6/3/1983 - Giving in to the voices in his head as he suffers from undiagnosed schizophrenia (his doctors unfortunately believe he is just one more drunken and drug addled rock-and-roller), legendary (Eric Clapton will call him "the best drummer in rock-n-roll" as will Ringo Starr) 37-year-old Los Angeles drummer and Grammy winner (for co-writing Layla), James "Jim" Beck Gordon, murders his mother, 72-year-old Osa Marie Gordon.
Gordon
Jim Gordon is born in New Jersey on July 14, 1945, becoming a part of the family of his accountant father John Shields Gordon, and his wife, Osa Marie (Beck) Gordon, a pediatric nurse (he also has an older brother named after his father, John). By the close of WWII however, the family has moved out west seeking better opportunities and as a toddler, Jim grows up in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. A typical family of the time, the parents buy a small house in Sherman Oaks where the boys are taught the manners of saying "Please" and "Thank You" (and answering the phone by stating, "Gordon residence"), mow the lawn, polish their father's shoes, and play little league baseball on a team managed by their father (who will battle the demons of alcoholism throughout the course of his life). From early in his life, Gordon begins a love affair with pounding skins and cymbals, creating his first drum kit out of garbage cans when he is only six-years-old and "debuting" to his parents and brother in his room as an eight-year-old. Hearing something in the youngster's power pounding, instead of putting down their son's preoccupation with drumming and throwing away his garbage can kit, Gordon's parents enroll him in music lessons and buy him a rudimentary professional set of drums when he is twelve (popular with his peers, Jim will be elected class president of his junior high, plays with the Burbank Symphony, tours Europe one summer, performs with a youth band in the annual Tournament of Roses Parade, and with a fake I.D., takes drumming jobs at local weddings, bar mitzvahs, and works the small clubs of Hollywood and West Los Angeles as a member of Frankie Knight and the Jesters ... and setting the stage for the tragedy that is to take place, he begins to hear voices talking to him inside his head!). Practicing and playing over and over and over for hours (he will eventually score a room of his own that his parents add on to their original house), by the age of 17, Jim graduates from Ulysses S. Grant High School in 1963, proficient enough with his kit that he receives a musical scholarship to attend U.C.L.A. (he is thinking of becoming a music teacher) and good enough that his services are requested by the Everly Brothers. Money the motivator, Jim decides to go out on the road (to London) with the harmony singing and hit making brothers from Tennessee.
Climbing Up The Ranks
The Everlys
Spotted by Joey Paige, the bass player for the Everly Brothers, at a Sunset Strip club as the boys are preparing a summer tour of England, Jim auditions for the backing band's drumming job and gets the assignment (also on the tour will be Little Richard and Bo Diddley). The 1963 tour a success (Jim will also be on-board for another tour with the Everlys the next year), Gordon returns to Los Angeles and continues to seek work slamming a beat for anyone in need of his drumming services, attends music classes at Los Angeles Valley College, and hangs out with famous backup players in the industry at the A&B Corned Beef Restaurant. Soaking it all in, a year later, as the protégé of 35-year-old session legend Hal Blaine, Gordon is ready to become the #1 drummer in the City of Angels.
Blaine
Session Work
The Bramletts
Coolidge
In The Studio - L to R - Allman, Gordon, Clapton, Radle,
And Whitlock
After a single tour, and massive amounts of drugs, Derek and the Dominos break up with its members fighting about money, artistic direction, and who plays well stoned (Gordon has now moved from snorting heroin to mainlining the drug). Still considered one of the best drummers in rock-and-roll, liking what he hears when Gordon sits in with the Plastic Ono Band for a 1969 London concert benefiting UNICEF, John Lennon hires Jim for his solo album, Imagine. That project complete, Gordon takes over the drumming as Traffic records The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, which he then follows up by going out on the road with the group in support of the album (somehow he also finds time to play on Harry Nilsson's Grammy winning album, Nilsson Schmilsson). Then it is back to London where Gordon holds down the drumming for studio sessions produced by Richard Perry, including Carly Simon's smash hit, You're So Vain. The hectic schedule Gordon puts himself through finally grows to be too much, and when the drummer gets so loaded that he totals his beloved Ferrari on a rain-soaked British road, he decides it is time to pull up stakes and move back to Los Angeles. Despite the notable changes that have taken place with the introduction of drugs into Gordon's personality, his services are still in demand as the music business booms in California during the decade of the 1970s (taking into account his two great periods of session drumming and band participation, Gordon works with a who's-who of musical giants of the time and entertainment legends that includes Duane Allman, Hoyt Axton, Joan Baez, The Beach Boys, Stephen Bishop, Jackson Browne, Jack Bruce, The Byrds, The Carpenters, Cher, Eric Clapton, Gene Clark, Joe Cocker, Judy Collins, Alice Cooper, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Burton Cummings, Delaney & Bonnie, Derek and the Dominos, Neil Diamond, Donovan, Dr. John, The Everly Brothers, Art Garfunkel, Lowell George, Merle Haggard, Hall & Oats, George Harrison, Jim Henson, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Carole King, Cheryl Ladd, John Lennon, The Lettermen, Gordon Lightfoot, Nils Lofgren, Manhattan Transfer, Dave Mason, Country Joe McDonald, Maria Muldaur, The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, Tracy Nelson, Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, Yoko Ono, Van Dyke Parks, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Kenny Rankin, The Righteous Brothers, Minnie Riperton, Johnny Rivers, Leon Russell, Seals & Crofts, John Sebastian, Carly Simon, Steely Dan, The Stone Poneys, Barbara Streisand, Mel Torme, Traffic, John Travolta, Tom Waits, Tim Weisberg, Bobby Whitlock, Andy Williams, Mason Williams, and Frank Zappa).
Gordon
With George Harrison
Except for his father's death in 1973, the period after his return from England is one of the best in Gordon's life; there is plenty of work to be had (putting down the drumming track on the Incredible Bongo Band's cover of "Apache," Gordon will create a banging that will be sampled in over 750 hip-hop songs over the years), he buys a home in Sherman Oaks and purchases a new Mercedes 450SLC, reconnects with his daughter, and marries singer-songwriter Renee Armand (Gordon will play drums, guitar, piano, arrange, and write some of the music on his wife's solo album, The Rain Book). For a time, Gordon is even off drugs, but continues to drink constantly (sometimes a fifth of vodka or scotch a day), and eventually, as the chatter in his head becomes louder, he is once more consuming chemicals, mostly speedballs mixing cocaine and heroin, in massive quantities. Madness beginning to slip out, the marriage to Armand lasts only six months, and is destroyed when without provocation, Gordon attacks his wife when she returns home from buying groceries, cracking several of Armand's ribs as he blames her for evil spirits inhabiting his house. Armand out, her place alongside Gordon is next filled by Stacey Bailey, a secretary for the soft-rock band, Bread. For awhile they are a happy couple with Gordon studying the Bible, bringing Bailey breakfast in bed, getting his girlfriend a seat next to Bob Dylan at a local Joan Baez concert, and taking care of his girlfriend's dog and newborn puppies when she is away visiting her parents (and for the first time, Gordon tells someone else about the voices he hears in his head). Violence however claims this Gordon relationship too as one evening Bailey awakes to find her boyfriend strangling her ... which he does off and then on again for over an hour before finally tiring and falling into bed with a chuckle.
Off To The '77 Grammys
The voices, no longer a lonely child's pals, begin to totally dominate Gordon's life, there all the time, everyday, making demands on the drummer's time and taking on real identities that Jim can see in his head ... a family of familiar noise that includes the musician's brother, his aunt, and his mother, and others like a male leader with a white beard, a young blonde woman, and a Greek man with a dark complexion. The music world finally finds out about Gordon's mental anguish when while recording Johnny Rivers' "Outside Help," the drummer suddenly stops playing and accuses guitarist Dean Parks of "messing with my time." Fisticuffs barely averted, it will be the first of many similar accusations that now become regular events each time Gordon is hired, producers finally stop using the drummer for anything but lower paying jobs putting down tracks for movies, television, and commercials (he also receives residual checks from earlier session work). Still trying to fight off the voices, Gordon flees to the Canada wilds to record with Burton Cummings, but the voices simply cross the border with the drummer. By 1977, the demands of the voices in his head seem to concentrate into the voice of Gordon's mother and a sad circle game begins in which the musician repeatedly tells his mother to leave him alone, then calls her on the phone and says the same thing while discussing arguments that the pair have never had, which in turn terrifies Mrs. Gordon, who sends her boy for help from the mental health providers at the Van Nuys Psychiatric Hospital. Over the next six years, Gordon will check himself into a mental facility at least fourteen times, before then checking himself back out ... his first stay lasts only two months. Despite everything, Gordon gets a second chance at getting his musical career back on track when Jackson Browne asks the drummer to play his kit for a spring tour of America introducing Browne's The Pretender album to the public. Surrounded by a host of friends and expert musicians, Gordon stays away from drugs and drink, jogs daily, and plays racketball with Browne, while not missing or being late to a single gig. Tour over however, Gordon's return to Los Angeles reveals a town still wary of working with the drummer, and the voices begin screaming at the musician once more (when Bob Dylan calls to discuss Gordon playing on the artist's Slow Train Coming Tour, his mother's voice tells him to tell Dylan he is not interested in the job, even though he is, and after accepting a job to back up Paul Anka in Las Vegas, his mother in his mind again, forces him to quit and return to Los Angles after the drummer plays only a handful of notes).
Dean Parks
Browne
Depressed after the tour ends and no further job calls are received, drinking again to try and silence the sounds in his head, in November Gordon checks himself into the Valley Presbyterian Hospital where he has a horrible stay during which he threatens to kill a nurse, smashes a potted plant to pieces, and runs down a flight of stairs yelling for phantoms to "Let me go! Let me go!" By 1980, Gordon is no longer a professional musician, but with having saved his money (for the most part), real estate investments, and royalty checks still coming in, he is able do whatever he feels like doing, and in Gordon's case, that means fighting a losing battle with the phantoms in his head; for long periods of time he doesn't bathe, shave, or change what he is wearing, but on other days he cleans up and goes to church. Large amounts of his time are spent sleeping, watching old black & white films on cable television, writing songs he never finishes, playing the same song over and over on his piano into the early hours of the next day, and drinking so much that doctor's warn him he will fry his liver if he does not desist ... good advice which of course leads Gordon to flee the facility where it was given. Slowly circling the drain, when Gordon checks into another rehab clinic on June 5, 1980, he is found to have already consumed two-thirds of a bottle of cognac and a half gallon of wine before noon. And if possible, he becomes even more obsessed with his mother, with her voice and the lady herself becoming one-and-the same. Though he tells doctors his mother is his best friend and he is released from his hospital stays into her company, Gordon also thinks his mom is an evil person capable of torture (her voice often will allow the drummer to have one bite of whatever he is eating), and that she had already murdered both comedian Paul Lynde (he dies in his sleep at his Beverly Hills home at the age of 55 on January 10, 1982) and singer Karen Carpenter (she passes away at her parents' home in Downey, California as a result of anorexia nervosa on February 4, 1983, at the age of 32). Every day becomes a waking struggle in a war that Gordon is powerless to win. Gordon stops going to a favorite bar because it has become a haven for evil people. No home seems safe, so he is continually changing where he lives. No ride is adequate for more than a few days and in a two year period of time, he cycles through a Mercedes, a Capri, a Scirocco, a Volkswagen van, and a Datsun. He prepares for the end of the world by renting a storage unit and filling it with freeze-dried food (he also pays off all his bills, and is up to the month on child support checks for his daughter). And when he is feeling well, he discusses with his friend, guitarist Larry Rolando, getting a new band together ... a plan that never lasts more than a day or two.
Rolando
In October of 1982, Gordon is once again in a mental health facility. This time his doctors and nurses hear about pains in his jaw and shoulder that are "killing him," that he is dying of "hate," and that his "world is falling apart." And Gordon begins thinking that his life has come down to a decision between two awful choices ... Gordon can kill himself and get away from all the voices, or he can remove the voice he finds the most obnoxious by killing his mother. Realizing she is a major part of her adult child's problems, Oso Gordon has moved to Lake Tahoe (retired from nursing, she still works off and on throughout the state as a licensed physical therapist) and hasn't seen her youngest son in two years, but she has missed and worried about him the whole time she has been in Northern California. Back in Southern California, on May 23rd, Oso writes to her son of her plans to soon live in Seattle with her son John and his family, and once more tells Jim that she is not his problem, that she still loves him deeply, and that if he needs anything, she is just a phone call away. The letter is never opened by Gordon. Just a few days later, at 9:30 in the evening, Oso gets another one of her child's all too typical phone messages, she is bugging him again, demanding he get rid of his drums, and that if she doesn't stop, Jim is going to kill her. Accusations denied as usual, after Mrs. Gordon gets off the phone, she calls the Medical Center of North Hollywood to find out if her son has checked into the facility for treatments. Her inquiry is answered by a nurse who tells her that Gordon had been at the facility earlier in the day, drunk once more, claiming he was feeling violent and that he needed a prescription of the antipsychotic drug, Thorazine, but because his doctor wasn't in yet, he leaves without receiving medication or treatment. Growing more concerned as the evening progresses, Oso next calls the police, but is told they can't presently do anything because Gordon hasn't yet done anything, she is wished good luck and told to keep the lights on in her home. Then she tries to call her son John about the situation, but he isn't home. At 11:40, she receives a second call from her son and it is more of the same as previously, accusations, denials, threats, and lots of tears that culminate in an abrupt hang-up. Uneasy evening completed, in the morning Oso calls the city attorney's office about having Jim served with a restraining order, but aggravated by all the hoops she needs to jump through to get a judge to order her son to stay away from her, she hangs up ... and why not when she has been dealing with her son for years and years and the boy has never harmed her and his doctors have never once mentioned him being a threat.
Gordon
Gordon
Two days later, on a Friday night at around 11:30 in the evening, Oso makes the mistake of answering her apartment's front door when her son comes calling. No one sees what happens next, but the neighbor's hear Oso's frightful screams and call the police. Arriving shortly afterwards, the authorities find 72-year-old, gray-haired widow, Osa Maria Beck Gordon, on the floor of her small North Hollywood apartment with a finely honed eight-and-a-quarter-inch butcher knife buried in the center of her chest. Notifying the next-of-kin of the death, the police arrive at Gordon's Van Nuys condo (only a five mile drive from his mother's residence) the next morning and find Jim face-down on the floor of his living room, moaning and sobbing. Lifted to his feet, the drunk (sober when the deed goes down, Gordon has spent the rest of the evening in a club, at a bar, and in his condo getting plastered on several double margaritas, shots of Pernod, Long Island Iced Teas <four ounces of alcohol in each in the form of vodka, rum, tequila, gin, and triple sec>, and a fifth of vodka) instantly confesses to the murder of his mother ... admitting to following through on the plans his mother's voice has given him ... selection of the butcher knife and it's sharpening to Oso's satisfaction, bringing along a hammer so he can knock his mother out before she can feel the pain of being stabbed to death, carrying the knife and hammer in a small leather attaché case, twice driving his white Datsun 200SX to his mother's home (she is absent during his first visit), and after she greets her son in a robe and her slippers, hitting his mother over the head four times, before stabbing her in the chest three times. Voice of his #1 fantasy foe silenced, Gordon's problems are far from being over though as he is placed in custody on the fourth day of June, 1983.
The News
Convict
Gordon - Once Upon A Time
What an epic story while I knew who he was I didn't know he had come to such a sad demise.
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