Jim Gordon, the 77-year-old rock ‘n’ roll session drummer who performed on iconic songs by Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and The Beach Boys but struggled with mental health issues and spent the second part of his life in jail for murdering his mother, has died.
According to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Jim Gordon died Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. The coroner in Solano County will decide the official cause of death, which is likely to be natural causes. Gordon had been in prison for four decades and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Few drummers were in more demand than Jim Gordon, a Los Angeles native and pupil of the all-time versatile session player Hal Blaine from the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s. Jim Gordon has been drumming since his teens and was a member of Phil Spector’s famous studio band, “The Wrecking Crew,” which included Blaine.
Jim Gordon was already posing a threat to others by the early 1970s. Coolidge stated in her biography that the pair was on a journey with Joe Cocker when Gordon assaulted her in a hotel corridor one night. Jim Gordon struck her in the eye “so hard that I was lifted off the floor and slammed against the wall on the other side of the hallway,” she said. She was knocked out for a few moments. After that, she did not charge Jim Gordon with abuse, but she did sign a restraining order, and their relationship terminated.
Jim Gordon attacked his 71-year-old mother, Osa Gordon, with a hammer and brutally stabbed her with a butcher knife in June 1983. He stated that he was instructed to do so by a voice.
Jim Gordon was diagnosed with schizophrenia only after his incarceration for second-degree murder. Jim Gordon was condemned to life in prison without the chance of release for 16 years. He was refused parole multiple times after failing to appear at any of the hearings and died in jail.
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