Famed Music Critic Joel Selvin: Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon

The Dr. Ward Bond Show

Author Joel Selvin, a San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic for thirty-six years, is author of more than twenty books about pop music, including the definitive account of the Rolling Stones free concert at Altamont and the biography of songwriter Bert Berns that paved his way into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well as the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock with Sammy Hagar.

Ladies and gentlemen, the subject of Joel Selvin’s latest book was raised in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles and got his start as a professional drummer touring with the Everly Brothers in the mid-1960s.

Jim Gordon’s penchant for creative and astonishingly accurate musicianship earned him regular session work, joining the community retroactively referred to as The Wrecking Crew.

His supernatural intuition and perfect sense of time can be heard on more than 30 Top 10 singles including several #1 hits, such as the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” and “I Got You Babe” by Sonny & Cher (he also supplied the literal beat for “The Beat Goes On” by the latter).

He has been immortalized on albums by George Harrison, John Lennon and the Byrds, among dozens of other household name music acts.

Gordon was notably the drummer for Derek and the Dominos and provided the piano coda for their evergreen anthem “Layla.”

Joel Selvin details how Gordon didn’t merely keep time, but he was also instrumental in shaping compositions; whether it was his Latin-influenced rhythms on “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” by Steely Dan or his monumental drum break on the Incredible Bongo Band’s “Apache” (a staple of hip-hop from the genre’s inception, having been sampled on over 750 other records), he wasn’t just a player on hits, he made them hits.

If you love music history, then Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon is a must read. Joel Selvin’s power of the pen makes live every page of Jim Gordon’s life and you learn in the midst of brilliant musicianship, the darkness of mental health issues like paranoid schizophrenia.

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