Episode 33: Jim Gordon part 2

Renowned studio drummer Jim Gordon discovers drugs, his schizophrenia gets worse, the voices in his head get louder and his armor begins to crack while also making music with the best including: Delaney and Bonnie, Leon Russel, Joe Cocker, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Star, Eric Clapton and Traffic.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello! Hey there! Welcome back! Uh, welcome back to Jay's Rock and Roll Stories.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

I'm your host Jay. Guess what? I'm using a little microphone. I have a little microphone attached to my t-shirt. I can my hands are in the air. I feel the air. I can breathe. Thank you. This was given to me from one of my fans who uh email me and said, Hey, can I send his microphone to you? And uh let's keep his uh name, let's just keep it anonymous. We'll create a name of thank you to Mr. Casey. Thank you, Mr. Casey, for sending me this little microphone. Anyway, so welcome back to Jay's Rock'n'Roll Stories. I'm your host, Jay, as I just said. And I didn't want to leave you waiting because uh I know that first episode with Jim Gordon, you're probably whining, man, this is boring. No, it's not boring, it's just not a lot of conflict, okay? The man is on the top of the damn mountain. So let's uh let's get back into it to part two of Jim Gordon. And uh yeah, we're gonna have some conflict. Uh yeah, uh a man's gonna fall off the mountain. There there was a there was some humorist who said, I forgot who it was, I'll come back and find it. But it was like something like uh to the lines of this paraphrasing or something like one of the biggest joys in life is watching your neighbor fall off his roof. Yeah, really? I don't know. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe, I don't know. Like your neighbor, I'm not sure. All right, let's just get back into it. Okay. So the last thing we were talking about was oh, the um Caesar's Palace, right? He ran away to Caesar's Palace, he left his wife, he left his kid. Um, excuse me. So all right, a band that comes into town in LA is called Delaney and Bonnie. Uh uh Delaney Bramlett, he's from Mississippi, and his wife Bonnie Bramlett from St. Louis, um, with Leon Russell, with Rita Coolidge, with Bobby Whitlock, all together in this big house in LA. Um they starting that they're starting to get known, and you know how Leon Russell and Jim Gordon played together, session stuff. So Leon Russell kind of uh invited Jim out to this house. Check it out. So he goes out there and he meets the band, and um he likes it because it's like a big kind of like a family community. Uh it's like a communal sort of like let's get together and just make music type of thing, you know. This is around 1969. And Jim loves doing this, he has a VW van like camper, so he he sleeps in his van outside the house where all these people live. And um the band, it's Delaney and Bonnie. He's uh he starts playing with them. Dave Mason from Traffic is uh joins the band. Um he also plays a little bit with Graham Parsons, but more focusing on this Delaney and Bonnie. Um George Harrison is uh is in love with this band, and also Eric Clapton finds out about this band, and it's just like this big party get together. It's like uh it's like this white version of Icon Tina Turner's soul review band, just a bunch of hippies smoking pot and playing music together. So it's it's like fun, it's like kind of get away from all the serious shit of recording and being in a band, and let's just get together and do it. So Jim is introduced. Uh Jim and is Jim is introduced to marijuana at this time. He grows out his hair a little bit. Not, I mean, he has like very curly hair, so it's like uh he grows his to a little blonde little afro. So um he's living with the band, he's playing music with them. Uh Leon Russell is invited to to play on uh Joe Cocker's second album, and Leon Russell's group and Delaney and Bonnie. Um that's where Jim Gordon and Rita Coolidge finally meet. They kind of they kind of hook up and fall in love, they like each other. Um Clapton tells Delaney and Bonnie to open for them, open for his band Blind Faith. We talk about Blind Faith when uh Mick Jagger and um the Stones played at the uh Hyde Park with um Sam Cutler. So, anyway, so so uh blind blind faith is kind of running out of gas. The band is bored with playing, you know, that they don't really like each other. So Eric Clapton falls in love with Delaney and Bonnie. He likes to get on stage with them, he likes to play guitar, and so he kind of joins them. Uh George Harrison eventually sees them at a concert. He uh he eventually gets on stage. It's like this big, big thing, this big party. And uh even it's quoted uh George Harrison says something to the effect of like uh this is the first time I've been really happy playing music. I got he he and Eric Clapton both say something equivalent of like, this is the first time I've been happy playing. So uh in London, the entire band joins John Lennon and Yoko Ono and Keith Moon and From the Who, and they they put on this uh Peace for Christmas benefit concert. Uh they go back to LA and uh Eric Clapton's first solo album of 1970. Jim Gordon plays on that. So he's Jim Gordon is very busy. He's he's doing all kinds of stuff. Uh all the success that they had from the European shows, Delaney and Bonnie, and they are they're getting kind of sick of Delaney. Uh Delaney Bramlett. He um he gets he he's like a he's like one of those angry drunks, and he beats up on uh Bonnie Bramlett. And to tell you the truth, I have um I mean I I like their music. Uh try on YouTube like Delaney and Bonnie Live. It's it's like a really loud rock and roll show, but you'll see how Bonnie Bramlett always has sunglasses on. Wow, I wonder why. Yeah, she's supporting black guys, she gets knocked around by by Delaney all the damn time. Um, there's some suspicion that Delaney is keeping all the money. Uh, all the guys in the band are only getting about $125 a week, but with with all the success that they're having, there should be more than that. Um, Clapton gets sick of Delaney's crap and he bails, he goes back to England. So out with Delaney and Bonnie. Uh that's out of the picture now. Oh, everyone gets kind of sick of Delaney Bramlett, and we'll talk about that in a second. So in comes Joe Cocker. All right, Joe Cocker is completely exhausted from coming off a nine-month tour, uh wrapping it up as one of the biggest uh parts of the Woodstock uh concert, 1969, when he he played the uh the Beatles tune, um you know that one. Anyway, so Joe Cocker alives in LA, and but his band is back in England. So Cocker's um new record producer is Leon Russell, and under the pressures of like you know, contractual like um license and fear of deportation, that they're kind of saying, you owe us these concerts, or you're getting deported and you will never come back to play the states. So Leon Russell works with Joe Cocker and they put together a band, right? Because his band is back in England. So of course, Jim Gordon is gonna be on the drums, of course. Um uh Leon Russell kind of steals all the musicians from Delaney and Bonnie just because like they're happy to go. I mean, they're they're kind of sick of being around a guy who's drunk and yells all the time and beats girls up. So yeah, so they leave Delaney and they all come to they all come to Leon Russell, uh, who's putting on this show. Uh Leon Russell uh he uses a giant orchestra, a um a vocalist choir for a 12-hour rehearsal on the soundstage where they shot the Perry Mason TV series. And word gets around that it's it's like a giant party, like people are showing up, people are checking it out. Another drummer there is a guy named Um Jim Keltner, who would kind of stay in the scene for a while, and he kind of looks up at Jim Gordon as sort of like an older, mature, uh talented brother. So they work together on this uh Leon Russell, Joe Cocker project. And the this would become what's known as Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Uh, this this Leon Russell project. And it's kind of interesting because the album is Joe Cocker, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, but really Joe Cocker is only doing the singing. It's this is kind of like Leon Russell's show. He he put everything together. He's uh he's basically the band leader, he's the conductor, he's the arranger, he's the freaking uh the the the cook, you know. Um but this was sort of for Leon Russell to move out from just doing studio work. He he kind of moved out from the shadows to like you know to really do something to show show that you know he has like an idea. So um he even steps up a bit. Leon Russell hires a private plane, he brings in a film crew to make a movie out of this. It's uh 40 musicians crammed into an old Lockheed Constellation four-engine propeller plane, right? It's definitely a crazy sex, drugs, and rock and roll party. Uh, it says in the book, even uh Joe Cocker got the clap from this little trip. It's nuts, everyone's fucking partying and getting wasted. Um so Jim is enjoying it doing drugs and partying and stuff, but he's really getting close to Rita Coolidge, the singer. And while the, you know, while all the parties go on, either on the plane or the hotels and stuff for the tour, uh, he and Rita, they're like a couple. They they they find some quiet time together. But really, Jim is like Jim Gordon is kind of like a loner. You know, he's quiet. Uh nobody really knows the guy. Um, there was another friend at the time named uh Claudia Lanier, she's one of the choir members of the Leon Russell show. She said that um there was something about his easy smile I just didn't trust. Like there's like just something is off-putting, right? Um Jim does, he fools around a little bit behind Rita Coolidge's back. And one time Rita finds that uh one of the girls from the choir, Donna Washburn, who was Leon Russell's uh previous girlfriend, had slipped her hotel room key under Jim's pillow. And Rita Coolidge went ballistic, you know, everyone knew about this fight that's happening. And uh it's interesting because like all these stories that I'm telling you about Jim Gordon, like it really doesn't, I'm not really saying anything about Jim Gordon, right? Because he's so he's such a fly on the wall, he just falls between the cracks, he's just kind of like, everything's cool, just smile, just play drums, everything's cool, don't worry, you know. Uh he wears the same clothes all the time. He he wears like a like a white button-up shirt with black trousers, slacks. It's Jim the drummer. No one really, no one really knows this guy. Anyway, so the Mad Dog, the Mad Dog's uh an Englishman tour uh is pretty heavy. It's 58 shows, 29 cities, eight weeks, they're crisscrossing the nation, uh, United States twice. Everyone is exhausted. Um, the drug use is just insane, and it's really taking a toll on Jim Gordon. Like it's this is this is overwhelming. And the voices in his head and voices in his head are getting louder, and the voices are barking, they're yelling at him. Here's a little drug story. So Jim Gordon hands Jim Keltner a tab of Owsley Stanley pure LSD acid, right? Jim Keltner takes half of what Jim uh hands him, and Jim Gordon takes uh a whole tab. So during the concert, we got two drummers going on. Leon Russell, you know, the whole thing, the choir and everything. Jim Gordon's banging away, but Jim Keltner is just sitting there. He peeks, right? And he can't, he doesn't understand what is rhythm. He looks at his drumsticks in his hand, like what what do I what do I even do with these things? He looks over at Jim Gordon. Jim Gordon is pounding away and looks at Jim Keltner. He says, Play! You know. Uh Jim Keltner is just so overwhelmed, like what what the what the fuck's happening? He's just having a bad trip and he just starts crying, just starts bawling. And some of the girls from the the choir just take him off stage, take him somewhere safe. So things start getting weird. Uh one night in New York at the Warwick Warwick Hotel, uh Jim Gordon with his sweetheart, Rita Coolidge, is uh is in the bass player uh Carl Raddle's room, and they're there with some friends, there's they're talking, they're joking. Um Jim snorts a line of coke and then leans in to whisper in Rita's ear. He says, Can I talk to you for a minute? And then Jim stands up and leads Rita away to like a hallway, and Rita's thinking, like, oh, he changed his ways. He wants maybe he's gonna ask me to marry him. How romantic. They're in the hallway. And Jim slams his fist into Rita's face and knocks her to the ground, knocks her up and down onto the ground, and then he just steps over her body like everything is normal, walks back into where the couch with the friends are, and he just kind of announces in like a very blank way. I just hit Rita. And no one says a word. Uh, the party sort of ends, people just like people just kind of leave, like, okay. Everyone goes back to their own room. Rita gets taken to the hospital. Um, someone finds her on the ground. Uh one of the managers takes her to the hospital, and she just has a big shiner on her eye, and they really all they can say is just put some ice on it. But Rita does take out a restraining order on Jim. Probably a great idea, and she makes arrangements to just avoid the guy at all costs. He has she has like uh someone accompanying her to the stage, to the hotel, to the room. You know, she's not alone. Um there's an interesting point that I like uh in this book, Joel Selvin's book here. He makes about um this because um the the talk of the punch got around, you know, everyone started hearing about how how Rita got hit, got got punched, and it just really kind of falls through the cracks because everyone's just kind of drugged up and crazy anyway, all the shit that's going on. And Joel Sylvan says how he says, amid all the depravity and debauchery, nobody could distinguish authentic psychotic behavior. I think that's that's interesting. And you can tell like from this right here, Jim's mask is is is cracking. So it doesn't end his relationship with Rita, though. I mean, they get back together shortly after the end of the tour. Uh Rita lives with her sister Priscilla, whose husband is uh Booker T. Jones, the Oregon player of Booker T and the MGs. Jim stays in his uh VW camper, parked outside of their house. Alright, so what's what's the next part of Jim's career? Derek in the Dominoes. So Eric Clapton, um Bobby Whitlock plays Oregon, Carl Raddle plays bass. They invite Jim Keltner, the other drummer, over to England to join the group. Um but Jim Keltner is already engaged with sessions with Jim Gabor Zabo, we talked before in Carlos Santana, and he can't make it. So he gives that he gives the job to Jim Gordon, and even out even without notifying anybody, Jim Gordon just flies over to England and goes straight to Eric Clapton's um place called the uh what is it called? Oh, the Hertwood Edge. It's like a it's like a country house, the Hurtwood Edge. That's at Hurtwood Edge. Alright, so he arrives at Clapton's place and uh he becomes a drummer with them, and they um they rehearse for hours, hours upon hours, uh ingesting lots of tequila, marijuana, and piles of cocaine. And they get so good that it's kind of like they can just read each other's minds, they get so in tune with each other. And the idea for the name of the band was gonna be um Eric Clapton and Friends. But Eric Clapton is so sick of being the front man, being the face, being the guitar god, so they come up with the name Derek and the Domino's. That's gonna be their name. At the same time, they uh, as Derek and Domino's, they do some work on uh George Harrison's uh solo album, All Things Must Pass. Um the the lady drama, uh, I'm not gonna talk too much about this. Um the lady drama is that Clapton is trying to steal away George Harrison's wife, Patty Boyd. And um Patty doesn't want to leave George but will go with Eric to make George jealous. Alright. So, uh as we said before, anyway, so we said before how how uh Jim kind of dresses like a square, you know, he he just wears like slacks in a shirt, and Bobby Whitlock gives him like clothes, like fringe shirts. Like, here, man, you gotta wear this when we take the photographs. So at least so at least he can like look like he's in the same band. Alright, so Derek and the Dominoes go on an 18-week tour of the UK. They play in little clubs, tiny little clubs. It was said that Carl Rattle's glasses would fog up because it was so sweaty and hot in these tiny little clubs. Um, their heroin use is increasing. I guess the the guy that they were buying coke from, he would include a little free thing of heroin. They weren't doing the heroin it right away. Uh, you know, Clapton would just like take the heroin bag and make like a stack of it. So they had a mound of like heroin to get to to try out. Um they go down to Florida to record with Tim Dowd. Tim Dowd had recorded with Cream. He also recorded with the Allman Brothers. Uh so Tim Dowd takes the the band, Dereth and Domino's, out to see the Allman Brothers. And um there's kind of like a magic moment there where the band is way up in front, they're watching Dwayne Allman play, and they just kind of look at each other. And then after that show, they take the Almond Brothers back with them to their studio uh where they where they make some amazing music. And this is one of my favorite albums of all time, um, Layla and other love songs by Derek, Derek and the Dominoes. Um, I want you to listen to a couple songs. I'm not gonna make you listen to Layla because that's you already know that song, but listen to something else. Listen to Why Does Love Have to Be So Sad by Derek and the Domino's. And I'll also listen to Keep on Growing by Derek and the Dominoes. Two beautiful songs. Okay. Uh Jim Gordon, he gets really into heroin when he goes back to London to be with his new girlfriend, Chris Odell. And uh one Time they're doing lines together, and she she notices, like, this is not Coke. What are we doing here? And he's like, Oh, with heroin. And he has a little bit of a freak out here, and he grabs a steak knife and chases this poor girl, Chris Odell, around the apartment. She's trying to get away, block him with furniture, like trying to, you know, she goes down the stairs, up the stairs, running running away from this maniac, and all of a sudden you hear, Hello? Is anyone there? And it's Robert Stigwood. It's uh Clapton's manager who happened to have a key to the to the place because it was you know rented out from the company. Jim freezes. He lays the knife down on the top of the piano, very careful not to scratch it, then smiles. Everything's okay, you know? Nothing to see here. Uh he apologizes to Chris and later um they talk about he he has no recollection of a knife, no recollection at all of what the fuck just happened. And Chris just let it go. She wrote it off as if like stress due to Turing, the drug use. And she also didn't know anything about the the Rita Coolidge punch right in the face. She didn't know anything about that, and the incident was never mentioned ever again. So, okay, the band, Derek and the Dominoes, Clapped in, Carl, Carl Rattle, Bobby Whitlock, Jim Gordon. They have dinner together at their uh the communal hotel, sorry, the communal apartment in London, and they're about to take off to the United States, and they they trash the apartment, they break everything in the apartment, they break the TV, they throw all-I don't understand that when rock stars do that kind of shit, like throwing the TV out the window. So stupid. And I feel bad for Chris Odell because in the morning they hand the keys to Chris Odell and they say, Here, turn this into the landlord. So she has to be the one to open up the apartment and say, hey, look, everything's okay. No, it's completely trashed, and she's like, Oh my god, don't worry, they'll pay for it. Okay, so they set out the dark Derek and Domino set out for a tour of the US, you know, U United States in 1970. But they're all so fucked up on heroin, and they arrive in New York to play at the Fillmore, and um there's they're there's stuff that they're getting, they couldn't fly with this shit, so the stuff that they're getting in New York is way uh it's been cut much more than what they're used to, so they're getting crappy stuff. There's a big party after the show at the Fillmore. Uh Paul McCartney's there, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young are there, and then after that, they do a spot on the Johnny Cash TV show. Johnny Cash had like this variety show for a little bit. You know, he would have like skits, and then he would have uh like uh bands, like guests, and Derrick Van Domino's do um do a number on that. And I've I've seen this on YouTube. If you want to check it out, it's the Derek Van Domino's Johnny Cash show. They do a couple songs, like old songs with Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, but the the one song that they do, the original of um of the Derek Van Domino song, um Eric Clapton is like they they like painted his face like like he looks like like a bronze, like he looks like a bronze statue, like like weird leather yellowy face. It's so bizarre because he's like a pasty little English guy, you know. Alright, so um anyway, so they head after that they head to San Francisco and they have a cool jam session with with Santana at the uh Wally Hyder studio. After that, the the band is sort of imploding. Everyone is so fucked up on heroin, no one is talking, um, no one's talking to each other. Uh Jim's habit, Jim Gordon's habit is now shooting speedballs. He likes to shoot Coke mixed with speed. Um, sorry, coke mixed with heroin, the speedball. Uh Jim goes back to London, uh, but Chris Odell goes back to LA, so Jim's having a sort of like a bachelor free-for-all. Christmas comes around, and Clapton uh uh puts out a big Christmas party for the band. He gets a giant Christmas tree and um he invites the band to the Hurtwood Edge. And Clapton buys every band member a sort of like a lavish gift, you know, like really goes out to like give the guys a gift. And he gives a gift to Jim. Jim opens it, and it's like uh an antique red wooden uh marching drum with like a sash and gold braids, you know. So, you know, like I think like a normal reaction might be like, wow, how cool, you know. But Jim's Jim's reaction was, what the hell is this? The hell is this? Uh Clapton's like a little stunned, you know, because like I got you a gift, bro. And he Clapton even like offers to like I I I'll take it back, you don't have to have it. So um, but no one no one is surprised by like Jim's like shit attitude. Uh he's been he's been pretty um disagreeable with everyone lately. And Jim also has like a paranoia, he's he's very suspicious of everyone, everyone in the band. Uh someone like that is not really easy to hang out with, and obviously uh the band is kind of falling apart because no one's getting along. 1971. Um, Jim plays drums on Bobby Whitlock's solo album. He plays drums on a Ringo Star solo album as well. He plays on John Lennon's song Power to the People and plays with uh Jim Capaldi with the band Traffic, doing their album uh The Low Spark of the High Heel Boys. Uh May of 1971, uh Jim and Bobby Keys, uh that's Bobby Keys is Keith Richard's best friend, uh saxophone player. They get on a plane to fly to Mick Jagger's wedding in France to Bianca Perez. And on returning, um he gets to Clapton's Hurtwood Edge to rehearse new material for the next album. So Jim has um a song he wants to play, he has he has an idea, he wants to perform it, he wants to sing it. Bobby Whitlock's having nothing of that. He says, uh, you know, Bobby Whitlock is the organ player. His reaction is like uh he's he said Jim sounded lost even when he was like trying to perform the song. He tells Jim, you know, Eric and I come up with the songs, you play the drums, okay? So um no one is getting along, and the final straw was when Jim had a giant new drum set, and it took two hours to get the thing in tune. Like you have to, like each drum has a drum key, you gotta turn it and you have to tune it. Like, let's say you got a you got you probably have to like maybe a middle C on the piano, and then you gotta tune it to that. So it's taking forever to tune the drums. Eric Clapton's sitting there with his guitar on his lap, smoking a whole pack of it took two hours, right? So finally he's like, okay, I'm in tune. I was after two hours. So Clapton now Clapton starts tuning, and Jim Gordon, he just loses it, he loses his cool, and he and he yells at Clapton. He's like, Do you want me to tune that damn thing for you? And the room goes quiet. Carl Rattle and Bobby Widlock just look at each other. Clapton shouts, Clapton shouts back at him, I'm never gonna play with you ever again. And then he puts his guitar down, he walks out of the room, and Derek and the Dominoes are over, which is such a shame. Because if you have never heard that album, Derek McDomino's, just give it a shot. There's something, it's alive. It's so like I there's so much happening that they do like they do a lot of overdubs, and there's so much guitar going on, and there's like a mixture of there's rock, there's ballads, there's blues. It's such a fantastic album. It's one of my favorite albums of all time. Um, so that's it. They're done. Jim moves on. He's living in London, he continues doing sessions with Traffic, and he does commercials too. Like he's never out of work. And he does an all-star session with uh BB King, Bobby Keys. He does Harry Nielsen's album, Nielsen Schmilson, and then uh Jim joins Traffic on the tour of the states uh to do the uh low um the High Heel Boys, that album. And there's a time when uh on the US tour they're backstage at the Anaheim Convention Center, and he's able to like entertain his mom, his dad, his brother, you know, show him what what his life is like. Uh back in England after the tour, he gets fired from traffic uh for his drug use, and then he crashes his Ferrari and decides that's it, I gotta go home. So yeah, that was like the last that was the last straw. He was like, I gotta take a break from this. That's a great place for us to take a break, too. So we're gonna take a break here. That's gonna be part two, and we're gonna continue with part three. So stick around. I won't keep you waiting too long. So thank you for joining me again on uh Jay's Rock and Roll Stories. And um send me an email, question, comment, suggestion to Jay's Rock and Roll Stories at uh photon.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

And I will see you.