Latest / Your Dark Companion Podcast / Jim Gordon's Drums & Demons | The Author Who Wants him Understood | Joel Selvin | Ep 231
Transcript
- Nobody would have thought that I would be the one. Ryder, sports talk. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. With the big mic. Oh, okay. Alright. Yeah. Okay. Now I get it. We got a lightning strike, boys. What happened over there, Grego? We had a little lightning parked right outside the window. The Texas Rangers win the world series. Alright. Alright. Here's a tip for all these Americano League teams. Don't what? You said tip. Yeah. Tip. Okay. With a p. I would keep jamming. The ticket, colon, nothing but a big gin x jerk off set. Is this a cool night or what? I hope somebody would hear that go bullshit. I'm back. I'll teach you soon. Bye. Hello, one and all. We are glad to have you with us today. It is another episode of your dark companion. This is episode number witch two thirty one. It's a big number, Shoopee. That is a big number. That's a very big number. What's the date today? Oh, hell out of nowhere. Remember. The eighth? Yes. The June 8, episode number 231. And today, as we flit about madly across that wide panorama of things that we discuss here on YDC, We are going to settle into the music bag today. Gonna be joined by the noted author, the great Joel Selvin. Yeah. Now, Joel, that's joining us from where? San Francisco? San Francisco. Well, it's good to have you on with us. I've been a fan of your work for some years. Thank you. But I I've always hoped to admit my fan. So you're the guy. I'm the guy. Right. The one book that you wrote really hit home with me, though, because I was also a big fan of the great Jim Gordon. There was a time in my life when I played drums, and Jim Gordon was my guy. Everybody's that plays drums, Jim was their guy. Yeah. It it takes a drummer to really understand how special his skill was. Right? It does. Jim Gordon, it didn't end well for him. And Joel has written the book Drums and Demons, The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon. And I when I first saw that this book was out there, I went for it right away because I was such a a fan of Jim. And I knew I'd read some of your previous stuff. And I knew that if ever there was a guy who could tell this story and tell it the right way and really connect with it all and bring it all together, you could and you did. It was great work, man. Thank you. Thank you. It it came to mean a real lot to me as I got to understanding Jim's case and feeling for what he went through. I came to feel like that I was on a mission to provide understanding and compassion that Jim never had in his life. And you tell me, you read the book when you got done and everything that had happened, it happened. Did you feel sorry for Jim? Yeah, I did. I did. You know? Now that may be the fanboy in me speaking to a a a certain degree, but, yeah, I mean, it's a it's a tragic story for anybody. But especially a guy like that who had a whole lot going for him, who was particularly skilled at one thing, and that one thing was something that he could do better than just about anybody else. And there were a lot of guys out there who are trying to do that same thing, and and you can ask any drummer out there what they thought about Jim Gordon, and and most of them are gonna say something along the lines that there's there's nobody like him. Yeah. Drummers all know him. So here's the cup the the the two things that just totally fascinate me about this. Alright? One, Jim was severely schizophrenic. His symptoms are as extreme as they come. Yeah. And yet, he also had this otherworldly ability to precisely divide time and attribute it to drums and percussion instruments. An uncanny level of intuition, right? So, those things are rooted in the same electrochemical setup in his brain. Right? The root of this incredible skill is the same place where the illness comes from. One thing. Now, the second thing is, as you know, because you play drums, it is an incredibly physically encompassing event. Yes. You you feel every stroke in your entire body and the hypnosis, the hypnotic effect of the rhythmic entrainment takes over. Right? And and you really you move out of the physical world into this other space. Yeah. And when Jim was playing drums, I'm pretty sure he didn't hear the voices. But every other time he Oh, does. If he's not playing drums, his head's filled with voices telling him what to do and chattering away at him. The schizophrenia thing is incredibly poisonous pernicious thing and super common one in one hundred in the general population. Okay. And of the schizophrenics, fifty percent of them don't respond to treatment. The other fifty percent, it's a scale from, you know, eking out a living, working at night and medicating and being careful to like Jim, really struggling with sanity and holding on and and whatever treatment plan Jim had, included like psychiatric care, psychiatric drugs, and illegal drugs and copious amounts of alcohol. Those were all parts of his treatment plan. And it was, you know, depend on the day, it will work or not. And at the end, toward the end, didn't work at all. Nothing worked. Did you know him personally at all before you did the book? Never met him. And he was nonresponsive to my letters to him in prison, which is, you know, pretty typical. Yeah. He was a late stage schizophrenic, and and people who were in prison with him tell me he was very remote, very kept to himself, very you know, spent a lot of time in his cell, didn't even hang out on the yard. Yeah. That's what I mean, everything I've read about him in addition to your book has said that, that he was just all to himself in there and didn't didn't really hang out with anybody. Nobody really knew him. He just did what he did and let everybody do what they did, and the two never really met. Were you as a fan of music, were you aware of what was going on with him? So I knew who Jim Gordon was from probably Delaney and Bonnie on. Yeah. And and he was a figure of repute, and saw him on this record. You saw him on that record. You know, you knew who he was if you were paying attention. Then when the killing happened and he was front page news, you know, that's seared into everybody's brain. I mean, you know, it's Yeah. Not many people kill their mother beating her to death with a hammer. Thirty years later, so I'm talking to a New York publisher and editor at one of the publishing houses, and he says to me that your next book should be rock and roll and crime. And as soon as he said that Jim's name came to mind. I went, oh, and that's Jim Gordon. And I had met some couple of gals who had been working with Jim on an authorized biography while he was in prison, but that'd be like 1994, And they'd done, were giving up, they were finished with the project. Considered it not happening and they were moving. One of them was moving to Montana and the other was moving to Texas. And I tried at that time in 1994 to buy the research from them. And one of them was fine with that. And the other said, she couldn't let go of her project, right? And so thirty years later, when Matt Harper says to me my next book should be rock and roll and crime, and I think about Jim, I start backtracking and I found one of these gals, and bingo, you know, I was able to acquire their research. So I had massive amounts of interviews with Jim, a bunch of interviews with other people that was many years in the past. People were much more, their recollections were much more fresh. And I was able to like, they'd interviewed his psychiatrist. I called the guy up and sent him a copy of his transcript. And and and he and I talked about his interview. I mean, so it was really a beautiful platform to start working on the book from. And I spent four years with it and it it became very like I said, it it I I took it personally. I I really felt like this guy had not been given any understanding or compassion in his lifetime and was deserving of much. Now for those who may not know Jim's work, we probably should circle back a little bit. Oh, sure. So he got out of high school, and the next day, he went to work with the Everly Brothers, which was, you know, about the top of the field in 1963. Yep. That that September, the Everly Brothers toured England with a little Richard and Bo Diddley, and the opening act was some band out of London that just put out their first single called the Rolling Stones. And and, you know, Jim knew all those guys from back then. But he became a a Hollywood session musician. Working with the Elderly Brothers exposed him to that. And and he played on a lot of records. He played on Sonny and Cher records. He played on Beach Boys records. I'd seen him on about half of Good Vibrations. He played on Glenn Campbell's Wichita Lineman. Just all the Hollywood recording sessions of '65 and '66, you can imagine. About '69 is when he got into playing live with Delaney and Bonnie and Joe Cocker and then Derek and the Domino's. And after that, he went back to Hollywood to play sessions with Johnny Rivers, Steely Dan. That's him on Ricky Don't Lose That Number. It sure is. Know, Helen Reddy, I am woman, just endless amounts of sessions. And and you can listen to the records and, you know, some of them, he's more prominent than others. But to my ear, he's always the MVP on the session. Check out BW Stevenson's My Maria. Yes. Yeah. You know, they're just it's always the drum part or or you're so vain by Carly Simon. Uh-huh. And he was always just so perfect. I mean, they said that his time was just unwavering, and it came as natural to him as as walking just about. And his technique, his cymbal technique, and his tom tom technique were the things that I always could identify a Jim Gordon tune by. You know? Yeah. That fifth drum too. It was sort of a timbales kind of thing. Yeah. But but it's an accent. Really, was the precise division of time and the intuitive sense of decoration that that set him apart. And you're right. He you could always tell when it's Jim Gordon, unless it's Jim Keltner trying to sound like Jim Gordon. Yeah. That's that's that's two pretty salty players we're talking about there. Kelner told me that he met Jim when he was in a folk rock group that had a a singles deal at Warner Brothers, and they were gonna go to the recording session. And he walked in, and there was a blue silver Ludwig set drum set already erected. So he goes, I guess I'm not playing drums today. So he sits down at the foot of this drum set and Jim and Jim Gordon comes in and plays the session. Keltner, life pivots. He goes out the next day, buys the identical drum set and he devoted himself to being able to play like Jim. And what he told me was is that I had to learn how to play like Jim in order to not play like Jim. Wow. Now didn't the two of them play together on the Joe Cocker tour? Yep. Yeah. But Kelner was just starting out at that point. You know? He just was, coming out of Gary Lewis and the Playboys. Yeah. Yeah. That I think I I saw Jim play twice. That was one. And the other was with Derek and the Domino's when they came through here. And I That was a good band. Yeah. That was a great band. I was sitting behind the stage then, so I had a pretty good view of everything. And I was just waiting for something to even be slightly out of kilter, and it never was. I mean, the guy was just amazingly perfect. And and you have no idea how high they were. Same with this show. I think I have some idea, but, yeah, for sure. Yeah. What kind of level of cooperation from his family or his people did you get? I I approached Mike Post who is Jim Jim's god god Jim's daughter's godfather. Jim's first wife's best friend and started in the business in high school in bands with Jim. They started in bands together. And I called Mike and I said that I wanted to do something that I'd like to talk to the family. He says, you know, no, there's no upside to this. So I sent him a couple of my books. He called me back and he says, books are great. If anybody can do this, you're the guy that can do this. But nope. So I finished the manuscript and I sent it into the publisher and I took a vacation. I went to Hawaii and the first morning I'm in the islands, the phone rings and it's Mike Post and he says that Jim has died and that the family wants to get out ahead of the story and put out a press release, but they don't really know how to put out a press release, and he had suggested that I might know how. Indeed, I do. So I put out the press release that announced Jim's death and the family came in. We had long talks and many interviews, And I was really glad to say there were some anecdotes that they were in charge of that I hadn't heard. And there was some color and certainly the first wife, Jill was fantastic and wonderful to talk to. But the manuscript I'd sent in had the story. It was all intact. And I put their stuff in, but what was more important than any of that was Jim's adult daughter had never dealt with this stuff. When it happened, she was 14 in high school and that was her much beloved grandmother. And so she just shut her father out of his life. He would send her letters. They were never answered. He bought her car. No, thank you note. He just stayed in prison and she ignored it as much as she could. Then about ten, fifteen, twelve years ago, somewhere in there, she decided to step up and created a conservancy for Jim, who was the wealthiest prisoner in the California Penal Authority because of the Layla royalties. And then she tried to visit him on, I think, three or four occasions, but he wouldn't come out. So she was trying to, like, figure all this stuff out. And we had she lives in Europe and has, you know, she's in her fifties. She has a life of her own. But we had several long, long talks. And I was in possession of information that was entirely vital to her. Same with the first wife. The first wife said, you know, she always wondered what the fuck was going on. And and Mike Post too. Mike Post told me that this, you know, settled a lot of really deeply personal issues for him. So, you know, book's been well reviewed, but but that experience of of of of getting involved so with those people's most traumatic episode in their lives and and and providing them some measure of healing, I hadn't I hadn't seen that coming. Do you think it was known in music circles what was going on with him when he was acting? They didn't understand it at all. No. They were they were able to deal with drunks. They were able to deal with drug addicts. They were able to deal with sexual predators, but genuine insanity. No. They didn't have any idea what it was. And and it would emerge in in in sort of awkward little explosions and and people just like, you know, didn't know what to do. There's a Johnny Rivers session, and it's just got a few minutes left and they're gonna try a new song. And Jim starts yelling at guitarist Dean Park, stop that. I know what you're doing. Stop that. You're messing with my time. And Dean says, what are you talking about? I can see you. You're messing with my time. Now stop it. And Dean's like, you know, I mean, the whole room just like us go, what the hell is going on? And Johnny Rivers says, oh, Jim, he can't do that from over there. Let's get going. One two one. And no doubt he just started playing and nailed it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as soon as he was playing drums, the voices were over. And Bob Glob, the bass player tells me that he was in a session with Jim where Jim, you know, stood up and threw his drumsticks at him and just started screaming about shit that he just didn't understand at all. Right? It was like, oh, what the fuck? It was kind of scary moment. But then like a couple weeks later, he's with Jackson Brown. Jackson says, are we gonna get to tour on the next tour? Kunkel is with James Taylor. And Bob Glob says, well, I just played a session with Jim Gordon. I don't know who's better than that. He's a little crazy, but geez, he plays great. He went out with Jackson. I mean, but Bob Glob, you know, it it it they they just didn't know what to do with with somebody who was mentally ill. So it was pretty widely known in music circles that he would have these episodes every now and then? I don't know if it was widely known, but, you know, by 1975, he'd kind of peaked with the session players, and and and he was getting less dependable. And, you know, by 1978, it was over. Dylan called and asked him to go out on the road and the voices said hang up on him. The voices made him hang up on Bob Dylan, and he was furious about that. So he called Paul Anka and said that he was available and Anka had a Vegas date and said come on, yeah. So he went out to Vegas, took his drum set, the afternoon rehearsal, sound check, sets up his drum sets, strikes the drum once, and then the voices start. They tell him if he hits the drum again, he's dead. And he looks at the musical director and he says, I'm afraid I can't play this gig. I have a mental illness and I can't play. So he called Anka, the musical director, put Anka on the phone and Jim told Anka, no. I'm going home. I can't play. And that was pretty much the end of Jim's career. He continued to play drums on sort of informal basis and you know, in tiny little bands and everything, but no more sessions, no more big time. He was contending full time with the voices. Yeah. Is it true that at the end, he was playing in Santa Monica with some bar band for $30 a night? Yep. Yep. On Monday nights. Yeah. The Blue Monkeys. And he'd had a couple other garage bands that he was involved with, but the the Blue Monkeys were his his his last public exposure. He was he was playing with the blue monkeys up until the crime. You know, there are a lot of drugs around back then, and everybody had access to what they wanted and yada yada yada. But by all accounts, he had his share. And how impactful do you think that drugs were in his story? So drugs were everywhere, And Jim had a a a metabolism that just consumed them. I mean, Keltner tells a story about sharing a tiny bit of LSD tab with him on the Cocker tour. And Keltner was so high, he couldn't even remember what rhythm was. And they had to take him off the stage in tears. And Jim was just powered on yelling, come on play, come on play. So he had an incredible metabolism for this stuff. And then, you know, 75, you start seeing medical professionals and they start putting him on all this crazy primitive psychiatric medicine, how to call and just stuff that would just cripple you. And he just went through it like it was peanuts. And so he's taken cocaine, he's drinking, he's taken all the psychiatric medicine. Is it helping? Not so much. I think that the alcohol was one of his more effective coping devices. I think that he could get himself to where he was almost comatose drunk. And that would that would that would quiet the voices down. I I asked some psychiatrists. I said, what's what's with the cocaine? That seems contraindicated. Right? If you're all jacked up and have voices, you know, this is no, no, no, no, no. It normalizes the dopamine. Okay, you know, it's like, okay, self medicating. And I think that was probably the most effective treatment. He had to monitor himself because Jim's symptoms were as severe as they get. Do you think that he reached a point where he stopped getting called for stuff just because it was he was it was just no matter how good he was or whatever, it's just too weird or too just too weird. How much of that got around. I I know that like Jimmy Bone was using him on the Tracy Nelson album, but he told Tracy that Jim wasn't he needed to use him every other day. You couldn't have Jim in the studio every day. Talked to other people that were using him on sessions in latter period. And his behavior was strange, but not unduly strange. It was like he wouldn't bother to listen to playbacks. He would go like tuck himself behind a recording equipment and try to disappear if he wasn't playing drums and didn't seem to be involved in any of the stuff. But I think he was just bombarded by voices. If he could play drums once he had his sticks in his hand and feet on the pedals, I I I think he was okay. Other than that, not so much. Now the end for him came when the voices told him to kill his mother. Mhmm. And that's what landed him in prison for the rest of his life. Right? Rather immediately, the cops picked him up at six in the morning, and I think mom the the crime happened about 11:00 at night, so he never saw the outs the outdoors again. Wow. What a tragic, crazy story. If I may wander off the page a little bit off of this page. Yeah. I do. I have your read your book on Altamont, and that I mean, I read it shortly after it came out. And for those who don't another cheery story. Yeah. It is another cheery story indeed. Good times. For those who may not know, the Rolling Stones played an outdoor concert in California, and things did not go very well because the Hells Angels were there, and and they they were providing security for this thing, which is a bit of a reach. But, nevertheless, they were contracted to provide security. Whose idea was that? Well, let me let me Really? You know, this is a I wrote the whole book to try and explain that because it's complicated. And and, no, they they they had nothing to do with security. When Sam Cutler, was representing the stones, was talking to Pete Nell, who was the vice president of San Francisco chapter about the concert. And he said, you know, we'd like you guys to do security. Pete said, we're not cops. And and that's the that's it. They the they acted out, but this it's a complicated story. The San Francisco Hells Angels were very close friends of the Grateful Dead. They lived across the street. One of their members was Owsley's partner in the LSD business, and the concert was originally supposed to take place in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. In which case, the San Francisco chapter of the Hells Angels would have jurisdiction. Now for a variety of stupid reasons because the Rolling Stones just were out of control, They lost the ability to have this concert in San Francisco, but they announced they were going to have a concert somewhere. And at that point, they started looking outside of San Francisco and Terry the Tramp, who was Owsley's LSD partner, he told oh, man, you know, if they go outside of San Francisco, it's open warfare. Now, eventually the whole thing lands in this patch of in in this demolition derby arena of 60 miles east of San Francisco on the edge of the Central Valley. And the you know, I mean, it just goes wrong from every minute of it gets worse. When they bring their steel over to build the stage, the stage manager, Chip Monk, orders to build four towers for spotlights for 60 foot towers. Right? And the spotlights never arrive, and they don't have enough steel to build a stage taller than three feet. So you can step up on that stage anytime. Just, you know, you don't even have to, like, haul yourself up. You can just step up from the ground. And and and and these knuckleheads, when they got finished with the stage, they put a piece of string across the front of the crowd. That that'll do them. Yeah. So here are the Rolling Stones playing on this three foot stage with 60. And then we've gotta talk about the the a little bit about Hells Angels politics because in the in the front of the stage was the San Jose Hells Angels. And that's a new chapter. It'd been formed, oh, about six months before after a turf war between the San Jose Gypsy Jokers bike gang and the South City Hells Angels. And and so this was a brand new chapter. And San Jose, by the way, was pretty remote from San Francisco in terms of culture. I mean, they still had grease in their hair and shit like that down there. And chapter also had a lot of prospects, people that wanted to get into the club. And they're real show off act out types that are like indentured servants. And so these are the guys that were in the front of the stage with the pool cues. Now when I talked to one of the guys from the San Francisco chapter, a guy named Flash, I guess his name is Gordon, but everybody knows him as Flash. Asked Flash, what the heck was the pool cues? K? And Flash was like, oh, man. You know, that's just complete Bush League shit. First of all, you can't get very close to anyone with a pool cue and they break really easy. So they're stupid. He says, if you really wanna fuck somebody up, you get a tire chain. So, I mean, these guys weren't even really like advanced Hells Angels, but they caused a lot of trouble out there in the front of the stage. The San Francisco chapter was backstage. They brought their own bus, so they were having a fine time. They weren't causing any much trouble. The Oakland chapter showed up and they took their place on the stage. Mean, really, some of the angels were very helpful and some of them were obstreperous and some of them were impossible. But they definitely got a bad rap here handed to them. When in actuality, it was the Rolling Stones who were responsible for this stupid thing. And they were the ones who were reckless and irresponsible and and and narcissistic and and and exploiting this entire situation for their own benefit. I mean, so that never gets mentioned. Yeah. That's what I've always heard, and that's that's what I always believed. You know? I mean, as you put the pieces of that scene together, it all kinda eventually lands at the feet of the Rolling Stones. Yeah. But for some reason, everybody always blames the Hells Angels. I mean but that's the Hells Angels for you. I mean, they they exist for people to blame them for doing shit. Not that they aren't like you know, I'm not saying they're upright citizens or anything, but they live by a code. I I know those guys. I've I've I've I've I've grew up with them. Well, that's an outstanding book too. Thank you. Really like that one. There there are a few additions on my must read list, if you don't mind telling me what I'm in for here. One would be the hate, love, rock, and revolution. Well, back in, like, mid nineties, '93, '94, something like that, I I wrote a book called summer of love, which I spent a long time researching and talked to everybody I wanted to talk to. And it really is the story of the San Francisco rock scene from 1965 to 1971. All that Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger sort of stuff. And as a response to that, I've been required to rewrite that over and over and over again for this magazine or this thing. The Hate is a book, a big coffee table book featuring the photographs of Jim Marshall, was a genius photographer and a very close friend of mine. This book was put together after Jim died. And so it's kind of a, you know, repurposing of that material. It's the story of the San Francisco rock scene from '65, in this case up to March sixty eight when the Grateful Dead move out of the hate. I don't take it forward to the closing of the film or west or anything, but it's a big color big lavish coffee table book. Yeah. Jim Marshall. Were you that scene Yeah. Back I was on high school over across the bay. I was taking acid and dropping acid and dancing to the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore. Let's see. What about Peppermint Twist, the mob, the music, and the most famous dance club of the sixties? So the Peppermint Lounge was this bar that these mobsters owned off Times Square. And it was just a place where they could hang out in the backroom and do their dirty deeds. They didn't care about the bar. They didn't care whether it made money or anything like that. But one of the chief mobsters son-in-law got the job managing the bar and he was kind of ambitious, wasn't a mobster, and he wanted to bring rock and roll in there. So he brought this band in, and the next thing you know, boom, the twist is happening. The Chubby Checker record and all that, and this place becomes the only place in Central Manhattan where you can dance to rock and roll. And it becomes a big thing. It attracts not only beyond capacity crowds. I mean, the cops had to manage the crowd outside the street, but it became a thing with society, you know, socialites and the Beatles showed up. I mean, it's just became this event. And the mobsters suddenly now they had to run a nightclub and it was the most famous nightclub in America. And it was like, you know, what do we do? It's pretty funny. And and the the mobster decides to become a rock and roll promoter and opens a big club in Miami. And, you know, Steve Van Zant, Miami Steve keeps telling me he wants to make a movie out of it. I'm a great idea because it's a feel good mobster movie, and there's very few of those. Yeah. That's those two things don't really add up, but I'd love to see it. No. It'd funny. Stuff. It is. What about Smartass, the music journalism of Joel Selvin? That's a collection of used newspaper articles. I'm always surprised that people actually pick it up and read it, but they do. I put that together with my pal, Steve Miller. And at the time, we were just fun. But while the book was in production, I ended up leaving the paper. So it became kind of an end of the era thing. And it's 400 pages of thirty six years of, you know, being at the newspaper and writing about this shit. Wow. Some of it's good. I bet it's all good. Who's your favorite guy that you've ever interviewed? Sam the Sham. Serious. Yeah. He was funny as hell, but he was also with a guy, the promo man for Atlantic Records, Mario Medias. And they they were like a fucking comedy team. It was the best most fun I ever had interviewing anybody. But I mean, you know, interviews are interviews. And, you know, it's it's great to be able to sit down with Keith Richards and ask him all the questions you've been thinking about or Pete Townsend's, you know. And and the it's not like it's a personal relationship because, you know, you're one of a thousand guys that that they've done this with. But, you know, you take it home and you you think about this stuff and, you know, oh, yeah. You know, he told me this and, you know, I always wondered about that and you know? What about Born in Chicago, the movie? Well, actually, I'm right in the middle of doing the movie as a book, and I guess it'll be published next year. I don't know. Now that's a little counter to the way it normally works, isn't it? I I well, I love doing the movie, and and the movie sort of came about backwards. It was a concert movie by a reunion of guys that used to play blues together in Chicago. And the people that did the concert movie, thought it might be good to throw some talking heads in between to sort of say who these guys were and what they were about. And they put that out and nobody really liked it. And the producers came to me and asked me what I thought about it. And I gave them a program and they bought into my program. So, I rewrote this whole movie and we repurposed and turned it into something entirely different than a concert movie. I think about maybe eight minutes of the original movie remains. Not much. Yeah. But you wouldn't know it was ever a concert movie. And I I I really like the movie and it's out there on Amazon. You can watch it. And it's got certainly some fantastic performances. I mean, the first twenty minutes is crammed full of live performances by Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. How bad can this be? And but the can't go anywhere in a documentary film that your footage doesn't take you. Right? Right. So to me, I wanted to go back to these clubs. I wanted to be there when those white guys came in and started playing with the black blues guys and see the what the black audience said, and I wanted to be in those rooms. I wanted to see this and feel this and that that that for that, we need to go to the written word. And so I'm I'm I'm going back over. All the interviews we used for the movie, I have now transcribed and it's as if I conducted them for this book. Right? And in addition, I'm doing other research. I'm not it's a much deeper, richer, more detailed stories as a book than a movie, but the you're right. Backwards. What is the one concert you've been to or one act you've seen that you just wouldn't take anything for that just really blew your mind? What? You mean the best night of music? Yeah. Oh, that's easy. I was at the last Waltz. Oh, really? I covered it. And, that was that was just amazing. I mean, you know, one after the other, Muddy Waters, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Doctor. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and then, you know, Dylan, you know. But to me, the moment that I remember the most was it's three in the morning and this whole thing has been going on since 07:00. Turkey dinner is Thanksgiving and Walt's Orchestra and then the band played a set and then they had all the Beatnik poets do an intermission act. And then there's some incredible panorama of music ending with everybody on stage including Ringo, where'd he come? Ronnie Wood, what? Doing I shall be released. I mean, it's just, you know, like talk about a catharsis. But then the audience just won't leave him alone. Right? The audience is demanding an encore. I mean, it was literally like five minutes of standing and cheering. And so the band comes out by themselves. I mean, Levon's still wiping sweat off with a towel and he sits down behind the drum kit and those guys just tore a new one in Winterland with baby don't do it. Oh, what I remember is they sent us home 03:30 in the morning. That's incredible. I mean, you couldn't you couldn't even execute that anymore if you tried because, you know, nobody will let you have the room that late. I know. And the it just was such an event. I mean, it was like whatever Woodstock was over three days compressed into an evening. I mean, I've seen a lot of good shows at at, you know, over the years that would be mentioned in the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers run at the Fillmore in the late nineties. Yes. They decided to become the house band and did like 30 shows in two months. Me, it was like a part time job. I had to leave some show and then go over and catch the second half of the Tom Petty or go over and catch the first half and go somewhere else. But yeah, I think I was at about 20 of them. Think they were just so much fun. And I don't know who was having more fun, the people in the audience or the musicians on stage. Yeah. That was that that that was one of the real highlights of Tom Petty's career. And, man, I wish I would have seen that. I mean, people Well, they've gotten to this place where they really were hating life. They've gone on the road pretty much for two years, and they've played the same set, same songs, same order, same guitar solos, same keyboard solos all along. Good. And Tom's like this, you know, super conscientious guy. He's aware of what the ticket prices are. He's aware that people paid a lot of money and parked their car and walked in from the lot and that, you know, this is a big event in their lives. So he felt a responsibility to give them this prefabricated show, but in doing so, those guys emptied their joy bag, and they no longer were in touch with that bliss that had got them into being Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in the first place. And they were they were down for a year. They they had no belly to go out and do that again. Yeah. And that's when Petty came up with the idea of sitting down at the Fillmore. It it it it just didn't make any sense, But they got up here, and I think they put up 12 shows for sale. They sold out in ten minutes, so they put up another 10. I think they had, like, 20 shows booked right away. And and they came back the next month and did some more. But and it was just, you know, they're just throwing stuff out. I mean, Campbell was playing a surf guitar instrumental every night. Ben was doing Booker T and the MG stuff. Petty was anything. Any old rock and roll song, had a Hanks doing. Remember him opening with Little Richard's Rip It Up. I remember him opening with Put on your red dress, baby. Yes. Hear sneakers. Yeah. I mean, they're doing anything that occurred to them. He did You Are My Sunshine one night explaining that was the first song he ever performed in public at summer camp. Oh. Yeah. I've heard of a lot of a lot of the the the tracks from that concert, and, man, you could tell that they were really stepping outside the bounds of what they normally did and really, really digging it and really, really Oh, they're they're just having so much fun. And, what they were doing is what they do better than anybody else, which is be a rock and roll band. And they've sort of gotten out of that and into being this rock entertainment vehicle, the Billy Joel realm or something like that. Yeah. But no, that's their natural habitat bar band, old zombies covers. Yeah. The last night, the last Saturday night of the run, they did a Westwood one, remember them, live broadcast. And they were on for three and a half hours. I think they played just about everything they were that they'd played throughout the entire Fillmore runs. There's a like a ten minute version of Louie Louie, and there's a satisfaction that goes on forever. And oh, Gloria. Gloria was the end of the Fillmore run, Gloria had become a set piece. Yeah. Quite a show, man. I wish I would have seen that one for sure. Yeah. Joel, you might not know this, but Mike is the lead singer of a Tom Petty cover band here called Petty Theft. Oh, I know Petty Theft. I thought Monroe Grisman was in that band. He that's a different Petty Theft. It's a tough war. But I know them, and they know us. They just stay on their own sides of the track, and everything's cool. We just you know? I was like it's like the coasters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of East Coast coasters and the West Coast coasters. Yeah. They got the California, the Betty Bam, and you got us. Monroe Grisman used to give me demo tapes when he was a 13 year old junior high school student. And I wanna tell you, they were excellent. You know, I mean, his father was a, you know, a figure of repute on the San Francisco music scene. So Yes. I knew David very well. But here comes this punk kid with a cassette going, hey, mister Selvin. I'm I'm way down with Monroe Grisman. That's crazy. I gotta tell you that I I did not have Monroe Grisman's name coming up on my dance card today. Thanks for that. Are you going to write a book about petty yourself? You got one of those in you? I don't know that I would do. There's certainly plenty of material out there. And I've got other books in, you know, in the shoot that I wanna get to. And then also I have to, like, you know, leave room for that thing that I haven't thought of or that somebody else is gonna bring to me. So, you know, I got plenty of work for the next three or four years already. Well, I'm glad you took a little time to visit with us today. We've been Well, you said the magic were Jim Gordon. I mean, it just I I can't tell you how much that guy tears at my heart. It's it is a sad sad story. It really is. It really is. And and it it has become a mission for me to bring compassion and understanding into Jim's case. Well, thanks for helping. I hope we spread a little bit of that here in the remote yet burgeoning outpost of Dallas today and surrounding benefits. Thank you very much, Joel. We appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. And we really enjoyed having you. Maybe we'll do this again sometime. I'm here. Carry on. Alright. Carry on. Yay. There he is. The great Joel Selvick joining us here on YDC today. That was awesome. Did you like that Shoopy? Hell, yeah. I did. Alright. I barely had to say a word. You you carried that thing. He did. Man. He did. He is he he he's outstanding. Now we need to get him out to a petty theft show here. Yeah. I guess we will. I guess we must. I already said something. Uh-oh. Hold on. We'll assume that's a yes. We'll get a All all the petty thefts. Yeah. All the petty thefts. Bring them all together. I'd love to get all the petty thefts together. They're about to they're about to be more than just petty thefts too. Well, listen, fellas. Thanks for all the interest, and I appreciate it. And great to great to make your acquaintance. Great to make your acquaintance too. Thank you very much, sir. We appreciate it. Now let's And the book is called drums and demons, the tragic journey of Jim Gordon. If you were a Jim Gordon acolyte or maybe you just want a a rock and roll story that does not have a real happy ending, this is a book for you. Now what we need you to do in the meantime, though, is get us out there on your social media. Please do that. If you don't do anything else today, share us with somebody you know and love, and maybe they will love us too. He wants to do it now. Yeah. Everybody see or do CBD. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Alright. One more thing we must do is tell you about the CBD house of healing. I'm holding here the full spectrum salve stick. I don't know. You're maybe thinking, okay. Well, what are you even doing with that? I was wondering that. Well, a lot of people are wondering that. What I'm doing with this is I'm helping myself feel better because that's what they do at the CBD House of Healing. Mhmm. I'm an old guy. An old guy start hurting. You know? And you don't know what's wrong. You don't know what's causing it. You just know you hurt. And I put some of this stuff on it, and you know what? Makes me feel better. Mhmm. Does it get rid of it? No. But it doesn't promise that. It just says, we will make you feel better, and it does. Now if this can do this for me, it can do it for you too. So what you need to do is stop by the CBD House of Healing and look into this for yourself. There's no sense in walking around in pain out there when you don't have to. And at the CBD House of Healing, we're not sending you off to some head shop in Garland or somewhere like that. They approach everything from a medicinal standpoint at the CBD House of Healing. Their owner is a registered nurse, and they will take whatever's wrong with you seriously and get you back on the road to feeling better. They are located at Northwest Highway and Plano Road in the Northeast quadrant of that burgeoning intersection. Stop by. Take a look around. Tell them you heard about it from us here on YDC, and start your healing at the CBD house of healing. Anything else? Mm-mm. Alright. For Becca, for Shoopy, for Ashley, I'm Mike. Till next time. Bye. Bye.