He was one of the most sought-after American studio musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before a criminal fall that precedes and recalls that of producer Phil Spector (1939-2021), with whom he had worked . Drummer Jim Gordon, part-time pianist and organist, died March 13, aged 77, at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, California, a mental institution whose name remains associated with sectarian aberrations. of the counter-culture, since the guru Charles Manson was imprisoned there and another member of his “family”, Bobby Beausoleil, is still there.
Jim Gordon was imprisoned for a murder whose atrocity evokes the character of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, of Dostoyevsky: on June 3, 1983, he killed his own mother with a hammer and a knife at his home in Los Angeles. He will say that a voice ordered him to do so, and will be diagnosed with schizophrenia. His mental health had steadily worsened over the previous ten years, to the point that his musical career had come to an end. His life was already punctuated by stays in a psychiatric hospital and the obsession for this mother whom he constantly heard in his head telling him not to play his instrument anymore or to end his life.
Before this descent into hell, Jim Gordon had built up one of the most impressive CVs on the rock scene, at a time when talent was not lacking. Born on July 14, 1945 in Los Angeles, this tall athletic fellow with curly hair, shy and smiling, had learned his skills from the age of 17, in 1963, accompanying the legendary The Everly Brothers. Before being rounded up by drummer Hal Blaine (1929-2019), who joined him in the Wrecking Crew, the musicians brought together by Phil Spector at Gold Star studios in Los Angeles to build his “wall of sound”.
It is to them that Brian Wilson turns to record Pet Sounds (1966), the masterpiece of the Beach Boys, in which Gordon participates. This one also plays this same year on the album River Deep – Mountain High, of Ike and Tina Turner, and other great milestones of the period like The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968), Byrds, or the first two opuses of Randy Newman. He could even, in 1969, publish an instrumental album as a leader, Hog Fatpar Jimmy Gordon and his Jazznpops Band.
Spirale autodestructrice
Here he was on the road that same year, when he joined the country-soul duo Delaney & Bonnie, in a group of accompanists including keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and a star guitarist named Eric Clapton. These four are working on Clapton’s first solo album and triple All Things Must Pass of George Harrison to eventually form a short-lived band, Derek & The Dominos. Derek is Clapton, anxious to blend into the anonymity of a collective, The Dominos – the other three: the association results in the grandiose double Layla and Other Assorted Love Songspublished in November 1970.
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