominos band during the early 1970s, and for co-writing the band's hit single "Layla" with Clapton. He is also heard on albums by top-selling artists of the period including John Lennon, George Harrison, Carly Simon, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Linda Ronstadt, Judy Collins, Seals & Crofts, Art Garfunkel, Bread, Frank Zappa, Steely Dan, Gordon Lightfoot, Carpenters, Daryl Hall & John Oates, and others. During this heady time he fostered increasing substance abuse and mental health decline. Apparently, he journaled of his directing voices which substantiates the fractured motivations leading to matricide on June 3rd 1983, believing his mother to be some form of devil taking over his life. Gordon was sentenced to second-degree murder and given sixteen years to life in California's Atascadero State Hospital (ASH) in Atascadero, a town just north of San Luis Obispo. Gordon spent the rest of his life in mental health institutions, and died in March, 2023 in the California Medical Facility (CMF) in Vacaville, spending twice as much of his life incarcerated as his professional career as a working and legendary musician.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

As you might expect, Drums & Demons gets increasingly difficult to read as Jim Gordon's mental illnesses progress.

This is a book about how easy it is for a person to fall through the cracks. It's about the callousness of the music industry. It's also about the nature of developing virtuoso-level musical skill. Jim Gordon's alcoholic father forced the rest of the family into unhealthy coping strategies, but once Jim showed talent as a drummer and seemed to take refuge in drumming, his parents remodeled their San Fernando Valley home to help him practice. Joel Selvin doesn't go into detail but my guess is they built Jim a soundproof practice room. It helped him develop God-given talent, it helped him banish the incipient voices in his head, and it doesn't get more womb-like than that. So Jim Gordon was a great drummer, but a poor fit for all of the extracurriculars of the LA music industry scene of the 1960-'70s, let alone the circuses of Mad Dogs and Englishmen and Derek and the Dominos. Nobody knew he had a problem until his illness was far along, but the environment made it easy to miss. No doubt he did plenty to burn bridges, but it's sort of appalling that only one music biz person (Jay Osmond) showed up at his trial. The juxtaposition of frequent awful person Eric Clapton's Grammy canonization with Gordon in the TV audience while incarcerated at a mental hospital is a nice bit of writing.

I took Joel Selvin's history of pop music classes at San Francisco State many years ago, and it's always a pleasure to read his books. He's curated an excellent Jim Gordon playlist on Spotify, which I am still digesting. Gordon's drumming always made so much musical sense. Sometimes it was flashy and sometimes it was minimalist, but he made it part of the organic whole of a song, like the song without his drumming wouldn't be the song. I almost feel that his ability to suit the song was somehow related to how he "masked" his illness for so long.

Drums & Demons ably captures one of the most notorious rock 'n' roll horror stories.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The word “tragic” in the subtitle of this biography, the first (to my knowledge) of drummer Jim Gordon, doesn’t do its subject justice. Gordon’s lifelong struggles with mental illness were exacerbated by his genetic predisposition to addiction, by substance abuse that was extreme even by classic rock era standards, and by the limitations of medical knowledge about/treatment of schizophrenia during the ‘70s and ‘80s. The result was a completely broken human who committed increasingly violent acts against women, culminating in (mild spoiler ahead but not really) the truly horrific murder of his own mother.

The story itself is gripping, largely because Gordon was so famous and so in-demand as a drummer during this era. You have heard him drum, probably many times, whether you know it or not, and you’ve definitely heard his most famous song. His partial discography on Wikipedia is the longest list of recordings by a single person that I’ve ever seen.

The only issue I had with this book is the clumsy writing, writing which includes sentences such as this:

“She didn't know any of the material, but volunteered to sing ‘Let It Be,’ which the band barely knew but pulled off as she felt the warmth of Jim's solid backbeat wrap around her like a gentle hand as soon as the band struck up behind her.” (p. 109)

and this:

“Like the shaman, Jim knew the drums were a beacon to guide him home. He wanted to do a band.” (p. 213)

The writing is so clunky throughout that my first thought was to compare it to a high school research paper; however, by the end it started to feel like the author was just trying to write in the same way that he would speak. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he had dictated this book into a recording app and then just typed it up word-for-word. If you can make peace with that (I did but it took a long time), then you’ll really enjoy this chronicle of a forgotten titan of rock ‘n’ roll.

[Shell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is titled correctly, a very tragic journey. How does someone go from being the most in-demand rock and roll drummer to killing his mother? Jim Gordon realized he wasn't like other kids at a fairly early age. Drumming was his distraction from himself. He poured himself into the drums, but also had an incredible natural talent for them. He was the drummer for Derek and the Dominoes, even being credited as co-writing Layla. He was the session drummer on recordings for The Beach Boys, Joan Baez, Bread, Jackson Browne, Eric Clapton, Cher, and so very many others.

The drumming quieted the voices in his head, the main one was the voice of his mother. The alcohol and drugs that were prevalent in rock during that period didn't help his situation. He drank and did drugs to quell the voices, but they always returned. Most of the people he worked with and knew blamed his weird behavior on the drugs, not realizing he had a mental illness. He even hid the voices from his psychologists, for the most part. Eventually, the voices told him to dump all of his gold records, then to stop drumming. This is what seems to have sent him over the edge. This is when his mother's voice started telling him that he had to kill her.

This is a sad, but very interesting read. The author did an incredible job researching Jim's life and interactions with the rock artists of that time. The story line was so fantastic, it's sometimes hard to believe it's true, but it is. The book will leave you feeling sad, but tragedy does that. I recommend this book, especially for those interested in the history of rock. #GoodreadsGiveaway

[Sharon Colarusso Roarty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joel Selvin's musical biopic about Jim Gordon, drummer extraordinaire on numerous hit records, is an easy and well written read. Going in I knew about Jim Gordon's career and his psychotic descent into hell but not until now has his life been so well documented. Jim Gordon played with many of music's greatest acts such as the Beach Boys, John Lennon and Carly Simon. He is also credited as co writer with Eric Clapton on Layla (although both Gordon and Clapton DID NOT give credit to Jim's girlfriend at the time, Rita Coolidge, for co-writing the ending piano music to Layla), and was drummer for Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes. Jim Gordon was living the dream and seemed to have it all except Jim was also a massive alcoholic and drug user, suffering from severe mental illness and undiagnosed schizophrenia. Because of this, he did not have empathy for others and could not build emotional bonds with wives, girlfriends, or his only daughter. He was directed by the 'voices in his head' and believed those voices instructed him to be violent to his significant others, savagely beating one of his wives and landing a knock out blow to girlfriend Rita Coolidge. But is was his final psychotic break that landed Jim in jail for the rest of his life, until his death in 2023, for murdering his mother. Until now the most we knew about Jim Gordon was he had an amazing musical career and then, one day, killed his mother. Joel Selvin's book documents Jim's life and, unfortunatley, those in his orbit who were his victims.

[J.D. Cetola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joel Selvin's "Drums & Demons" is about, as the book's subtitle states, "The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon". Once one of the world's greatest drummers (Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, and many others acknowledged Gordon was "the greatest rock 'n' roll drummer who ever lived"), Jim Gordon lived his life as a largely undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic.
Selvin takes the reader through Jim's early days as a quiet kid with an almost otherworldly talent for the drums, through Gordon's many successes as highly sought after studio musician, to his rock 'n' roll ventures as the drummer for the Everly Brothers, Derek and the Dominoes, and many others. Unfortunately, Jim abused alcohol and hard drugs and suffered from a chronic brain disorder. This combination was particulary deadly and eventually led Jim Gordon to kill his mother.
As if this isn't enough to make a good story, the author takes the reader out on the road (to include all the partying) with some of rock 'n' roll's most famous musicians. Jim Gordon's drumming can be heard on an incredible number of mega hits from the 70s ("Layla" (where he shares a writing credit), "Marrakesh Express", "Tiptoe Thru the Tulips", "I am Woman", "What is Life?", "After Midnight", "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys", "Midnight at the Oasis", "Rikki Don't Lose that Number", "Sundown", and a ridiculous amount of other major and minor hits, many listed in the back of this extremely engaging and interesting book. Definitely recommended reading.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a sad yet fascinating story. My only knowledge of Jim Gordon was that he was the drummer on the amazing album by Derek & The Dominoes (Layla and Other Love Songs). One of my favorite records. I saw his name on some Traffic records too, but I had no idea that he played with everyone from Carly Simon to Frank Zappa to the Beach Boys! He was THE session drummer and also toured with Delaney and Bonnie, Joe Cocker and the Everly Brothers. But what I also never knew, until his recent passing, that he suffered from a debilitating mental illness (most likely schizophrenia) and her murdered his mother. It's such a sad and tragic story. In his effort to quell his voices, Jim self-medicated with any drug imaginable in prodigious quantities. None of it really worked.

The book was well written and never veered into salaciousness - the crime doesn't surface until the very end of the book. It was amazing that he could function at such a high level and still conceal what was going on in his head. My one question throughout was whether the his drug and alcohol abuse made his condition worse, or staved off the demons until they couldn't. I guess we'll never know.

[Jonathan White · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing was light and lucid and moved along pretty nicely. Sadly, Mr. Gordon remains a bit of a blank, even at the end. Most of the book is a recounting of things that were happening in rooms where he was (physically) present. Since he was running around with Clapton, the Beatles, etc. it's all juicy, gossipy industry stuff.

The author returns every 10 pages or so to his attempts to try and impress upon what a drum god Gordon was-- which can get a little old (and repetitive). Inherent in the project of a biopic on a murderer is the fact that it vaguely feels to be taking "his side" against the family that he scarred.

I think the most interesting takeaway was the fact that his psychosis and budding homicidal tendencies were so little noticed in an industry that was built upon decadence, hedonism, and elaborate attempts to overlook the demonic inhumanity of many superstars. His "early warning signs" kind of got lost in the general swirl of debauchery.

Overall, though, I felt like the author did a good job of humanizing him and chronicling his crumbling mental state.

[Bob Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Brilliant Rhythm Of Madness

This is a sad tale of the musical genius of perhaps the greatest rock ‘n’ roll drummer of all time, who was also, simultaneously, a rampant and ultimately murderous schizophrenic.
For me, a wanna-be hobby guitarist rocker, Jim Gordon was “the beat.” Throughout the mid-60s to mid-1980s his drums anchored everything. I only saw him play live once, with Mad Dogs And Englishmen, but his beat could be found on hundreds of legendary tracks from, Layla to Joan Baez and everything in between.
As folk-rocker John Stewart said on his live album, The Phoenix Concerts, he was “ … the incredible … Jim, The Flash, Gordon.”
But his story became an epic Greek-style tragedy, because of the voices that drove him to murder his own mother. Perhaps, he was finally freed from his hell when he died in prison in 2023.
His drumming was without compare but his life was hell.
This wasn’t uplifting, but it was a worthy read.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim Gordon was a gifted drummer who played on an absolutely mind-blowing number of hit records. He was also plagued with paranoid schizophrenia, and as his symptoms grew worse and treatment became less effective, his story culminated with a tragedy that ended his career and left him to spend the rest of his life in prison.

It's a worthwhile story told from within the full flowering of the California rock and studio scenes. But does it warrant an entire book? One could argue not quite. It's not hard to spot passages that are padded out and overwritten. There are also an unfortunate number of misspellings and misnamed song titles.

But Selvin's research is thorough, even bringing in the cooperation of immediate family members who previously were reluctant to talk publicly about Gordon. If you're interested in that time and place, and the sheer volume of music superstars Gordon crossed paths with, the book is certainly an informative, quick read.

[Mark Lieberman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read quite a few music books lately, and Jim Gordon, a drummer has been mentioned. So, when I saw this book about him, I was definitely intrigued and wanted to learn more about him. He ended up being the best studio drummer, and I had to stop reading the book quite often and ask Alexa to play the songs he drummed on. I don’t want to name them all, because I would forget quite a few, but I will mention Layla by Derek and the Dominoes.

I had no clue about his drug and alcoholism intake, and his schizophrenia (which took control of him as he heard voices and often did what they asked him to do). Eventually, the voice of his mother told him to kill her which he did in 1983 and was incarcerated till 2023 when he died.

He did try to get help from the medical profession, but never could tell them about the voices until it was too late.

Overall, the book was a quick read and I enjoyed it.

[JJ Lehmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I'd like to think that I know a lot about music, but it is impossible to know everything. Despite that, I feel like I should've known about Jim Gordon. I'm a bit of a drumming nerd. I always hear the drums and bass first and then go to the other instruments from there. While reading the book, I was struck by how many of his songs I already knew and loved. Iconic songs like "Good Vibrations" and "Layla" highlight his incredible contributions to popular music.
Essentially, this biography is about a drummer... a very good drummer, but one who suffered from schizophrenia and ended up murdering his mother.
Mostly, I felt incredible sympathy for everyone involved. There were times when he'd be eating with his mother, who told him that he had to eat more, but his inner mother's voice was simultaneously yelling at him that he needed to stop eating.
Fascinating read.