Overview: Drums & Demons The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon is the blazing rock opera of the greatest drummer of all-time, Jim Gordon, from the legendary Wrecking Crew to redefining rock on the Seventies’ biggest hits and outrageous tours, and ultimately to the most shocking crime in rock history — his is a story of musical genius and uncontrollable madness!

Verdict: In what is a most fascinating, at times eye-opening read from renowned author Joel Selvin, Drums & Demons The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon (born James Beck Gordon) quickly unveils to us the simply fact that Gordon was, and undoubtedly, one of the most important drummers in American rock history.

Having played with artists such as Buffalo Springfield, Alice Cooper, Jackson Browne, John Denver, the Beach Boys and even Randy Newman, Jim Gordon (07/14/1945 - 03/13/2023) always gave his all and never once backed down from a challenge. Which is remarkable, given the fact that this biography also leans into Gordon’s issues with mental illness and substance abuse, both of which would ultimately bring his life to a premature end, sadly.

Chock full to the brim with stories and wondrous memories galore, let alone some incredible, never-before-heard interviews and comments from Gordon’s immediate family [who, it is believed, had declined to do such interviews over the years for other inquirers], we soon learn that Gordon was a protégé of Hal Blaine, and whereas such drummer alums as the co-founder of Toto Jeff Porcaro, sessionist Jim Keltner, and Andy Newmark (Sly and the Family Stone) all looked up to him, it was a warm glow that he himself never self-consciously bathed in.

Now, I won’t be digging into his aforementioned mental health and drug issues, as that is most definitely not what this book has been created for, but what I will say is this: to get a more defined picture of Jim Gordon, we should first understand that the man was, for all intents and purposes, living in two worlds - the real one and an unreal one, where it has been told down the years inner voices started to take him over [schizophrenia].

I mean, it is true that his life was shattered by mental illness and a murder conviction (for having taken the life of his own mother), and thus spent nearly 40 years in prison thereafter, but I would implore you to focus more on the fact that Gordon was performing professionally as a teenager and as early as 1963 was playing drums with Frankie Knight and the Jesters.

But, and moving on from that, instead let us all bathe in his majestic musicianship that came to the fore in the late ’60s, when he did turns with such artists as Neil Young (1967), Connie Francis (1968), Ricky Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Rivers, Tiny Tim (1969), and crossing into the ’70s with George Harrison, and both Eric Clapton and Derek and the Dominos.

In closing, Drums & Demons is a what-we-are-led-to-believe accurately impassioned tale of Jim Gordon, a larger-than-life personality who before he got caught up in the maelstrom of schizophrenia, was knee deep in the laid-back L.A. sound one minute, yet ready to explode into a more frenetic being -- as witnessed on songs like Mason Williams’s “Classical Gas” (1968) or John Lennon’s “Power to the People” (1971); let alone when he toured with the late, great prolific workaholic Frank Zappa (who nicknamed him Skippy for his All-American demeanor and his all-American looks).

In closing, here are a couple of quotes from those who knew Jim Gordon well:

“Based upon my interactions with Jim Gordon, author Joel Selvin accurately portrays Jim’s genius as well as his development into the living hell he gradually occupied. Jim was always soft-spoken, and the first one to arrive at a session. His drums spoke for him, and he had a subtle but commanding presence. Years later, when he was scheduled for a session where I was producing a commercial, he arrived forty-five minutes late, was surly, and uninvolved. Someone else had taken over the Jim we knew and loved, and that was the last time I saw him.”
— Mark Lindsay, Paul Revere & The Raiders

“I loved Jim Gordon like a brother and am grateful for Joel Selvin’s unstinting notice of Gordon’s luminescence, which adds great leavening to this heartbreaking work of staggering genius.”
— Van Dyke Parks

About the Author - Joel Selvin a San Francisco–based music critic and author known for his weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle, which ran from 1972 to 2009. Selvin has written more than 20 books covering various aspects of pop music — including the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock with Sammy Hagar — and published articles in Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times, Billboard, and Melody Maker.

He has written liner notes for dozens of recorded albums and appeared in countless documentaries. His most recent books are Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History and Hollywood Eden: Electric Guitars, Fast Cars and the Myth of the California Paradise