A harrowing look at drummer Jim Gordon’s descent from rock talent to convicted murderer

Book Review Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon By Joel Selvin Diversion Books: 288 pages, $29 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. Gordon would go on to play drums for Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominos, adding the song’s indelible piano coda to “Layla,” and record with John Lennon and George Harrison. “For Jim, it was a crack in the mask he wore,” writes Joel Selvin, the former San Francisco Chronicle music critic, in his deeply reported and well-written book “Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon.” “His herculean self-control had failed him, letting the dark forces he had kept under tight wraps peek out, dark forces that would have shocked anyone who knew sunny Jim.” As recounted by Selvin, Gordon heard voices that would only grow more hostile and dangerous over time, even causing him intense physical pain if he dared to disobey them. Selvin shows the handsome, blond, 6-foot, 4-inch drummer in the studio playing on Brian Wilson’s masterpiece “Good Vibrations” and driving the beat of a 24-piece orchestra on the Mason Williams 1968 instrumental hit “Classical Gas.” In one memorable scene, producer Richard Perry tapped Gordon to play drums on Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” after two other drummers failed to give him the sound he wanted. Gordon “made the track sound like a big, juicy hit record on the first take, and at the end of the evening, he left no doubt in the minds of everyone in the room that was exactly what they now had.” Selvin vividly charts Gordon’s decline in harrowing detail, including his alarming violence toward women, myriad psychotic episodes and banishment from rock royalty because of his increasing unreliability and frightening behavior.