What a tremendously heartbreaking story about a musical genius who made every recording sound like it was emanating straight out of his chest.

I can be a sucker for a rock ‘n’ roll bio but this one may have been too brutal for me. I’d never heard of Jim Gordon before but my heart aches for him now. Psychosis and schizophrenia masked and/or promulgated by self-medication, this is a terrifying tragedy in the form of a human life story.

This book is for you if you're really, really into the 60's/70's music scene. All the main players are here. Everything is explained, shown, and talked about in excrutiating detail. There's lots of behind-the-scenes stuff and rock music history and a whole section on drums and drumming and the history of drumming in recorded music.
Also, we hear about genius drummer, Jim Gordon.
This, to me, was the main problem with this book -- Gordon's biography gets drowned out by all this other super important stuff the author thought had to go into his narrative as well. I get that Gordon in a lot of ways was very much of his time, a product of and willing participant in all kinds of drug use and the so-called rock'n roll lifestyle (i.e. testosterone-driven self-centered young white males with a lot of disposable income and no purpose in life behaving badly; not all that glamorous in my opinion, but hey), so of course that kind of thing is just to be expected, but. At a certain point, "Drums & Demons" veers off its rails and decides to embrace all of that era's rock music, so we get treated to all this completely superfluous detail of Famous Other Rock Star doing this or that with that Legendary Producer or this Other Famous Rock Star, and wouldn't you know it, some years down the line, they would tour with Rock Star X while Rock Star Y would end up with that other dude's producer sprucing up his new album, and so on and so on and so ON. It got EXHAUSTING. Also, like I said, the person who was ostensibly the reason for this book getting written tends to fall out of view completely every now and then.
There's also precious little about Jim Gordon the man. We get to hear everything and then some about his professional exploits (and that dude was on EVERYTHING from that period), but things like his marriage(s), the birth of his only child, his private life and thoughts and all that take a definite backseat to the circus that was his career. Yes, he was a genius drummer. But there's only so much musical fawning I can take before it gets painfully tedious (and repetitive). In a way I was glad when the narrative reached the point when he finally dropped out of professional music because of his worsening mental state; at least that meant I didn't have to suffer through another Steely Dan or Derek & the Dominos or Bachman Turner Overdrive career recap. (Then again, the author, never one to miss a chance to cram some more Redundant Music History 101 into his book, uses the final chapter, set in a medical prison facility, to give us a quick yet in-depth rundown of the 1993 Grammys. You know, just in case you couldn't recall who were that year's presenters for Best Song, for instance, or what funny quip Garry Shandling came up with, or how Eric Clapton styled his hair.)
I guess I would have gotten more out of this book if that era's music meant more to me. As it is, I often felt the urge to just swat whole passages away when listening to the audiobook, with the author going on yet another tangent with (to me) useless info filling the air like pesky auditory insects. (Admittedly, I'm not really an audiobook person. I would have much preferred the print version; I only requested the audiobook because I was so interested in Jim Gordon. Oh, the irony.) Still, this is billed as a specific person's *biography,* not a treatise on a certain era's rock music and all its key players, so being forced to sit through yet another detour into Classic Rock City was not exactly what I came for.
Also, it felt weird that I was listening to some person telling me about this track or that incredible piece of drumming *in words*, without providing an actual sound snippet. I know this is probably down to rights and somesuch, but still, I thought it weird that in the audio (!) version of a musician's biography, which just by virtue of its format surely lends itself to adding audio "illustration" the same way a printed book uses photos, there was no actual music.
I liked the narrator, though. He had a nice voice that even held its shape when I (through sheer desperation and "And what Eric Clapton did next" overload) turned up the playback speed.

Actual Rating 3.5

This work is a biography of Jim Gordon, a studio drummer who was featured on an astounding amount of records during the 1950s to 1970s in the U.S. and who tragically murdered his mother in 1983. The book quickly becomes situated into Jim Gordon’s life story, with a heavy focus on his musical career. The author touched lightly on the tensions and stress of his home life growing up but focused much more on his drive, his time in the studio, and his time jumping between studio projects.

The author mentioned that Jim Gordon the man is usually lost behind the murder and his trial. I felt that in this book Jim Gordon the man was somewhat lost behind the music. The author did an amazing job creating a cohesive story from the studio time, hopping from band to band, and touring. I learned quite a lot about rock & roll coming into its own and how studio bands were often the real musicians playing on the studio albums of famous bands. But there were so many instances where I wanted to know much more about the man than all this information about sliding in and out of studios for famous musicians.

Gordon had a few mental breaks earlier on, especially after intense drug use started, and while they were briefly presented, it felt like more time should have been spent on examining Jim’s mental health and state. The same thing happened with the presentation of his first marriage, the birth of his daughter, and his early home life. These events all felt like afterthoughts that were included, instead of pivotal life moments that might have contributed to his mental state or at least made him feel like more than just a drummer. It’s possible including all of this would have made the book much longer than the author wanted, but I think it would have contributed greatly to painting a meaningful portrait of Jim.

If you’re interested in American/British music (generally rock & roll) during the ‘60s and ‘70s, you’ll likely really enjoy this one. I’m generally not interested in that topic, but still found this to be an interesting but tragic read and a reminder of how far we’ve come and yet to come in the world of mental health. My thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I give this book 4.5 stars. I received a free copy of the audiobook from Netgalley in exchange for a review of this book. I have heard of the name Jim Gordon but I didn't know his story. I really like biographies. I work in mental health. This story was fascinating.

The narrator for this story was really good. One of the most important things for a good audiobook is the narrator. The story was very interesting.

There were so many musicians in this book that I knew. I didn't know some of their trauma or addiction stories. I ended up googling some of the artists while listening to the story.

The book put me in Jim's mind. I work with people who suffer from addiction and voices. I don't think I realized the trauma until hearing Jim's story. In those days, the medications didn't work so well. It's a story of the human condition.

It took me a little longer than usual to finish this book. It is very detailed about Jim's life. His life was so colorful. It's a book that I would listen to again. The last 25 perfect of the book I was captivated.

The biography has the reader know the inside of Jim Gordon's mind. It's hard for most books to do this. .I highly encourage others to read this amazing book. Thank you to Netgalley for the wonderful experience for learning about Jim Gordon.

Super sad read. Gordon's story is an absolute tragedy, but Selvin does a nice job of chronicling Gordon as a musician and his resume is insane, but Gordon's abusive behavior towards the women in his life was really upsetting to read about. He played on some of my favorite albums, many I didn't know about (Smiley Smile?! The Muppet Movie?!), but his struggles with substance abuse clearly didn't help and, famously, he murdered his mother in a schizophrenic daze. Selvin really excelled at balancing this book as an appreciation of Gordon's sizable talent as a drummer and telling Gordon's life story as a cautionary tale about the dangers of an unchecked mental health crisis coupled with substance abuse - terrifying at times.

I was drawn to read this book because I had heard a lot about this controversial musical figure while reading other musical biographies, most recently a great one about Leon Russell. Jim Gordon was a massively talented drummer who could perform miracles as a session drummer on scores of famous hits. He also is credited as co-writer of the Eric Clapton song "Layla", as Jim wrote and performed the iconic piano coda that ends the song- a controversy as his ex-girlfriend Rita Coolidge swears that they wrote this together during their relationship. Jim played on recordings by The Beach Boys, Derek and the Dominos, Harry Nilsson, Helen Reddy, Steely Dan...and many others. He also was part of the "Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen" tour in 1970. He killed his mother in 1983 and was incarcerated ever since. He was psychotic and persecuted by voices that told him what to do. He also experienced excruciating phantom pains associated with these psychotic incidents. The voices told him to stop eating, stop drumming, etc. At one point he repeatedly would remove his gold records off his wall and carry them out to the refuse bins, then bring them back in....over and over again in supplication to these voices.

While Jim and his then girlfriend Rita Coolidge were part of the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, out of nowhere he punched Rita in the face so hard she fell to the floor. During another aborted psychotic escapade, he chased after Chris O'Dell (former Leon Russell girlfriend who had also worked for The Beatles at Apple Corp) with a butcher knife. These two women were very lucky to escape with their lives, but his mother wasn't so lucky. Jim died in prison in 2023.

I listened to the audiobook. It was very informative and chock full of details. On the one hand, there was the happy story of an incredibly gifted drummer who enjoyed great success, tempered by intermittent mental lapses into madness. I loved hearing tangentially about the other famous musical artists Jim interacted with. As the years went by and his mental condition worsened, it was like a crescendo building and quite disturbing to hear about. These persistent voices in Jim's head were mainly dominated by that of his mother, which instructed him to kill her. This was a fascinating deep dive into a masterful drummer whose career stardom was cancelled by matricide.

The audiobook was narrated by David Bendena. He did a pretty good job, but he kind of reminded me of an actor on the show "Chicago Fire" whose voice already disturbs me. They have someone with a sort of unsettling voice narrating a very unsettling story. I think I would have preferred reading the ebook because the story was so intricate and full of juicy music industry details that I would have preferred to savor it more by reading it.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media for providing an advance reader copy via NetGalley.

I had heard of Jim Gordon in passing but had never really known the tragic story. As much as I dabble in classic rock, I guess that shows my age, lol. I came across this audiobook on Netgalley and was instantly intrigued -- as a fan of mystery and true crime, this story seemed slightly familiar while still totally being out of my wheelhouse. There was a LOT of name dropping happening here, and I learned quite a bit about relationships (working and otherwise) between many 60s-80s rockers. Maybe I was hoping it would focus more on his crimes, though I completely understand why it didn't. Otherwise, it was a very well-written biography.

The narrator did an excellent job bringing the story to life.

Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon is more than just a biography of Jim Gordon. It is the biography of an entire group of musicians during a particular time period. Jim just happens to be the focal point. Along the way, I learned more about artists ranging from Bonnie Bramlett (I will never watch Roseanne reruns the same way again!) to Joe Cocker (TMI, brah), and the session musician system. For these details alone I highly recommend Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon to any rock aficionado.

Joel Selvin's treatment of Jim and his mental illness was fair. Schizophrenia is a serious thing, and I believe strongly that the public deserves to be protected from those with violent symptoms. I also think the psych industry deserves the dressing-down that Joel Selvin gave it for (1) its inability to deal with the dual diagnosis of use disorder (addiction) and mental illness; and (2) even today, the US psych industry largely ignores medications like acamprosate, disulfiram, and naltrexone in favor of 12-step programs (see the article The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous in the April 2015 issue of The Atlantic). If things are still so bad today, looking back 40 years, is it any wonder that poor Osa Gordon was murdered?

I would love to see Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon turned into a biopic or streaming series. I wish all available closure for Jim Gordon's surviving family. I believe Joel Selvin's treatment of Jim's professional reputation was rehabilitative and no less than deserved. I would like to thank Dreamscape Media. for allowing me to experience this NetGalley audiobook.

I completely devoured Joel Selvin's Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon. What an amazing biorgraphy!

Chock full of incredible stories about the trials and challenges of this super talented drummer, I'm stunned by the amount of research Selvin did to pull this book together.

Beautifully narrated by David Bendena, I highly recommend the audio version of this info-packed story. Great for fans of rock music, '70's history, and biographies!

Boy, the word “tragic” in this title is no joke.

How does one go from co-writing Layla with Eric Clapton, touring with Clapton as a Domino, and playing as a top notch studio drummer for the likes of The Beach Boys, Streisand, George Harrison, Tom Petty, and hundreds of others, to a man that commits matricide? This book shows us exactly how and it is so very sad.

One of the things that spurred me to ask for an ARC of this book was its focus on mental illness. (There's plenty of drugs and alcohol too, but we'll set that aside for the moment.) I have close relatives with mental illnesses of one type or another. My husband's best friend growing up developed schizophrenia around the age of 18, and it stole him away. I wanted to learn more about it and how it works.

On to Jim Gordon. The son of an alcoholic, strict father and a somewhat checked-out mom, (at first), Jim led a normal, quiet life, (unless his dad was in the midst of an alcoholic rage.) Then, Jim discovered drumming. And not only that, he was very, VERY, good at it. There is a bit of discussion about techniques and what Jim did that made him stand out and I must admit, some of that talk was a bit over my head as a non-musician. However, the gist of it came across for sure, Jim was phenomenal.

He went from making very little money with this band or that, until recording studios in Hollywood really got going, and then he was in high demand. Once other musicians and record producers started hearing what Jim could do, all hell broke loose. He was playing with musicians on the road, he was working in the studio, he was always employed.

What no one really knew at the time was that Jim was struggling internally. He heard voices. Drumming drowned them out for a while, but soon enough the drumming wasn't enough to calm those voices. He began drinking and drugging to drown those voices out, but soon after, those weren't enough to quiet the voices either. Many thought it was the alcohol and drugs causing the problems, but in fact, it was the voices that caused the addictions. (And perhaps a genetic leaning as well, since both his brother and his father became sober after years of alcoholism.)

As the drugs and alcohol became even larger problems for him, Jim started to become violent. As time went along, the voices got louder and louder and started urging him to violent acts. He fought them for so long, but they began to take over. After dating Rita Coolidge for a long time, one day in the studio he asked her to come out into the hallway. Rita, thinking he might propose, eagerly followed him out at which point he punched her in the face so hard she slammed into a wall and crumpled into a heap. She had a black eye for the rest of their tour. (Another thing regarding Rita that was a terrible surprise-she wrote the piano piece at the end of Derek and the Domino's song "Layla." When she heard the song on the radio and recognized her work, she went to Eric Clapton's manager, she was basically told "You're just a girl singer. What are you going to do about it?" When the song was released, the credits stated written by Jim Gordon and Eric Clapton.)

By that point Jim was a mess. He began having loud arguments with people no one else could see. He was beginning to experience great physical pain if he ignored the voices. They would say "throw all your gold records out," he'd take them down, truck them out to the dumpster, go inside, drink and drug till the voices went away, at which point he went and got his records and hung them back up again. Imagine day after day of this mental torture and physical pain. His mom tried to get him help, and indeed, Jim tried. Hospital after hospital, doctor after doctor, and in and out of drug rehabs numerous times. He was put on all kinds of different medications, but none of them quelled the voices. They tortured him, they never left him alone, and they eventually spurred him into an act so violent, that society never forgave him for it.

Jim Gordon's story is magnificent and tragic all at the same time. I am here to say, from a more modern standpoint, that the treatment of mental illness has not come that far since then. My family members have dealt with bipolar disease, among others, and I've seen them struggle with meds that do not work, or have such awful side effects that they can't take them. It sometimes seems to me that creative people like Jim, and a few members of my family even, often pay for their creativeness in the form of mental illnesses or issues.

In today's world we like to think that the term "mental illness" is no longer taboo and that we have removed the stigma associated with the term. We have not. Even today, people can be fired for being open and honest about their mental health. They can be shunned. They can be shamed. None of which helps to treat the actual problem. We should be working, and working hard, on new treatments, on public opinion, and on the opinions of employers-why should someone be ashamed of mental illness? They are not ashamed to say they have cancer. These are diseases, and just because they often show no outward signs, they are diseases just the same.

This book left me feeling so sad. Not only for Jim and what happened to him, but for the world of music as well. We lost a good human being, and perhaps, one of the greatest drummers of all time to a disease, ab0ut which we still don't know a lot. I will never hear Layla again in quite the same way.

Drums & Demons was narrated by David Bendena and he did a decent job, it took a while but his performance grew on me.

I enjoyed this tragic story, (as much as one can enjoy the tale of someone else's mental downward spiral.) I learned about the music industry at the time, and to be honest, I liked reading about the debauchery of some of these bands back in their heyday. This book brings plenty of that. In the end though, it was my interest in the psychology of it all that kept me reading/listening. It is my hope that someday, we will have a better handle on mental illness and how to treat it. I'm just sorry that we will be too late to save Jim.

Highly recommended, especially for fans of rock music, musicians, and those fascinated by the psychology of it all.

*Audio ARC from publisher, via NetGalley. Thank you.*

Drums & Demons was a good summation of the life of Jim Gordon. Gordon was a very talented drummer who suffered from mental illness that was greatly amplified (or created) by substantial drug abuse. I enjoyed learning about his many successes in his professional life but was horrified by his choices and actions in his personal life. His tragic life goes to show that one negative action can completely obscure all of one's accomplishments. The book was filled with name-dropping that is at least one or two generations removed from my own. Perhaps the older generation will recognize more of the names and happenings.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media and to NetGalley for an ARC of this audiobook.

I knew the name Jim Gordon before requesting this book, but I didn't know his story outside of being one of the best drummers in Rock'n' Roll history.

Jim Gordon played drums on some of Rock most well-known songs: Layla, Good Vibrations, God only Knows and many more. He shared the stage with such well-known artists such as: Eric Clapton, John Denver, Mick Jagger, Carly Simon, The Everly Brothers, and most of the Beatles. However, Jim had a dark side that not most knew about. He suffered from halucinations and paranoia that he mostly kept to himself. Unfortunately, this built up until one tragic day in June.

I was completely captivated by this book. The author did a good job balancing what was going on in Jim's career with what was happening to him outside of his work. What a sad story and sad ending for someone who was such a pioneer of Rock, but thanks to Joel Selvin, Jim's story can finally be told.

I enjoyed listening to this as an audiobook, I thought the narrator did a great job.

Incredible story of a talented but tormented studio drummer who played with more musicians than you can even imagine during the 1960s and 1970s. Just about any singer you can think of during that era he recorded with including Eric Clapton , Beach Boys , Everly Brothers, Carly Simon and so many others. His talent was beyond belief but so were the voices in his which lead him to kill his mother. Thank you to Dreamscape Media and Net Galley for the advanced copy of the audiobook