Drumming Into The Fire: A New Book on the Tragedy of Jim Gordon
“When fear is allowed to flourish in its dark and lonely medium, then any evil that can be conceived by the fearful imagination will emerge.”― Andrew J. Robinson
The first thing I learned in the studio, producing records, was the necessity of having a killer drummer as anchor for the session, for the recordings. When I was a late-teenager interning at Warner Bros. Records, my partner Rob Cavallo would take me around to sessions he was overseeing as an A&R guy…oftentimes sessions being led by legends like Jimi Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer…and I would sit in the corner and watch and understand that when the drum track was slamming, the song in question blasted into life like the big bang to the universe. When the drums were sloppy…everything fell apart. There was nothing to overdub onto…no structure to work from. The drummer commandeered the successful sailing of a session…beat a hit into life. I have had fortune to observe some great drummers in the studio: Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips, Paul Quatrone of the Modey Lemon (now with The Oh Sees), Dan Peters of Mudhoney, Yoshimi Pee-Wee and Atari of Boredoms, Ronald Bruner and Scott Amendola…most recently Marco Giovono. When they are peak playing, there is no one more important in the room; they shine brighter than any star.
So when Joel Selvin writes a book about Jim Gordon, where he heralds him the greatest rock ‘n’ roll drummer in history and goes on to celebrate his importance to the success of recordings we all know but ascribe to the famous artists whose names are atop the single, the hyperbole can be questioned, but the final reasoning is nothing less than sober and correct. Drums and Demons, a book that was released a few weeks ago about the tragic life of Jim Gordon, is an incredible work of pros because not only does it prove the thesis of Jim Gordon’s greatness…with copious facts and details about the artists and sessions attached to Jim’s legacy that only the likes of Selvin can deliver with the right amount of gusto to breath them life and excitement…but uses this buildup of character and success to tell another, dark and twisted tale of falling from such heights to such final depths. It is a tale of demons, a horror story best served by a bad card of fate to an innocent soul and hidden by the excessive drug addled world of the music business.
For those who know of Jim Gordon…and there are many amongst the record collector scumbags and road weary music journalists out there…the headlines are simple: he co-wrote Layla as a member of Derek and the Dominos…and he killed his mother and died in prison for his crime. Ok…maybe it is only the second headline that immediately comes to mind…but nevertheless, the legacy of Gordon’s work…he played on so many (So. Many.) great recordings…has been muddled by his last horrific act. One of Selvin’s self-given tasks is to bolster said legacy, which he does by detailing both his glory in the greatest sessions of the greatest recordings done by the top artists often overseen by legendary producers (who wanted Jim and only Jim) as well as the post-recording touring…touring and conquering. Starring Delany and Bonnie. Joe Cocker and the Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Derek and the Dominos. Paul Revere and the Raiders. Gordon Lightfoot. The Everly Brothers. George Harrison. The Byrds. The Beach Boys. The Monkees. So many more era defining artists that are all showcased within the book’s pages as significant characters in Jim’s crazed life tapestry.
An example: Selvin tells a rich story around the session that birthed Your So Vain by Carly Simon. It could have gone all ways but good with a producer Richard Perry, who was as talented as he was a tyrant (more on him in another Signal), and not a drummer in the wings that could nail the needed part. Jim walks into the studio like he was walking onto a yacht on the final night of the session and, while Simon objects to his being there and “burst(s) into tears,” Jim nails the part. The story of the creation of Carly Simon’s biggest hit could be a book unto itself, with Jim as savior, a made-for-HBO docudrama much more exciting than 6 hours of the Beatles plodding, plodding away covers and crankiness in the studio any day. Drums and Demons is loaded like a Chicago dog with extra peppers with stories like these…and that alone: dayenu.
However, the darker current beneath it all was that Jim was schizophrenic. He battled with demons for most of his life, and they got worse as he got older. It is how Selvin deals with this part of Jim’s story that makes Drums and Demons a masterwork, breaking out of the confines of the rock ‘n’ roll biography and into the world of Hitchcockian psychotic horror. Yes, Jim Gordon was recording and touring with the craziest druggies of his era of rock, and he was a top user himself. But there was something battling from within him, that he masked with a sweet smile, beyond the excess of drugs and drink (which of course did not help) that made him unexpectedly explode with violent actions that recall the harshest scenes from John Carpenter’s Halloween or from the Brett Easton Ellis novel American Psycho.
Such a moment happens during the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, with Jim ferociously erupting with fists on an unsuspecting girlfriend (who happens to be a star unto herself…read the book to find out who). Even with the knowledge amongst the group that such horrible abuse occurred, the tour went on, and Jim along with it. Which brings about such a telling piece of writing from Joel: “There was no small irony that, amid all this depravity and debauchery, nobody could distinguish authentic psychotic behavior.” During the Derek and the Dominos’ tour, Jim came close to severely hurting Eric Clapton (it is such a wonder that Clapton did not kick him off the tour then and there). In the fucked-up world of the male-driven 70s rock ‘n’ roll star experience, anarchy, chaos, and depravity were the norm, and Jim had a habitat in which his sick self could exist…at least for a while.
Things get a hell of a lot darker as the novel progresses, leading to the story that defined Jim’s life.
I recently heard an interview with Joel where he talks about how while many either knew or suspected things were very wrong with Jim, that not one person really tried to help him out. He was in and out of hospitals for much of the later years of his life, without ever finding anything close to a light at the end of his troubled tunnel. He goes on to say (and I’m paraphrasing) that with Drums and Demons, he tells Jim’s tale with a great degree of empathy, changing the perception of Jim Gordon from being a murderer to someone who was not in control, someone who lost the battle over his sickness as the voices in his head multiplied and took over. He is beyond a character in a Shakespearean tragedy because he never was allowed a moment to understand the true nature of his heinous actions.
Joel put together a playlist of some of the greatest recordings Jim played on that offer an understanding of how many legendary tracks he was a part of.
You can buy a copy of Drums and Demons here.
The NYPL's archive of the legendary East Village Eye now available to the public
A rabbit-hole of an archive, The East Village Eye has all the styling’s of the underground art scene of the 80s; an amazing time capsule. Now you can digitally flip through them all. “The records of the Eye will be essential to researchers studying the evolution of the punk movement, the growth of hip-hop, the rise of HIV/AIDS, and the early careers of artists like Basquiat, Mapplethorpe and Fab Five Freddy."
The Institute for Illegal Images
This was sent to me by several friends who thought of me when thinking of a museum of blotter acid. Mark McCloud’s collection seems pretty incredible, once again proving that the artistic vision can find opportunities in every facet of the underground experience. I need to go. To dig even deeper, there is another webpage to ponder here.
19-Foot-Tall Statue of Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles Is Unveiled with Typos, Goes Viral
I realize I am one to talk re. spelling errors as anyone who regularly catches the newsletter must gander (I always try to do better). But whomever made the decicion (their spelling, not mine) to create a statue without spell check…which showcases multiple errors…should be truly embareassed (intentionel (intentional)).
“If You’re Cool, Aren’t You Sexy?”: Kim Gordon, in Conversation With Chloe Sevigny
GORDON: The post-punk dress code was always t-shirts, and I remember Mark Arm from Mudhoney once asking me why I don’t wear t-shirts anymore. So I started wearing a giant T-shirt with nothing, just boots and a choker…It was the nineties…Yeah, Dirty era, I guess. There’s this thing about whether you dress to look cool or sexy, and how do you balance those?
SEVIGNY: Right. But if you’re cool, then aren’t you sexy?
GORDON: One would think. I remember seeing this noise band open up for us in Detroit called Universal Indians, and Gretchen [Gonzales] was wearing baggy corduroys and a T-shirt and she was playing a guitar with a rock. I thought that was really sexy because it was so cool. I’d never seen that before.
***Gretchen’s latest band Infinite River’s new record is out on Birdman NOW.
How great were the Rasberries? Eric Carmen was a hit solo artist as well….but damn, how great were the crunchy power poppy songs of the Rasberries??? This obit from the Guardian is the one to read…. Eric Carmen RIP.
“If Heaney’s greatest sins were attempting to uphold nuance in public discourse during fraught political times and a later surfeit of decency, coupled with a too-earnest desire to be a servant for poetry, they’re sins that wouldn’t have worn out his knees at confession.”
The Willows by Algernon Blackwood
I think I have posted this before on Blackwood’s birthday (which today is)…but it is worth posting again: one of the great horror short stories. It is a great read. The creepy, mysterious, tense feeling it bleeds will stain your imagination forever…
Ode
By: Arthur O'Shaughnessy
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; —
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.
We, in the ages lying,
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming —
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.
They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.
And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.
But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing:
O men! it must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye.
For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry —
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.
Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.
I don’t just ‘like’ this post, I loved reading it through to the end.
De nada.
For the time being, the eyes (slightly distorted), fingers and toes (too many or too little) usually give AI away.