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In Episode 133 of Ill Literacy, Tim Benson talks with Joel Selvin, author ofDrums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon.
Heartland’s Tim Benson is once again joined by Joel Selvin, long-time rock critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, to discuss his new book, Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon. They chat about why Selvin thinks Gordon is the greatest rock drummer of all time, what makes Gordon so unique as a musician, the impact he’s had on American popular music, and his undiagnosed schizophrenia and the tragic second half of his life.
Get the book here: https://diversionbooks.com/books/drums-demons/
Creators & Guests
Host
Tim Benson
Ill Literacy, the newest podcast from The Heartland Institute, is helmed by Tim Benson, Senior Policy Analyst for Heartland’s Government Relations team. Benson brings on authors of new book releases on topics including politics, culture, and history on the Ill Literacy podcast. Every episode offers listeners the author’s unique analysis of their own book release. Discussions often shift into debate between authors and Benson when ideological differences arise, creating unique commentary that can’t be found anywhere else.
What is Ill Literacy: Books with Benson?
The Heartland Institute's podcast discussing notable new works with their authors. Hosted by Tim Benson.
What's the time? It's time to get ill. What's the time? It's time to get ill. So what's the time?
Intro Song:It's time to get
Tim Benson:ill. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Illiteracy Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Benson, a senior policy analyst at the Heartland Institute, a national free market think tank. This is episode well, I actually don't know what episode number this is because we're taping this, probably a couple months before it's gonna air. So the episode numbers weren't sure to change by then.
Tim Benson:But anyway, point being, we've been doing this podcast for a long time. But if you are new to the podcast, haven't listened before, basically what we do here is I invite an author on to discuss a book of theirs that's been newly published or recently published on, something or someone or some idea that, we think you guys would like to hear a conversation about. And then hopefully at the end of the podcast, or, you know, even in the middle of the podcast, if you get your druthers about it, you go ahead and purchase a book yourself and give it a read. So if you like this podcast, please consider giving illiteracy a 5 star review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to this show, and also by sharing with your friends. That's the best way to support programming like this.
Tim Benson:And my guest today, once again, is mister Joel Selvin. And mister Selvin is a San Francisco based music critic and author known for his weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle, which ran for 37 years. You may have seen his work in Rolling Stone, Billboard, the Los Angeles Times, Melody Maker, and many others. And he is the author of more than 20 books, including 2 for which he previously guested on this show, and those books are Hollywood Eden, Electric Guitars, Fast Cars, and the Myth of the California Paradise, and Sly and the Family Stone, an Oral History. And lastly, he is the author of Drums and Demons, the tragic story of Jim Gordon, which will be published, February 27th by Diversion Books and is the book we will be discussing today.
Tim Benson:So, mister Selvin, thanks so much for coming back on the podcast. Appreciate it.
Joel Selvin:Good to be back, Tim.
Tim Benson:Thank you. Alright. So, usual starter question, every time you come on here, you know, what made you wanna write this book? How did you decide that you wanted to tell Jim Gordon's story? What was the, what was the genesis of the whole project?
Joel Selvin:Oh, I've had this story in mind for many, many, many years. Back in the early nineties, I met a couple of gals who had given up on writing an authorized book with Jim. They'd conducted a number of jailhouse interviews. They'd talked to a lot of his associates. They weren't professional journalists, Didn't really know what they were doing, but they gained Jim's, cooperation.
Joel Selvin:They had access to all his records and his his his, diaries. I I remember I I they said, oh, the diaries weren't any use. That they just were his studio sessions. Oh, no. That's not useful at all.
Joel Selvin:But, they at that time, I wanted to acquire their research and continue the project. And one of them was fine with that. They were splitting up, moving out of state. The other one couldn't let go of the project. So 30 years later, I, I'm talking to an editor at a publishing company, and he said, that he would really recommend my next project to be something that combine crime with rock and roll.
Joel Selvin:And I couldn't think of a more famous crime in rock and roll than Jim Gordon, and it's been sitting in my brain this whole time. And I I I found the gals and and acquired the research this time, and boom, started work on the book.
Tim Benson:Great. So I guess, what we should do right off the bat is, explain or who Jim Gordon was, what his importance is to the world of pop music, the world of rock and roll, the world of drumming. So why don't you enlighten everybody, tell everybody, just a little summary of Jim Gordon's career, why he was so well thought of.
Joel Selvin:Jim Gordon is largely remembered for, the crime he committed that ended him up in jail for half his life. But he was the most sought after drummer in rock music for many years. He was a prodigy talent who started out as a professional the day after he graduated high school on the road with the Everly Brothers, and he became a session player in Hollywood. He played on the greatest records of the day, whether it was Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys or Wichita Lineman by Glenn Campbell. He moved into the rock scene in 1969 with Delaney and Bonnie, Mad Dogs, an Englishman, and then most famously, Derek and the Domino's.
Joel Selvin:He's coauthor of Layla, the Derek and the Domino Signature Song. He continued his studio career in the seventies, played on number one records with Gordon Lightfoot, Harry Nielsen, Steely Dan, Carly Simon, and succumbed to, an ever increasing mental illness. Just, took him out starting about 1975. It really interfered with his life. And by 78, he was through as a real active musician, and in 83, he committed his, crime and went to jail.
Joel Selvin:He killed his mother very brutally. His mother was a voice in his head, and, he had been tortured by these voices for many, many years. None of his struggle with mental illness has ever been recorded before. It just the crime happened. He'd killed his mother, and the shock and dismay that that was greeted with was total.
Joel Selvin:He was a instant pariah, and nobody ever bothered to look back at this with any compassion or any detail. But behind this, is years years of of torture and torment, many, many, many admissions to, mental hospitals, psychiatrist, drugs, both legal and illegal. It was an incredible battle against the forces of real evil that all took place inside Jim's head.
Tim Benson:Yeah. It really is a, as you say, it's a tragedy. It's a very, sad story. This man who lived with schizophrenia for most of his life, if not all of his life. And, let
Joel Selvin:me say something, Tim, about schizophrenia. It came as a complete shock to me to learn how common schizophrenia is. Schizophrenia occurs in 1 in 100 in the general population. By comparison, multiple sclerosis is 1 in 10,000.
Tim Benson:Yeah.
Joel Selvin:So all those people you see out on the streets wandering around, that's, those are schizophrenics. And about 50% of people that are diagnosed as schizophrenic don't experience any benefit from treatment. Mhmm. The other 50%, sliding scale. Some are able to live very normal lives.
Joel Selvin:Some struggle every day. But half of them, there's nothing could be done for
Tim Benson:it. Yeah. And very few of them, I should we should point out, you know, hit their mother in the head with a hammer. You know?
Joel Selvin:Generally speaking, schizophrenics are not violent.
Tim Benson:Right.
Joel Selvin:They're most frequently violent against themselves.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Joel Selvin:Suicide and self harm is a common approach to, like, stopping the voices. So, striking out at other people is is is rare.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, back to Jim as the drummer as a drummer, well known drummer. There are some people of the opinion that, as far as rock drumming went, he was the best there ever was. And I actually I was curious.
Tim Benson:I went to Rolling Stone to say they have you know, they do their lists of, you know, 100 best guitarists, 100 best singers, artists, that sort of thing. And they had, like, the 100 best drummers. So I went on it to see where they placed Jim Gordon. You know, a lot of their lists are just keep parting my French, fucking terrible. But, I think they had him somewhere in the mid fifties, which struck me as I mean, it's it's hard to quibble with all the other drummers that are on the list and where their placement is and whatnot, but, that struck me as a little low.
Tim Benson:Right? For example, he was, you know, Roger Hawkins, the famous studio drummer, the one of the
Joel Selvin:Muscle Shoals.
Tim Benson:Muscle Shoals. Yeah. The one of the swampers. He was, like, in the, I think, like, high 30, something like that. So, I don't know what Well, I
Joel Selvin:don't know who puts the Rolling Stone list together, but if they asked drummers Yeah. Jim would be way high up. He had an intuitive style that was beyond any other person's abilities. You know, I've heard drummers try and explain it to me, you know, you retard the second beat and it puts a role in the whole measure, but that doesn't add up to it. You can't divide time that accurately unless you have some incredible ability and some deep intuition, which Jim had.
Joel Selvin:I'll tell you what Jim Keltner said to me, because Keltner ran across Jim at a session that he thought he was gonna play, but came there and there's this setup. And he heard Jim, and his life changed that day. And he said that he had to learn to play like Jim in order to not play like Jim. This guy had a style that was so beyond the ability of other drummers that he was an immediate sensation with studio musicians. Hal Blaine, who's played on more hit records than any other single person, took him immediately under his arm and started handing out jobs.
Joel Selvin:Earl Palmer, the other great drummer of the studio sessions in Los Angeles at that time, was also a huge Jim Gordon fan. And 1 by 1, all the producers just they all went to Jim, whether it's Brian Wilson, whether it's Lou Adler, whether it's Richard Perry, they all called Jim first. Yeah. Because he was the most musical drummer on the scene. He was not mister timekeeper backbeat guy.
Joel Selvin:He had a way of making his drums embed in the music. They were compositional. And you can find examples where what he did on the drums changed the entire nature of the record, whether it's like Midnight at the Oasis by Maria Moldower or, My Maria by B. W. Stevens Yeah.
Tim Benson:I wanted to talk about that one. But
Joel Selvin:And then, of course, You're So Vain by Carly Simon.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Joel Selvin:That is a masterpiece of drumming, and he orchestrates that entire track from the drumstool.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to talk about this a little later when we get into the seventies. Back to, before we get into the the heart of the book itself, I guess it gets back to his to his schizophrenia and the whole, tragedy, of his life. Was this was this the most difficult book you've had to write or up there in terms of difficulty, not in terms of labor per se.
Tim Benson:Maybe it was in terms of labor too, but just in terms of the story itself and just the the the the human tragedy involved. And, you know, we talked about this a little bit early before we came on air where, you know, I assume that it's something that a lot, you know, a lot of the participants who helped you with this book didn't really relish doing. You know, so was it, was this a more difficult book to write for you than normal, would you say? Or
Joel Selvin:There were lots of challenges to this book that were unique to the project. You're talking about something that traumatized an awful lot of people. Certainly, the family was not interested in cooperating or participating in the project at all. It just was not a subject that they wanted to delve into. After Jim died, they changed their mind and came back to me and and participated.
Joel Selvin:But for the longest time, it was just a trauma they didn't wanna deal with. And all through the process, I had to keep in mind that there was an adult daughter whose father was a factor in her life that she couldn't manage, that she had to deal with, and and, that this guy had done things in his life, including kill his mother, that were and inexcusable. However, once I saw into Jim's troubled heart, I had nothing but compassion for him. I came to really love Jim and see his struggle as a kind of definitive battle of good versus evil, which he unfortunately lost.
Tim Benson:Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, it seemed like it was something he was able to keep a hold of for most of his life. And then just, you know, whether it's just the attrition of time or, whether it was the help of the illegal substances or it it just had a it it just got away from him. And Well, he was so
Joel Selvin:high functioning and maintained such a, a strenuous, professional, career that none of the psychiatrists that saw him figured him as schizophrenic.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Joel Selvin:That diagnosis came after the crime.
Tim Benson:Yeah. They all thought it was
Joel Selvin:was depressive and, possibly, bipolar, but, and and they they medicated him with the primitive, psychological medicines they had in the in in the seventies. So he was getting carpet bombed with tranquilizers and antipsychotic medicine along with all the illegal drugs and alcohol he was treating himself with.
Tim Benson:Yeah. People sort
Joel Selvin:of really worked.
Tim Benson:Yeah. I'm gonna say people the people in his life sort of chalked up his eccentricities to not to his schizophrenia, as you said, but people just thought it was, you know, the drugs and the booze really that, you know, like, they just thought he was another of one of the many drug casualties of the of the period.
Joel Selvin:His mother was a long time member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And although she was a nurse and a medical professional, she was in considerable denial about Jim's psychiatric problems. She was convinced that his problems were exclusively drugs and alcohol and encouraged him to go to meetings, and he did go to meetings with her. And he did, have long periods of sobriety, and they were horrifying. They were terrifying.
Joel Selvin:Drugs and alcohol helped keep those voices under control for him. Mhmm.
Tim Benson:Mhmm. Alright. So let's, let's go back to the beginning. So his early life growing up in Sherman Oaks, California in, the San Fernando Valley. What was his early life like in the valley as a kid growing up?
Tim Benson:Normal kid or
Joel Selvin:Well, Jim discovered drums early in life and became in infatuated with them right around age 8. By age 12, he had his own drum set, a room in his house to practice in. He had been playing at his elementary school. By the time he's in high school, he was a full fledged musician who had taken all the training he could at high school. He had taken training at UCLA.
Joel Selvin:He'd taken lessons with private lessons. I mean, he could read. He could play all the mallet instruments. And like I said, the day after high school, he started his career as a professional drummer on the road with the Everly Brothers, which was starting at the top. They were the greatest rock and roll band still touring in 1963.
Joel Selvin:And in fact, in September, after touring US that summer, he went to the, England to tour with the Everly Brothers. They headlined over Little Richard and Bo Diddley and a new group making their first performances outside of London called The Rolling Stones. So that's how far Jim's career goes back.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Not a bad deal. No. So you said you know, like you said, he gets to start with the Ivleville brothers. And then pretty soon, he's going to move into session work in LA.
Tim Benson:And, to me, this this period, I guess, roughly the mid sixties, I guess. So roughly 64 to 67, but especially 1965 and 66. To me, these were sort of the the apex years of popular music in the 20th century. You know what I mean? Because just because it seemed like every every branch of music was sort of firing on all cylinders.
Tim Benson:You know what I mean? You had, obviously, you had the Beatles and the Stones and all the British invasion groups and then the American groups that formed in their wake, and this was Dylan's electric period, and you had the Beach Boys, obviously, and the the San Francisco scene was just emerging. And it was sort of the last days of all the the the build drill building, songwriting crews, you know, that sort of stuff. Soul and r and b were at a peak. You know, Motown was setting the world on fire.
Tim Benson:You had the, you know, Stacks and Atlantic cranking out stuff in Memphis and Muscle Shoals. You know, James Brown's pretty much inventing funk during this period. You know, there's lots of amazing things happening in the jazz world. You know, Impulse and Coltrane and Blue Note and Atlantic again, and then you have, you know, Miles Davis' 2nd quintet. And, you know, the Folkies were still doing some interesting things and country music too.
Tim Benson:And, you know, even all the old blues cats are still around and kicking. You know? So, I mean, it it's just like I said, everyone seemed all these different strands of music seemed to really be just at a, like, massive creative level all at the same time that I don't I don't think we've ever seen, certainly not since then and not not before then, and I'm not sure if we'll ever see that again. And and Jim is right in the heart of this.
Joel Selvin:Yeah. Well, it was a high tide, and and what where Jim caught the tide was Los Angeles was a minor center for recording until just about the time you're talking about. And behind the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean and Sonny and Cher and Nancy Sinatra and Phil Spector moving back from New York. The Los Angeles scene suddenly in that 64 to 66 period became one of the global centers of the music. And the musicians who were working in the studios were pushing the boundaries of what could be done every day.
Joel Selvin:And Jim was like the new, young, hot drummer that caught that wave. So he's on Bird's sessions, he's on the first Neil Young solo session, He's on Carole King's 1st solo sessions. All the if something new and hot and exciting is coming along, generally speaking, they draft Jim Gordon to do the drums and let Earl Palmer and Hal Blaine handle the movie soundtracks or the standard Beach Boys stuff. But, I mean, Jim split Good Vibrations with Hal. That the basic track to Good Vibrations is half Hal Blaine and half Jim Gordon.
Joel Selvin:So even even the the the the standard, the establishment stars were using Jim at that point. He was just too attractive not to. So his career just floated up with the entire Los Angeles music scene.
Tim Benson:Yeah, and he's working, he's so busy, working 6 basically, 6 days a week doing 3 3, 4 hour sessions a day, basically, and, you know, for for years. And he was in such high demand. And like I said, just as I mean, if you're out there, I won't list all the, you know, the songs he played on. But if you just go to, like, Wikipedia or there's a website that actually, is it jimgordon discography dot blogspot.com?
Joel Selvin:Adam Minkoff's. And you can also go check out the drums and demons Spotify playlist. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there you go.
Tim Benson:Drums and Demons Spotify playlist. That's that's great. But, yeah, I mean, you can just scroll down, and you can just see all the people and all the groups and all the hits on records he's playing on. I mean, just, it's an incredible, body incredible body of work and all due to his amazing ability, intuitive drum ability, and just his his way of knowing, not even not even not even hearing a song before, you know, just sort of playing it off the cuff and knowing exactly what the drum sound, what the drum pattern, what the beat should be for that song.
Joel Selvin:That's true, Tim. A number of producers, spoke of Jim's sort of ability to forecast what people were going to play. And they talked about exactly what you're saying is that when they run a song down in the studio, commonly, the drummer doesn't play the first time. He just listens to it, or maybe he hits the kick drum on the 4. But Jim just started playing, and, he he could see what the piano player was gonna be doing on the next bar and set it up and tee it up.
Joel Selvin:He had this remarkable intuition. It was an almost supernatural ability.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Really incredible. Alright. So he does the session thing for a couple years, few years, 6 days a week, 12:12 hours a day. And then this eventually sort of well, I guess he sort of burns out on it as I'm sure anybody would.
Tim Benson:But so but he in the, I guess, 1968, around there, 1969, he falls in with Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, and get becomes a part of their group, and that is going to, change his life. He's gonna become a a touring musician again, for the first time since the Everlys, and and he's gonna fall in with Delaney and Bonnie who are gonna, and the, strength of that group, the the sound of that group is just gonna take, basically, the rock world by storm, and it's gonna open a lot of doors for him in his later career.
Joel Selvin:They, ended up opening for, Blind Faith, the the the supergroup with 1 album out and, Clapton hated it, Blind Faith, and loved the opening act. And he would watch from the wings, and before long on the tour, he was sitting in with the band in the back, where they he couldn't quite clearly be seen and writing songs with Delaney Bramlett in in hotel rooms on the tour and, you know, he discovered a bliss that he lost and invited Delaney and Bonnie to to open a European not open, to back him on a European tour. And that's where Jim and all those guys started in with the English rock scene. That was super, fruitful for him. He, ended up, joining the Mad Dogs of Englishman tour out of Delaney and Bonnie.
Joel Selvin:And out of, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, he went to England and and started Derek and the Domino's with Clapton. The first job that Derek and the Domino's had was serving as the studio band for George Harrison's solo sessions. And Jim brought his astonishingly, his astonishing skills to the London sessions. Ringo had been playing on the tracks, but he had to leave town to go to record some stuff in Nashville of his own. And when he came back, Jim was on the drums, and they gave Ringo a tambourine.
Joel Selvin:Give you a perfect example is that that's Ringo playing on My Sweet Lord, and it's just a straight drum part. There's no real dynamics to it. Spector, the producer, Phil Spector fades it in, fades it out, fades it in, fades it out. That's the whole dynamics of the thing. Compare that to Jim on what is life, where the drums just thunder in at the beginning and open that and then drive the song all the way through.
Joel Selvin:It's easy to understand why they gave Ringo the tambourine. Ringo didn't mind. I mean, those guys were playing double drums together on jam sessions before those sessions were done. They're they're they're on those Apple jam albums playing together. Mhmm.
Joel Selvin:Yeah. And Ringo's, has has been quoted as saying that he thinks Jim is the greatest rock and roll drummer ever.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And that's not, George was not the only Beatle he played with during the time. He actually he did the the power to the people power to the people single, but for John Lennon. Right? Because, again, I think because Ringo was filming a movie or something like that.
Joel Selvin:He he was unavailable, and and, Lennon came, called up Bobby Keys, and Bobby brought Jim Gordon out. And Spector knew him, of course, because he played on all of Spector's records back in in Hollywood. So, yeah, that was, power to the people. The drum part on that strikes me as Jim sort of like, Ringo on steroids. It it's it's a like a constant cascade of paradiddles, over the a basic beat.
Joel Selvin:It's it's it's truly got this incredible momentum to it, and and it's it's technically an almost impossible drum part to comp, to duplicate.
Tim Benson:I always thought I never knew it was Jim. I always thought it was Alan White who, drummed for I think he was the drummer for Yes. And he played on, I think, Instant Karma and some of the other plastic on the bands. I always thought it was him. I never knew it was Jim.
Tim Benson:So that was first I heard of it was in this book too.
Joel Selvin:Well, think about the drum part on Instant Karma. As you know, it's got that sort of drag beat and as opposed to the bounce beat of Jim Gordon where the the beat rolls through. It's it's it's it's it's it's you can tell Jim almost immediately. He has such a touch, and and nobody matches it. The people that match it are the ones who are trying to sound like Jim Gordon and hello there, Jeff Porcaro.
Joel Selvin:Okay? Jeff Porcaro was a Grant High School kid who knew the Jim Gordon legend very well, starting out. And that whole, his whole work on Toto is a tribute to Jim Gordon. And in fact, the Steely Dan guys brought him in to play on some of their stuff. And he said, hey.
Joel Selvin:You guys should have Jim Gordon. And, you know, the next thing you know, Jim Gordon was on those Steely Dan sessions.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. But before we get to that, just still in this period, this 1970, 71 period, the music was so dynamic. We mentioned Delaney and Bonnie. They're one of my absolute favorite groups to listen to.
Tim Benson:And then the the Mad Dogs, an Englishman album, the Joe Cocker album, which really probably should be a Leon Russell album. But, that's just a phenomenal, live record and very detrimental, that tour, to Joe Cocker's health and well-being and his mental stability. But, just a a phenomenal phenomenal live record in every way. And and, again, Jim's right right in the heart of that too.
Joel Selvin:As, Jim and Jim Keltner playing together Mhmm. The,
Tim Benson:There was, like, 35 people in that
Joel Selvin:through to the show, which is not on the album, I don't know if it's on the expanded CD version, is a a a riff from a Bobby Blubland, song called, turn on your love light. Mhmm. Real sort of stirring upbeat sort of riff. And they they open with that and then just stop and let the drums take over. That's how they started the show.
Joel Selvin:Was like this incredible Volley from Keltner and and and Jim Gordon. It's,
Tim Benson:Yeah. They don't they don't start the the expanded one with the the Lovelight. But I know Leon's live Leon live, the one that came out in 70 2, 70 3, the triple album. That one starts with the I don't think Jim didn't play on that, but that one
Joel Selvin:starts with
Tim Benson:yeah. That one starts with the, with the Lovelight.
Joel Selvin:You can hear it on the DVD. Yeah. And it just it just explodes.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And it's during I think it's during this tour, right, that he's gonna start his relationship with Rita Coolidge, the famous
Joel Selvin:It started before the tour.
Tim Benson:It started. Mhmm.
Joel Selvin:I think that, Jim joining the band was how Rita got her ticket to, the, deal. Although, those tickets weren't hard to come by. And, of course, at the end of the tour, there was, an an unexpected assault by Jim on Rita. He he took her out into the hotel hallway and and and knocked her unconscious with a single blow. Nobody really saw that coming.
Joel Selvin:Jim was this gentle, quiet, smiling guy, and he didn't seem to have any anger issues or anything like that. And Rita thought she he was taking her out in the hall to ask her to marry her. So, that was probably the first sort of psychotic break that Jim had.
Tim Benson:As I say, that was the first time the the voices really got the best of him.
Joel Selvin:I'm not sure he was even acting under the indirect influence of those kind of, command hallucinations that would later just rule him. But, obviously, there was this roiling, poisonous interior life that would that was starting to, like, leak out and and and the fissures. As as said in the book, his mask slipped.
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Tim Benson:So from there, he's gonna get involved again with, Eric Clapton, the the the band, what is essentially Derek and the Domino's will record Clapton's first, solo record, and then they'll go back and do, the thing that probably well, certainly Eric is best known for and probably Jim too, and that is the the Layla record, which is one of my probably I'd say that's probably one of my top ten records of all time, maybe. Not probably, it's definitely in the the top ten, I would say. And, so, yeah, the the Layla album, the song Layla itself, that's sort of the heart of if people know one thing about Jim Gordon, that's that's probably the song or, you know, that they know him from, I would say.
Joel Selvin:Well, the song was entirely different beast when they got to Miami to make the record, and Dwayne Allman started to guest on the sessions. He was the one who jacked up the tempo of the song, and, he tacked on a riff that he, nicked from, Albert King and created that dynamic, exciting guitar introduction and and really turned the the the song into something fantastic. But Clapton was not satisfied with it. So when they came back to Miami to sort of finish the postproduction, he knew of a piano piece that Jim and Rita had performed for him at Olympic Studios on Twin Grand Pianos. Rita had given him a tape of it.
Joel Selvin:And this was some piece that Jim and Rita had composed together, in, Hollywood, and they just carried it around. Rita had some lyrics to it, and Clapton persuaded Jim to bring it back out. Jim cut a version of the piano part, and Bobby Whitlock, the keyboard player in Derek and the Domino's, was, convinced to also put a part down. Whitlock didn't like the piece. He didn't think it went with Leila.
Joel Selvin:He, knew that Rita Kulich was one of the co authors and thought she was, not gonna get credited here. And but he went ahead and and did his part, and Tom Dowd, the producer, made a composite of Jim's playing and Whitlock's playing, and they put it on the end of Layla, the piano exited, they called it. So when the record first came out as a single, it didn't have that part on it, and it wasn't a very successful record at all. And a year or so later, they put it out a second time, this time with the piano part on the end, and it was a top ten hit. And Rita Coolidge knew nothing about this until she's, like, doing a photoshoot at A&M Records and the radio was on.
Joel Selvin:And she's sitting there not paying much attention, and all of a sudden hears this familiar piece of music and realizes that's the piece she wrote with Jim. Her efforts to get credited for the composition were met with scorn and complete rejection by Clapton's management, And she'd already been ripped off, as a songwriter.
Tim Benson:Groupie.
Joel Selvin:She and Bonnie Bramlett had written a song called Groupie, prince c superstar. And that was copyrighted by Delaney Bramlett and Leon Russell. So she'd already sort of seen how the And that
Tim Benson:was huge.
Joel Selvin:Music business could work and just sort of folded her hand and went away. That that copyright was worth 1,000,000 of dollars. It it made Jim the richest prisoner in the California penal authority for 38 years.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And just, back to that, the Superstar song, that was a huge, huge hit for the Carpenters that she I mean, so so not just Layla that she missed out on 1,000,000 of dollars with, but, you know, superstar too. Yep. That's a shame. But, yeah.
Tim Benson:But that that whole album, the Derek and the Domino's album is such a, well, it's a double album. But it's so it's rawly emotional in in a way that Clapton certainly couldn't get back to afterwards, and there's just an intensity to the whole record. And, I love it. You know, I you mentioned Tom Dowd. I love Tom Dowd too.
Tim Benson:But the one thing I don't like the way the record is produced. I don't like the production on that album at all. It's just it seems sort of flat. I don't really like, to be to be fair to Tom, that I don't really I'm not a big fan of that Criteria Studios in Miami. I I never think that I know that, like, part of Rumors was recorded there and some other stuff too, but I never out
Joel Selvin:of out of almost all out of Sausalito.
Tim Benson:It was almost, but it was there was they did some some work, not not a lot, but they did some work on rumors in criteria studios. But there's this a lot of things that have been recorded there. It was sort of like the home base for Atlantic Records, like, after Jerry Wexler retired and moved to Florida for but I just I've never really liked that room that much for whatever reason, so I've never liked the production on Layla that much. But still, it's just such like I said, such a fantastically in intensely raw and emotional and, what's the best word? I'm trying to think of it.
Tim Benson:It it sort of has, like, a locomotive push to it. And, I went actually not to shit on Rolling Stone again. I went back and read their original review of Leila when it came out in 1970. And, it wasn't too complimentary in the the the reviewer. He called Bell Bottom Blues, filler.
Tim Benson:He called that song filler, and I was like, well, Jesus Christ, that's one of the worst
Joel Selvin:Record was not well received when it first came out, and, the the tour, was launched before the record. So, really, nobody really paid much attention to the tour either.
Tim Benson:They had a Right. Especially just because Clapton's name wasn't even, you know, it was Derek and the Clapton was purposely trying to sort of escape the the, you know, the stardom and the rock god, guitar god thing. And so they were just billed as Derek and the Domino's. No one knew, you know, who the hell Derek and the Domino's were. Like I said, they didn't have a record out.
Tim Benson:So, yeah, it was tough sledding. And then I know Dwayne Allman wasn't a part of the band necessarily. I mean, he did play a couple dates with them, but, Dwayne Allman gets killed in the motorcycle crash, you know, later in 1971, and that sort of, and then with all the the drug problems and then Eric Clapton being rejected by Patty Harrison over the record. She basically hears the record that he made for her to express his love for her, and it scares the shit out of her. And, like, she, you know, like, pushes away from Clapton, and then Clapton spends, like, the next 3 years sitting in his house doing heroin.
Tim Benson:You know? And, but, so there was a lot of fallout from that record.
Joel Selvin:Well, they certainly couldn't get a second record together. They imploded during the sessions trying to do it, and the stuff that they left on tape was far cry from the first album. So, yeah, it was a record that was of the moment. No question about it. Everybody sort of came together.
Joel Selvin:I'm I'm I'm so amused that you're you're critical of Tom's production.
Tim Benson:It's like the I love him. I it's like it's it's the one thing, like, I normally you know, I I will go to bat for Tom Dowd whenever, I think the world of Tom Dowd is an engineer. I just I don't know. I just for some reason, like, I hear that record, and I'm like, this this could be like, the production on this could be better. It just sounds sort of too condensed.
Tim Benson:I don't I I I don't know how to put it, but but then again, I don't really like the the Spectre production on those John Lennon and I don't I don't really like the production on all things must pass that much either. I don't know. I think the, the product I think Tom Dowd's production on the on Clapton's first record was really good. I know there's, like, 3 different mixes of that. I know Delaney Bramble had a mix, and Clapton had a mix.
Tim Benson:And then I think that the Tom Dowd one was the one they released, they they went with with the release. I love that one, and I love all his other stuff with you know, that he did for Atlantic in the sixties. But I just for some reason, I just, it's it's the one thing every time I listen to the record, I'm like, man, I wish this could be better.
Joel Selvin:That's so interesting. I I I I wonder how much better it could be. Certainly, Spector couldn't have gotten that record out of them. The Tom's chief, accomplishment was finishing the record. He was an adult authority figure that managed to maintain enough discipline on this project when the musicians themselves were as as as wasted as they could be.
Joel Selvin:So, I I think that's, gotta go on the, on the books about, like, you know, what Tom's job as a producer.
Tim Benson:Producer slash babysitter.
Joel Selvin:And doing the Rod Stewart or Leonard Skinner track cuts.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Yeah.
Tim Benson:I don't know. I just I don't know. I would have loved to I would have loved to heard, like, somebody like Jimmy Page or something produce that record because Page is I never understood why. I don't know. Maybe it's because it's his his own battles with substance abuse or whatever.
Tim Benson:But, like, Page was like, all those Led Zeppelin records sound phenomenal even today. Like, they some of that stuff sounds like, you know, it was recorded, you know, 6 hours ago. And, and especially that that first Zeppelin record, which they made in, like, 30 hours or something like that.
Joel Selvin:All those records were made before electric guitar tuners.
Tim Benson:Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Selvin:Which is, the unique sound of Led Zeppelin has to do with Jimmy Page's hearing because he tunes his guitars just a little differently than anybody else.
Tim Benson:No. Yeah. So and he understands guitars and and stacking guitars, and there's tons of overdubs on on the Layla album, you know, Clapton playing with Allman and then Clapton playing off himself. And I just I think, like, I would have loved to have hear what he could have done with those record with that record because, and he and he also gets a phenomenal drum sound off everything. I mean, part of that is just, you know, Bonham was a phenomenal drummer, and he's gonna sound great no matter how you record him.
Tim Benson:But, I don't know. It's just, like, think someone like I've in an alternate universe, I would have loved to hear, like, Jimmy No.
Joel Selvin:Great great casting. I like that. I I did hear, a tape that was made at a jam session during the Abraxas sessions for Santana.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Joel Selvin:Clapton's on it and David Crosby and and and the Santana rhythm section and the guitar player. And it's a different engineer. It's a jam session, and it was done in the same studio while they were doing Abraxas, but the engineer for Abraxas, Fred Quatero, wasn't behind the board. Some other engineer, I don't know who. Mhmm.
Joel Selvin:But the difference in sound is unbelievable. The drums just explode, and you can't listen to this without wondering, wow. How good could Abraxas have sounded? You know?
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. That's a great record too. Alright. So enough bitching about producers.
Tim Benson:Let's move on a little bit. So he's gonna have another, we mentioned his physical assault on Rita Coolidge. That's eventually I mean, that unfortunately, that's gonna be something that's gonna become part of a pattern with Jim. He gets involved when he's over in England in relationship with, Chris O'Dell, who is, I think she was a I don't think she was no. The Beatles have broken up.
Tim Benson:So she wasn't working for Apple Records anymore, but she was an employee of Apple Records close to the Beatles, close to the Stones, and then that's they met, and, he's going to assault her as well in the relationship. And this is gonna be something that's gonna become a a pattern, with, you know, the women, the romantic the women that are involved with him romantically in his life, Renee Armand, especially, and and a few others.
Joel Selvin:Schizophrenics have real difficulty establishing human relationships. And Jim very much wanted to be involved in a romantic relationship and have a partner, but it was almost impossible for him to sustain any kind of relationship. I spoke to people who had spent 100 of hours with Jim in recording studios, but had never had a meal with him, didn't know whether he was married or not, didn't know if he had children, had no sense of him as a human being, just as a drummer that they played with. That's in the nature of this mental illness that he suffered from as he lived so much inside himself, and what he presented to the world was a kind of carefully arranged mask that must have been very difficult for him to maintain, very trying. And and there would be these fissures, and they would be around relationship issues.
Joel Selvin:It's not atypical to this condition, But they weren't like, you know, it wasn't an I Turner thing. It wasn't like this was some way to control his relations. It would these were absolutely
Tim Benson:Right.
Joel Selvin:Inexplicable explosions that even Jim didn't understand.
Tim Benson:Right. Yeah. And, I'm sorry. I was gonna say, well, forget that. I lost my train of thought, so we'll just move ahead.
Tim Benson:So, yeah, so Derek and the Domino's break up. He, hooks up with another member of the ex member of Blind Faith with Stevie Winwood in traffic, goes on tour with them, records the I don't know if the entire Low Spark, a High Heel Boy record.
Joel Selvin:Entire album. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Entire album.
Joel Selvin:Mhmm.
Tim Benson:So he's on that one. And then
Joel Selvin:Did a European tour or English tour and a US tour with them.
Tim Benson:And then he gets fired, I I believe. Right? Yep. Or or they just move their,
Joel Selvin:no. They're the, the the they had to clean up the scene. He and, Rick Gretsch were, both very, very addicted to drugs, and that was, like, counter what the other guys were. And Reebok was a alcohol problem. So, you know, they they just got rid of the troublemakers and and and regrouped, with the Muscle Shoals guys.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Oh, speaking of the drugs, let's go into the bat the Jim's drug intake a little bit, what that consisted of. Because for a long time, he resisted the temptation, I guess, to, you know, take these things. I mean, he had, like, a pact, I think, with with Mike Post, who was his, like, sort of lifelong buddy that they weren't gonna, you know, get involved with that stuff. But eventually, he, you know, does get involved with it, does start taking drugs.
Tim Benson:So what is his and, he's an alcoholic also by this period. So what is his daily drug alcohol regimen look like? I mean, you know, what what's the
Joel Selvin:time the dog is taking? On the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, Jim got an opportunity to really exercise his appetite for drugs. And, his, electrochemical setup in his brain was such that he could consume massive amounts of drugs without any apparent side effects. Keltner tells a story about taking a bit of an LSD tab at while Jim gobbles a whole one and and goes out to play, and Jim can't even remember what rhythm is and just sat behind his drum set weeping while Gordon was playing like crazy. You know, I'm looking over at Keltner going, play.
Joel Selvin:Play. The heroin starts coming in during the Derek and the Domino's era. Got back to Los Angeles and he became pretty, alcoholic. All this is self medication, and, the alcohol was the only way he could quiet the voices down at all. And I asked the psychiatrist about the cocaine because it didn't seem to me like that the the if you had the head full of voices that taking cocaine would be necessarily indicated.
Tim Benson:Right.
Joel Selvin:The psychiatrist said, no. No. No. It'll regulate the dopamine levels. Oh god.
Joel Selvin:Of course. My god. So, yeah, Jim treated himself with massive amounts of psycho psychological, really primitive psychological medicine that was prescribed by a psychiatrist, you know, Haldol, which left him with constricted feelings through his chest and ribs. So if he's playing drums, he's still got this, like, feeling. I mean, I don't know how he did it.
Joel Selvin:And, I mean, really heavy handed psychological drugs that may or may not have had any effect on on it all, and then massive amounts of illegal drugs, and all within the bounds of trying to just keep himself between the gutters. Without drugs and alcohol, the voices just ran amok on him. They wouldn't let him eat. They wouldn't let him sleep. They wouldn't let him play music.
Tim Benson:I was
Joel Selvin:thinking they wouldn't let him. It it sounds silly, but what happens is that if he didn't do what the voices commanded him, he would experience blinding headaches. And psychiatrists are all familiar with this syndrome. They call it the electric hat band. But Jim would find himself crawling on his floor, wetting his pants, trying to get the pain to go away Mhmm.
Joel Selvin:Unless he did what the voices told him. So he soon came to do what they told him to do.
Tim Benson:Yeah. I was thinking the same thing about the Coke, with the voices because you think, like, well, if you're having all these voices, is it you know, the one thing everyone sorta knows about Coke is, you know, people that are on Coke can't shut the fuck up. So you would think that, you know, you wouldn't want a bunch of coked out voices in your head, you know, hammering in your ear when they're in your butt, but that makes sense with the dopamine levels. But, anyway, so after traffic, he moves back home to LA from England, and he picks right back up with the session work, and he's as busy as he was in the late sixties. And, we mentioned a couple of these earlier, but I just wanted to talk about a few of these songs that he plays in this period, just because they're so different from each other and so unique and, and, the impact these songs are gonna have.
Tim Benson:So he plays on, Rock the Boat by the Hughes Corporation. Everyone knows that song, one of the the first disco hits. Again, you mentioned You're So Vane, the Carly Simon song. I I'm remind me to ask you when we go off air if you know who that song is about, if if you've heard to the grapevine who your serving is about. And then he's on this version, a cover of Apache, which has been done a 1000000 times.
Tim Benson:I think, like, Jorgen Ingemann was, like, the one who had the big hit with it in the early sixties. He does version of this with the incredible Bongo Band, and his drum break from that song is going to be sampled by hip hop producers, you know, 8 gazillion times in in the eighties nineties and and 2 thousands. So he believes on that. And then, you mentioned My Maria by, Buckwheat Stevenson, which is a song, I could probably listen to 50 times a day and not get tired of it. I I know I love that record for some reason.
Tim Benson:But so he records these songs, you know, right in the same sort of period with each other, and they're all different styles. And I'm just
Joel Selvin:And that is the Oasis is right in there. Sundown with Gordon Lightfoot is right there. He's cutting, tracks with Nielsen.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And, yeah, jumping the fire and yep.
Joel Selvin:He was at the height of his his career at that point.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And it's just an amazing breadth of of, of styles and that he's playing, and that's that's sort of the best, the best session musicians. They somehow managed to keep their individuality about their playing, but they still seem sound like, somebody else, you know, needs them to sound. You know what I mean?
Joel Selvin:It's a different aesthetic than, the virtuoso musician.
Tim Benson:It's a very fine line to to walk. You know, you want the song, you know, for example, you want the Carly Simon record to sound like a Carly Simon record, so you have to play, you have to play in your own style, but still, you know, get the sound that Carly Simon wants or her producer wants or, you know what I mean? It's just a it's a whole different animal than just being in a, a rock group or in a band or something like that and just, you know, playing the way that you play all the time?
Joel Selvin:It's more surgical. It's more scientific. It is a commission job. You're brought in to serve the music, not to express yourself, and the, skills you bring to bear on that, are are are directed in that regard. You know, you're not there to, like, bang the, the rhythm out.
Joel Selvin:You're there to be part of hit making record machine. Mhmm. And and that is quite different than being in a rock band on stage where really all you have to do is make sure that time is kept and and that there's a a good thud behind everything. So, yeah, studio musicians are an entirely different mentality. Does not reward the virtuoso musician.
Joel Selvin:It rewards the versatile musician. It is an aesthetic of collaboration where you have to see your role as part of the whole, and it's an entirely different approach to, music.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And he could do the the rock band stuff too. I mean, if you listen to the the live recordings of him with Delaney and Bonnie or Mad Dogs and Englishmen or the the live stuff from Derek and the Domino's
Joel Selvin:Or traffic. That traffic. Traffic. Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Selvin:That traffic record. Rocks it.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, he could he could do both as well. He could do one as well as he did the other, and that's, part of what makes him so unique and so great.
Joel Selvin:I think, listening to all this stuff and refreshing my recollection, that that Delaney Bonney band was one of the most amazing rock bands of their time.
Tim Benson:Absolutely. 100%.
Joel Selvin:And and Jim was just an essential ingredient in that mix.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Joel Selvin:The Delaney and Bonnie band was the Mad Dogs in English band Yep. Augmented, and it was stripped down. It was Derek and the Domino's. Yep. So that's kind of a a a a pivot point for rock where the studio musicians went on stage.
Joel Selvin:You know, and then that that's 1969, and and Jim had been in the studio, what, 5 years by then. And 1969, oh, man, Live Rock was a big deal. Led Zeppelin was a gigantic attraction that fall. They did a 2 and a half hour show. It had a half hour drum solo in it.
Joel Selvin:The Who was touring with Tommy that fall, and that's when the Stones came back to, play live. So the action had moved from hit records in the studio to the stage of Woodstock. Right. And that's where Jim made this transition. He wanted to spotlight.
Joel Selvin:He wanted to be recognized. He wanted part of what was going on in the culture at the time, and and he'd done everything he could do as a studio musician. He'd had every success possible. He'd made as much money as you could. He'd done all the things you could do.
Joel Selvin:TV, live, whatever. But this, playing in a rock band live on stage, that was the thing to do in 1969.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And we have, I really think we have the San Francisco bands or the scene in San Francisco to thank for, like, the the way that, the rock concert sort of developed and, you know, because the tours, people are playing before that scene gets going. You know, they're doing, like, the little half hour. You know, the Beatles come out and play for half hour in front of all the teeny boppers and screaming, and they can't hear themselves. And the Stones are the same thing.
Tim Benson:And or they're in part of those package tours, where, you know, you know, Murray, the k presents, you know, rock and roll extravaganza, and there'll be, like, the girl groups and the Motown people, and then, you know, 5 minutes of the small faces or, you know, something like that. And, you know, he had, like, the Motown review and all that sort of stuff. But the the scene that develops at the Avalon and the the carousel slash Filmore, you know, Bill Graham and and the all that stuff. The you know, sort of like that that structure of the concert and then playing for, you know, not just for half an hour, if you're the headliner, you know, playing for an hour and a half, 2 hours, you know, if you're the dead or Zeppelin or something like that for for 3, 3 plus, you know, sometimes 4, You know, that really I think, for the most part, that all really starts in San Francisco.
Joel Selvin:And the All those musicians were on LSD.
Tim Benson:They Yeah.
Joel Selvin:They couldn't they couldn't contain their, self to 3 minutes.
Tim Benson:No. Yeah. Yeah. No. And but, I mean, even, like so the visiting bands that come there in the from England that come there in the in the mid sixties, you know, the Creams, you know, the Jeff Beck Groups and that sort of thing of the world.
Tim Benson:Like, they have to, sort of meet expec expectations and raise the bar. Like, well, the local bands here, you know, this is how they play. You know, this is how the this is how it's structured. So this is what you have to do. And really allowed them to step out and stretch out in ways that they hadn't before.
Tim Benson:And then that started to sort of take over the whole of The Rock, establishment of, like, you know, this is how a rock concert is presented, you know, with the light show and and all that sort of stuff going forward.
Joel Selvin:A gym saw cream in, I guess, 68 at the Shrine Auditorium, and Ginger Baker blew blew his mind. And and it wasn't long before he was sitting in with Delaney and Bonnie at local clubs in the San Fernando Valley. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yep. Alright. So, we've already gone pretty long here. I don't wanna keep you too much longer. We'll start wrapping it up.
Tim Benson:So, things really start to deteriorate for Jim after, Elise's relationship with his mother, after the death of his father.
Jim Lakely:We don't
Joel Selvin:really know that. We know that Jim's illness and his delusions about his mother got larger. But it's really hard to say what the reality of his relationship with his mother was. Because the the the thing of his mother being this tormentor was entirely an invention of his illness.
Tim Benson:Right.
Joel Selvin:She was a decent mother. She was a kind person. She was perhaps a little controlling, but she was a caring individual, and and and there would be situations where Jim would be dining at her house, and and her voice in his head would be telling him not to eat. And she would be wondering out loud why he wasn't eating his dinner. And Jim, of course, thought the whole thing was a trick that was being played on him by this evil tormenting person.
Joel Selvin:But I don't think Osa was that person. I think Osa was a caring, decent mother, and and and Jim invented the voice in his head.
Tim Benson:Yeah. He also thought his mother was controlling all the doctors he was seeing at the different psychiatric hospitals he was going to and that, you know, he couldn't trust anything that because his mother was a nurse and so knew all that stuff. And so
Joel Selvin:he He didn't have any respect for doctors. They hadn't helped him. He didn't see that they could do anything for him. He went into, his first residential treatment program. He was there for a couple of months, and nothing happened.
Joel Selvin:If anything, he got a lot worse because he wasn't on drugs and alcohol. He went home and tried to kill himself. So, no. Doctors were not his favorite thing. And, yes, he suspected that his mother, the nurse, had some secret connection to all these doctors, and and they were controlling him on her behalf.
Tim Benson:Yeah. When I first started the book, knowing how it ended, I figured he was gonna and just the nature of the times and all that. I figured he wasn't that the schizophrenia was basically or his mental illness was gonna be something that he never got treatment for, then all of a sudden, you know, it pops out and then he, you know, kills his mother. But, no, he actually he tried very hard to to get, get his situation under control, get help for what was going on in his mind, the voices in his mind. And like you said, he was he probably hospitalized himself couple dozen times pretty closely, you know, in between the late seventies and the early eighties, and it never seemed to do anything for him.
Tim Benson:Or they could never figure out how to the doctor
Joel Selvin:He had moments he had moments of recovery.
Tim Benson:But not much. Yeah.
Joel Selvin:Not much and, the treatment was, very rudimentary. They really didn't understand a lot of what was going on. For instance, a lot of people thought that Jim's problems were exclusively related to drugs and alcohol, but they didn't understand illness mixed with addiction issues. Right. And those are very difficult to unwind.
Joel Selvin:And and and the recovery community has come to understand more about dual diagnosis since then, but it's always been complicated. And back then, they had very limited psychiatric medical tools. They had very limited understanding of the recovery issues involved, and Jim was severely ill. It wasn't like he was slightly ill. So, yeah.
Joel Selvin:And keep in mind, he had the wherewithal to get the best treatment available. That's not the case with most people who are afflicted. And it still really didn't help him much at all.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And then the, you know, the unthinkable happens. The the night he ends up, but he starts eventually hearing voices or hears his mother's mother's voice in his head saying that, you know, you I mean, he has these command hallucinations, the call, then he starts so he has these voices in his head, including his mother, including his brother, including his daughter and, you know, other people, you know, tons of different voices. But his mother's voice, as you said, was one of them. And now he starts hearing his mother's voice in his head telling him to kill her.
Tim Benson:That will, you know, solve your problems. That will end your pain. You have to kill me to, you know, to to to be better. That's that is the step you're gonna have to take to get the you know? And, Jim eventually gives in, to this.
Tim Benson:You know, he realizes he might go to jail for it for 20 years, but at least he will be, you know, it'll quiet what's going on, the symphony of the cacophony of voices in his head, and that leads him to, to doing what he did. But, he's caught very quickly, and, it basically waives his Miranda rights and, admits to it to the police and all that. And, and then pleads guilty or not guilty by insanity. It was not guilty by reason of insanity, but due to changes in the, in California state law, they sort of narrow the definition of how you can plead insanity. And because of that, his they even basically, I I think he said it the the person has to not realize what they are doing at the time
Joel Selvin:they were doing it.
Tim Benson:At the time at the time they were doing it, and, obviously, he admitted to knowing what he was doing at the time that he did it so that there went his defense.
Joel Selvin:Jim was tried in front of a judge, not a jury, and the judge recognized that Jim, did not have the mental capacity to, plan this. So he convicted Jim of second degree murder. He, gave him a sentence of 16 years to life. Jim served 38 years. He died in prison in March of 2023.
Joel Selvin:I don't think he wanted out. He skipped his parole board meetings. He undermined his, progress towards parole, and, you know, he lived out his life, kind of a reclusive guy who didn't hang out on the yard a lot and didn't play in a lot of the prison music, things, just sort of did his time.
Tim Benson:Did he receive, do you know did he receive any did he ever get any better mentally? And during his time in prison, did he get any sort of the care that he he needed? Or, I mean, was
Joel Selvin:So the way they handle that in prison is pretty heavy handed as you might imagine.
Tim Benson:I'm sure.
Joel Selvin:Jim had to sign an agreement that he would take psychiatric medicine daily, and that was administered every day after breakfast, and they kept him doped up for the duration of his time. I suspect if you discussed this with prison medical officials, they would say it was for Jim's benefit. I think not. I think that that's the way they deal with inmates who are mentally ill is they just keep them subdued.
Tim Benson:Gotcha. And, I know we didn't mention it earlier, but, you know, during the early sixties, he he gets married once and or his first marriage and, has a, gets married to his high school sweetheart, basically in in the mid sixties, and then they have a child together. And so his daughter, I believe, was around 11 or 12, around that age, maybe 13, something like that, when or early teenager years when the the murder happened of her grandmother, and, you said in the book that she basically that Jim wrote her letters, or at least at the start, Jim wrote her letters and never received a response. Did they ever form any relationship later on, through the years?
Joel Selvin:Well, Jim never knew how to be a father, and that was very troubling to him.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Joel Selvin:He struggled with that all through Amy's upbringing. And, yeah, she was in high school when her father killed her beloved grandmother. Yeah. And hugely traumatic. Hugely.
Joel Selvin:I don't believe that Amy ever spoke to her father again. In the past, like, 10 years, she, has started to look at that part of her life again. And, although she didn't really, she had no interest in participating in a book, after her father's death, I I I got in touch with Amy, and and and we've talked a lot. Of course, I knew she was there and I was quite aware, that I was writing a book about this person's most traumatic episode and that I would have to stand that test. So Amy's read the book and and and she's okay with it.
Joel Selvin:She said that, you know, she feels like that it may restore her father's reputation as a professional, that that it was the illness was dealt with compassion and sensitivity. And so she's okay with the book. I I I don't expect her to be doing any book signings or anything.
Tim Benson:Sure.
Joel Selvin:But that is validation for me that I can't possibly top. That that that was the thing that really mattered was that Amy Gordon be okay with the the account of her father's life that I provided. And, yeah, we we we we passed that test and and and, she she's gonna come to know her father even more. It it it was something that she had to resolve in her life, and it took years years years years.
Tim Benson:Yeah. I can can only imagine. But, alright. We've gone about 15 minutes long already, so we'll I'll wrap this up. You know, normal exit question, you get when you come on the podcast, and, that is, you know, what's the what would you like the audience to get out of reading this book or what's the, you know, what's the one thing you'd want someone who's read it?
Tim Benson:What would you want them taking away from it?
Joel Selvin:This book has an important story to tell, Not just how pernicious and and dangerous mental illness is, but how it can destroy the greatest of lives. So I wanted everybody to understand what an incredible life Jim Gordon had scheduled for himself. And how it was taken away from him viciously and violently by mental illness. And again, it just bears repeating, schizophrenia, 1 in 100. So this is a more important book than I'm used to writing.
Joel Selvin:It it it has very significant social issues involved. Plus, I I really wanna rescue Jim Gordon from history.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I certainly think you did you did so. Like you said, you've you Amy Gordon season pleased with the book, how the way the book turned out, how, how her father's is treated in the book, how his illness is treated, how his legacy is treated, how the, you know, the tragic events that, Jim put upon people, were treated. And, it it really is a fantastic book.
Tim Benson:There was I mean, I know, you know, quite a lot of stuff about rock and roll, and there were things in here that, you know, I, lots of things in here I didn't know, and especially just
Joel Selvin:Now did you know Gene Krupa designed the modern drum set?
Tim Benson:No. Actually, I did not know that either. I was I wanted to I I actually I had that written down as one of the questions for you, but, we already we went pretty long with the intro, so I decided to skip it. But, yeah, we got if you don't mind, we got a little bit of time. Talk about that.
Tim Benson:Jim Gene Krupa's role in assembling the drum kit or what we think
Joel Selvin:of today. Well, drums.
Tim Benson:See a drum kit in your lime in your mind, you know, he basically came up with that setup.
Joel Selvin:Well, drums, of course, are ancient, and they go back in time, you know, eons. In the early 20th century in America, a drum salesman out of Chicago named William Ludwig invented a pedal that would allow you to use a kick drum. And that was the beginning of the development, sort of before the First World War of what came to be called the contraption drum set. And it was a a collection of different sized drums, of whistles, of bells, of cymbals, of all kinds of stuff, klaxon horns that some of them held on a table. They were very popular with vaudeville pit band.
Joel Selvin:In 1927, Gene Krupa was a 19 year old drummer in Chicago, where jazz had taken hold with young white musicians that had been private previously the province of black musicians from New Orleans. And he brought a drum set into a recording session when drums weren't really featured in recording sessions. The equipment was not good enough to get drums. They managed to record these drums. They were an instant sensation on the record, and Kroupa became famous as the leading drummer in the jazz world at this young age.
Joel Selvin:He began to design drums. And in 1932, he entered into a deal with the Slingerland Company to create the Radio King drum set, and that's the drum set that we know. Snare, tom, kick drum, ride cymbal, splash cymbal mounted on the rim. He even went to work with the Zildjian cymbal company and helped design American Cymbals, thinner, larger bell. And so not only did he create this drum set that all the musicians began starting to use, then he became the leading player of that drum set.
Joel Selvin:And in 1939, at the Carnegie Hall concert by Benny Goodman, His drum solo in sing sing sing was the epitome of the swing era, and and he sealed that deal. I think I said this in the book that in his solo, you can hear not only the world of swing, but you can hear rhythm and blues coming in the future. You can hear rock and roll in Gene Krupa's drumming. And it's not just what he played. He designed the kit.
Joel Selvin:One world, one drum.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Incredible story. I think going back to those Rolling Stone rankings, I think they had Gene Krupa, like, 6th or 7th, somewhere around there.
Joel Selvin:Oh, give give me a break. They don't even know who Gary Chester was. But you can Google him and find out. Yeah. And I know I'm sure he's not even on their list.
Tim Benson:I I have to go back and check. I'm not sure. I I don't I just But let me tell you.
Joel Selvin:The Libra installer, Bert Bacharach, Bert Burns, they wouldn't do a session without him.
Tim Benson:Yep. That's true. Alright. Again, the book, drums and demons, the tragic journey of Jim Gordon, a fascinating look into the life of this very troubled, man, but also this amazing amazing musician, amazing drummer, a man who was literally, you know, at the peak of his profession. You know, there's not that many people in the world that are at the peak of in in the entire world of what they do.
Tim Benson:It's a very limited field of people, and Jim Gordon was one of those people. And because of the horrific nature of of this murder of his mother has been sort of lost to history, and, this book does a great job of, as you said, you're rescuing him from history and and bringing back, you know, into the light, just what an important, musician he was and what an important, drummer he was and how much of an impact he had on the history of, you know, late 20th century American and, English popular music. So, it's a highly, highly recommended book For everybody out there, go and get it. Drums and Demons, the Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon and the author, mister Joel Selvin. So, mister Selvin, thank you.
Tim Benson:Thank you so much once again for coming on the podcast and talking with me.
Joel Selvin:Jim, thanks for having me. It's good to be back.
Tim Benson:No problem. And thank you again for, taking the time to to write the book and get the story out. You know, it's a lot of lot of man hours, a lot of work. So we appreciate, you know, all the all the the time and effort it went to, you know, getting this thing out there.
Joel Selvin:It's good to talk about it with you.
Tim Benson:Alright. Take care. And if you like this book or excuse me. If you like this podcast, please make sure you leave us a 5 star review and share with your friends. And if you have, any questions or comments or anything like that, any books you'd like to see discussed in this podcast, you can reach out to me at, timbenson@heartland excuse me, tbenson@heartland.org.
Tim Benson:That's t b e n s o n at heartland dot org. And for more information about the Heartland Institute, you can just go to heartland.org. And feel free to also give us a follow on our Twitter account for the website or, excuse me, for the podcast so you can, you know, stay abreast of what's going on, find out when new episodes are released, that sort of thing. Our our Twitter handle is at illbooks, at illbooks. So make sure you check that out.
Tim Benson:You know, feel free also to reach out to us there. And, yeah, that's pretty much it. So thanks for listening everybody. We'll see you guys next time. Take care.
Tim Benson:Love you, Robbie. Love you, mom. Bye
Tim Benson:bye.