A drummer who performed with the Beach Boys and Eric Clapton among others has died aged 77. Jim Gordon had battled mental illness all of his life and killed his mother.
Alongside playing with the Beach Boys and Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominos - and being credited as a co-writer on 1970 hit Layla - Gordon played with Steely Dan, Carly Simon, Sonny and Cher, Nancy Sinatra, and the Byrds. He was also one of the main drummers for George Harrison's album All Things Must Pass.
The drummer passed away from natural causes at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, California, where he was serving a 16-to-life sentence for murder, reports the Mirror.
Gordon bludgeoned and stabbed his 72-year-old mother to death in her home in North Hollywood in 1983. After his arrest, he told police that voices in his head ordered him to commit the crime.
He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and convicted of her murder in 1984. A judge ruled he could not be found innocent by reason of insanity under the California insanity laws at the time.
Despite being on parole several times, he was always denied, for not showing up to his hearings. Before his schizophrenia diagnosis, Jim had a history of mental illness. At one point, he assaulted his then-girlfriend Rita Coolidge in 1970. Jim rarely showed signs of his erratic behaviour in front of his fellow musicians, however, Rita recounted one particular violent memory she had of him in Bill Janovitz’s biography of late musician, Leon Russell.
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She said: "Jim said very quietly, so only I could hear, ‘Can I talk to you for just a minute?’ He meant 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 on the other side of the hallway… It came from nowhere."
She went on to say that he was "an amazing guy, just really so charismatic. [But] after everything happened, I started to recognize that look in his eye and knew that he was not playing with a full deck."
