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Jim Gordon, a top drummer for Eric Clapton, George Harrison and countless others who was diagnosed with schizophrenia after his mother’s murder in 1983, has died.
According to the announcement, he died Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacavillle, Calif., after a long incarceration and a lifelong battle with a mental illness. He was 77.
Gordon was a member of Clapton’s group Derek and the Dominos and is credited with co-writing the 1970 classic “Layla.” As part of the elite crew of session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, he played literally hundreds of songs . He was also a member of Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen Group and Delaney and Bonnie and Friends and was one of the main drummers on George Harrison’s landmark 1970 album All Things Must Pass. His work on the song Apache from the Incredible Bongo Band 1972 is one of the most sampled drum breaks in hip-hop history.
Any casual fan of 1960’s and 70’s rock will recognize him on songs by the Beach Boys (including the Pet Sounds album), Steely Dan (Rikki Don’t Lose That Number), Carly Simon (You’re So Vain) ), Gordon Lightfoot, Harry Nilsson, Sonny and Cher, Nancy Sinatra, Glen Campbell, Leon Russell and even the Byrds – he played that thrashing drum fill at the end of their 1967 cover of Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s “Goin’ Back”. . He was arguably one of the greatest rock drummers of his day, but his long-term, improperly treated mental illness led to his mother’s murder.
Born in 1945 and raised in California’s San Fernando Valley, he began his professional career the day after graduating high school in 1963, playing with the Everly Brothers. He has made a name for himself as a session musician with hits from many of the artists mentioned above, and has occasionally toured with artists such as Delaney and Bonnie, Cocker and Derek and the Dominos.
However, he had a history of mental illness and his behavior became unstable in the late 1960s. While touring with Cocker in 1970, he attacked singer Rita Coolidge, his girlfriend at the time. Coolidge is quoted in Bill Janovitz’s biography of Leon Russell: “Jim said, very quietly so only I could hear, ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’ He said he wanted to talk alone. So we walked out of the room together… And then he hit me so hard that I was lifted off the floor and slammed against the wall across the hall… It came out of nowhere.”
While he had been treated for a mental illness, Gordon had previously shown little if any evidence of unstable behavior towards his fellow musicians. “He was a great guy, just so charismatic,” Coolidge continued. “[But] After it all happened, I started to see that look in his eyes and knew he wasn’t playing with a full deck.”
The tour and Gordon’s busy career continued, however, culminating in Derek and the Dominos – Gordon is credited with the piano-driven, instrumental second half of “Layla” (although two of his bandmates insist the composition was actually written by Coolidge). His career continued through the ’70s working with Alice Cooper, Steely Dan, Dave Mason, Helen Reddy, Frank Zappa, Johnny Rivers and many others.
In June 1983, he beat his 72-year-old mother with clubs and then stabbed him, claiming voices ordered him to do so. He was then officially diagnosed with schizophrenia and sentenced to 16 years in prison in 1984. He had applied for parole multiple times, which he was denied.