When the roll call of rock’s finest session drummers is made,
great players from Jim Keltner to Hal Blaine would be among the first
to insist on a place in the list for Jim Gordon. A fixture on a truly
remarkable catalogue of famous recordings, a noted organ player and
listed as co-writer of the rock classic ‘Layla,’ he was born on 14 July
1945.
Gordon’s later life has been blighted by turmoil and tragedy, but
even a swift scan of his credits as a player is awe-inspiring, for his
drumming on
Pet Sounds, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, All Things Must
Pass, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, The Low Spark of High Heeled
Boys, Nilsson Schmilsson, Pretzel Logic and countless other genuine landmark records.
In addition to his close association with
George Harrison and as a member of
Eric Clapton’s
Derek and the Dominos, Gordon also played with the archetypal who’s-who
of 1960s and ‘70s stars, from Joan Baez to Jackson Browne,
Joe Cocker to
Alice Cooper,
Leon Russell to Linda Ronstadt and
Glen Campbell to Carly Simon.
His work also embraced groundbreaking rock ‘n’ rollers like
Little Richard and
Gene Vincent, Clapton-associated acts such as Delaney & Bonnie and Friends and historic live events such as Cocker’s
Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour. The NME praised Gordon’s “powerhouse” work on the Cocker album of the same name.
That record was released in 1970 just a few months before the almost simultaneous appearance of Harrison’s
All Things Must Pass and Derek and the Dominos’
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.
Disagreement remains about whether or not Gordon wrote the piano coda
on ‘Layla’ itself: vocalist Rita Coolidge again claimed in her
autobiography
Delta Lady: A Memoir to have composed it. But Gordon is listed as co-writer of the timeless track with Clapton.
Among far too many other credits to do justice to, he is also thought to have played drums on ‘It’s So Hard’ from
John Lennon’s
‘Imagine’ album of 1971. Describing the disc in advance for the NME in
the summer of that year, Lennon said: “There's Jim Gordon on drums, Alan
White on drums, Jim Keltner on drums, and they're fantastic.”
In 1983, Gordon, an as-yet undiagnosed schizophrenic at that time,
was found guilty of murdering his mother and sentenced to 16 years to
life imprisonment. In 2013, he was denied parole until at least 2018.
But the career that predated those dreadful events drew huge accolades
for his musical achievements.
“It seems redundant to praise Gordon when the world is at his
doorstep,” wrote Fusion magazine in 1971, “but, goddamn, can that boy
play! His rhythmic ideas are as open and fluid as Clapton's melodic
ideas, and they complement each other perfectly. Rock on, Jim Gordon.”
