LOS ANGELES – Jim Gordon, the famed session drummer who backed Eric Clapton and The Beach Boys before he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and went to prison for killing his mother, has died. He was 77.
Gordon died Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation confirmed Thursday. He is believed to have died of natural causes, but the official cause will be determined by the Solano County Medical Examiner.
Gordon was the drummer in the blues rock supergroup Derek and the Dominos, led by Clapton. He played on their 1970 double album “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” and toured with them.
Gordon was credited with contributing the elegiac piano coda to “Layla”. The group’s keyboardist Bobby Whitlock later claimed that Gordon took the piano melody from his then-girlfriend, singer Rita Coolidge, and did not give her credit.
Coolidge wrote in her 2016 memoir “Delta Lady” that the song was called “Time” when she and Gordon wrote it. They played it for Clapton when they went to England to record with him.
“I was furious,” Coolidge wrote. “What they had obviously done was taken the song that Jim and I had written, discarded the lyrics and brought it to the end of Eric’s song. It was almost the same arrangement.”
Coolidge said she took comfort in the fact that Gordon’s song royalties went to his daughter, Amy.
Gordon can be heard on George Harrison’s first post-Beatles album “All Things Must Pass”, The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” album and Steely Dan’s 1974 song “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”.
He also worked with Joan Baez, Jackson Browne, The Byrds, Judy Collins, Alice Cooper, Crosby Stills & Nash, Delaney & Bonnie, Neil Diamond, Art Garfunkel, Merle Haggard, Hall & Oates, Carole King, Harry Nilsson, Tom Petty and among others the Heartbreakers and Barbra Streisand.
Gordon’s mental health eventually declined.
In 1970, Gordon was part of Joe Cocker’s famous “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” tour with Coolidge, then a backup singer, before going on to a successful solo career.
She wrote in her memoirs that Gordon punched her in the eye one night in a hotel hallway “so hard that I was lifted off the floor and hit the wall on the other side of the hallway.” She was briefly knocked unconscious.
It was only after his arrest for second degree murder that Gordon was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Gordon was sentenced to 16 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole. However, he was denied parole several times after failing to attend any of the hearings and remained in prison until his death.
Born James Beck Gordon on July 14, 1945 in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, he began his professional career at 17 supporting The Everly Brothers.
Gordon was a member of The Wrecking Crew, a famous group of Los Angeles-based session musicians who played on hundreds of hits in the 1960s and 70s.
He was a protégé of drumming legend Hal Blaine.
“When I didn’t have time, I recommended Jim,” Blaine told Rolling Stone in 1985. “He was a hell of a drummer. I thought he was one of the real go-to guys.”