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| Jim Gordon (1945-2023) |
Jim Gordon, the famed session drummer who backed Eric Clapton and The Beach Boys before being diagnosed with schizophrenia and going to prison for killing his mother, has died. He was 77, according to AP News.
Gordon died Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation confirmed Thursday. It’s believed he died of natural causes, but the official cause will be determined by the Solano County coroner.
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 for “Layla.” The group’s keyboardist Bobby Whitlock later claimed Gordon took the piano melody from his then-girlfriend, singer Rita Coolidge, and didn’t give her credit.
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 the Heartbreakers and Barbra Streisand, among others.
Gordon’s mental health eventually declined.
In June 1983, he attacked his 71-year-old mother, Osa Gordon, with a hammer and then fatally stabbed her with a butcher knife. He claimed that a voice told him to do it.
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