Jim Gordon, the prolific session drummer and convicted murderer who played with some of rock’s most famed artists — including the Beach Boys, George Harrison and Eric Clapton, whose classic “Layla” he’s credited with co-writing — before he was sentenced to prison for killing his mother, died Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. He was 77.
His death was confirmed by a publicist, Bob Merlis, who said Gordon died of natural causes “after a long incarceration and lifelong battle with mental illness.”
A Los Angeles native, Gordon was a member of the so-called Wrecking Crew of studio musicians who shaped the sound of countless pop hits in the 1960s and ’70s; later he played in Clapton’s Derek and the Dominos and as part of Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen band. In 1983, Gordon killed his mother, a crime he described to the Washington Post as “kind of like a dream”; he was later diagnosed with schizophrenia.
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This story originally Appeared on LATimes
