DISGRACELAND - Derek & The Dominos: Clapton, A Christmas Shooting, Cocaine, and a Motorcycle Crash

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

In 1960s London, for young guitar enthusiasts, believing that “Clapton is God” was practically the 11th Commandment. In 1970 he lent his big, sticky tone to yet another band: Derek and the Dominos. The group’s white-hot blues burned bright for barely more than a year, but their impact was massive. Guided by drug, alcohol and heartbreak free-fall, Eric Clapton created one of rock’s most recognizable guitar riffs, while drummer Jim Gordon contributed God’s great piano coda. Except Gordon was guided by something far more sinister — something that started with incessant voices in his head, and ended with a hammer, a butcher knife, and a dead mother. To see the full list of contributors see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com.⁠ This episode was originally published on December 6, 2021. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.

He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things,

Tana Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes are insane.

They involve murder, a deadly motorcycle accident, in devastating heartbreak and scandal. Eric Clapton was a one-of-a-kind guitarist seemingly hell-bent on self-destruction. He was heavily addicted to heroin, cocaine, and throughout his stint in Derek and the Domino's, attempted to snort his way through unrequited love. And in doing so, came out on the other end with one of Rock's most recognizable guitar riffs. And only one year after Clapton's Derek and the Domino's got together,

the group disbanded. But a year was all they knew. needed to introduce the world to their white-hot strain of blues, which they nailed on their one-and-only studio album. Because when Eric Clapton, Jim Gordon, Dwayne Allman, Bobby Whitlock, and Carl Rattle were in the same room. They made great music. That music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Palisade Sache, MK, K, I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights

to the long and winding road by the Beatles. And why would I play you that slice of last gasp of collective creativity cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on June 14th, 1970. And that was the day that Derek and the Dominoes made their live debut

and began to make their indelible contribution to rock and roll. On this episode, Murder, motorcycles, unrequited love, and Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Christmas, 1929, Germantown, North Carolina. Charlie Lawson had a lot to be grateful for that holiday season. Aside from the death of his third son, William, back in 1920,

the Lawson's lived a good life, all things considered. Their sharecropper neighbors considered them well-to-do. Two years prior, Charlie Lawson bought the family a tobacco farm out on Brook Cove Road, and they lived off of that farm, if not handsomely, then in relative comfort. Charlie Lawson and his wife, Fannie and their seven children, Marie 17, Arthur, 16, Carrie, 12, Mabel, 7, James 4, Raymond 2, and Mary Lou just four months, were envied for their new clothing they wore when they made their trips into town. There was a rumor going around that their father Charlie,

had even sprung for the cost of a family portrait, a blatant act of ostentation if there ever was one for a modest, god-fearing family of farmers back in 1929, Germantown. There was a depression on, after all. Hadn't the Lawson's heard? Charlie was hearing a lot. Whispers.

Then full-on voices. They told them about the rumors. They knew. Others knew. Peace was impossible with the voices. They weren't always there, but when they were, they weren't to be ignored. Listening to them was the only option.

Ignoring them only made them louder. Charlie answered them in hushed tones under his breath. Fanny, his wife, at first thought Charlie was praying, talking to himself, sermonizing to himself to pass the time working the farm. But Charlie's muttering eventually made it into their home. Random, sharp shouts to himself out of nowhere in the company of the children. Once at the dinner table and then, incredible. in public on a Sunday, seated in their usual pew at church.

No one noticed. Everyone thought it was just another touched soul convening with the Holy Ghost, but Fanny noticed. Something was not right with her husband. He doted on the children as of late, an act that would be welcomed by most wives and mothers if it wasn't so out of character for Charlie Lawson, the stern, hard-lined tobacco farmer who seldom expressed himself emotionally,

Perhaps a smile for his wife on Sunday sitting in their pew taking stock of their family, but hardly anything else. The small act of pride he allowed himself was just another reminder that he sinned like everybody else. Fanny relished those moments. She was downright petrified by what she was seeing as of late. Charlie laughing with the kids,

he even took to telling jokes he'd heard retold in town by Avodville stagehand. The joke was clean, but Charlie was blue, inside, Fannie could tell, particularly telling, was the extra attention and affection he was paying their 17-year-old daughter, Marie. Most nights, the day's hard farm work, set Charlie asleep like a rock. He seldom stirred. From 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., Fanny Lawson's husband lay on his back in the small twin bed aside hers, stone cold asleep. But on that night before Christmas, what Fannie saw when she awoke in the

middle of the night took her breath away with the fear of the devil himself. There, at the edge of his bed, sitting up in his pajamas, rubbing his calloused hands together, was her normally restful husband muttering to her horror. Yes, I will be good, I promise, I won't know more. I will be better. I will be good, but you have to stop. You have to stop, and so will I. Yes, yes, I promise, I promise. Fannie didn't know what scared her more. The subservient tone in her normally strong husband's voice or the fact that he was carrying on a full conversation with himself at the edge of his bed in the middle of the night. She stood up, walked over to his bed, placed her hand on his shoulder, and shocked him back into reality. He ignored her, stood, left the room, and didn't return for the

rest of the night. The voices were in control now, and they would remain so well into the next day. Charlie Lawson enjoyed watching his family, especially on that Christmas morning, admiring them, Seeing them open their presence and play with their toys, it seemed to make all the hard work worth it. Later that afternoon, he sat out by the tobacco barn enjoying the clear winter's day, and he watched his daughters Carrie and Mabel run across the field. And they were off to their aunt and uncle's house down the way. Charlie asked them to go, and they were delighted to do so. From where he sat at that moment, watching them, they weren't too far.

He could see the different colors on the scarves and mittens fan he had named. He could see the smiles on their faces, the excitement and anticipation for more presents from their relatives and a Christmas feast before the day's end. Charlie saw all this as the voices in his head told him that the time was now. Charlie did what he was told. He lifted his 12-gauge shotgun, aimed, and put a bullet through his daughter Carrie, and then another through his daughter Maybill. The snare drum blasted out like an old Remington. Drummer Jim Gordon sat at his kit listening to the voice in his headphones. It was a voice he knew well, even if he didn't know its owner that well, personally. It was a famous voice, the voice of a beetle, Beatle George Harrison.

George was instructing him on the feel he was looking for on this new track they were recording. It was George Harrison's first foray into the studio as a solo artist post Beatles. Work had commenced on what would become George's masterpiece, all things must pass. and Jim Gordon found himself in the enviable position of drummer in George's new studio band. As Jim listened to George, George kept his finger pressed on the talkback button and continued conversing with another voice in the control room. Jim knew this voice, or it was the voice of God, the voice of Eric Clapton. In 1960s London, for young guitar enthusiasts, believing that Clapton is God was practically the 11th commandment.

Eric Clapton had perpetually blown minds since he first hit the scene with the Yardbirds and then inexcusably quit the successful UK pop band in search of something more creatively fulfilling. He later took up with John Mayle's blues breakers and proceeded to turn the London rock scene on its ear with his ingenious application of the stylings of Chicago bluesman Muddy Waters' harmonica player Little Walter Jacobs through the strings of his Gibson-Less Paul electric guitar. The result was a big, fat tone. That was also wildly expressive and heretofore unheard of in rock music. Eric Clapton added psychedelia to his sonic palette

with his late 60s projects, cream and blind faith, blowing minds all the way up the charts in both groups. But like most great bluesmen, Eric just couldn't be satisfied. And by 1970, was casting about for a new group to lend his big, sticky blue tone to. He found that group in Delaney and Bonnie's band. The American singer-songwriter duo, affronted a white hot rock and soul review that was lighting up stages across the U.S.

in Europe as an opener for blind faith by the turn of the decade. Eric Clapton glombed on and to the delight of concert goers sat in with Delaney and Bonnie on some shows and elevated their sets to new heights. When the tour ended, Delany and Bonnie's keyboardist Bobby Whitlock,

bassist Carl Rattle, and drummer Jim Gordon, Americans All, retired to Eric's Surrey Estate to get some downtime. downtime for musicians of this caliber, however, meant constant jamming. Blues, blues, and more blues. Powered by cocaine, mandrecks, and some sort of deep-seated heartache

that was propelling Eric Clapton. When George Harrison called Eric Clapton to come down to Abbey Road to play on his new album, Eric showed up with a fully formed band spoiling for a session, and they did not disappoint. All Things Must Pass was the first ex-Beatel record to fully connect with audiences, allowing George to step out of the shadow of John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the process. All things must pass, sat atop the charts in the U.S. for seven weeks, and in the UK for eight weeks, far outselling McCartney and John Lennon Plastic Ono band,

the first LP solo efforts by his former bandmates. Eric Clapton couldn't ignore the power of the band. They quickly played a show, a benefit they were asked to contribute to, and they needed a name. Someone suggested, maybe it was George and who the hell knows why, at literally the last minute, like moments before they were to go on stage, that they call themselves Derek and the Dominoes. Sounded good enough to them, so Eric Clapton's new band was born.

And Jim Gordon was in a group, Derek and the Domino's, and on stage. Not in the studio listening to the voices in his headphones, but instead to that voice in his head, the one that told him he could do better. Jim, you can always do better. But it was hard for Jim Gordon to do better. He was literally the best. Try finding a rock drummer up until 1970

that played with more groups of consequence than Jim Gordon, and you'll be looking for a long time because there simply isn't one. Jim Gordon's list of credits is long and mighty impressive. By the time he had hooked up with Eric Clapton, he had already drummed for the Everly brothers, the righteous brothers, the birds on the notorious bird brothers. Judy Collins, Gordon Lightfoot, Glenn Campbell on Wichita lineman,

the Beach Boys on Pet Sounds, and the list went on. In the future, he'd perform with Joe Cocker, Dave Mason, traffic, Frank Zappa, Steeley Dan, Alice Cooper, and on Carly Simons' year so vain, and on John Lennon's Imagine. To give you some idea of how prevalent Jim Gordon was as a working professional drummer, you know that amazing scene from Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas,

the one where Ray Leota's character, Henry Hill, is coped out of his mind in paranoid trying to outrun helicopter, The one with the incredible musical montage with back-to-back-back-banggers heightening the intensity of what is probably the greatest film of all time, songs like The All Things Must Pass Track What Is Life by George Harrison, and Harry Nilsson's Jumped to the Fire, which is used three times, climaxing in Jim Gordon's drum solo,

just as Henry Hill is about to be arrested. Of the eight music cues in that montage, Jim Gordon plays on half of them. To give you some idea of how influential Jim Gordon was as a drummer, That's him playing on the Incredible Bongo bands Apache. You know the song. Even if you don't know the song right now, trust me, you know the song. Because more than 700 hip-hop songs have sampled it because of Jim Gordon's incredible drumming. Beginning in 1981 with the Sugar Hill Gang and their hit also called Apache,

Grandmaster Flash, LL Cool J, Kuhl J, Nas, Apex Twin, Missy Elliott, Kanye West, and J.Z, and Cool Herk himself, who called it, quote, the national anthem of hip-hop music. In oh yeah, drummer Jim Gordon. co-wrote Eric Clapton's most recognizable hit. Derek and the Domino's Lela. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care.

So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler,

we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me.

You're like, making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham.

So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gayton Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Mongeau. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more.

Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words Podcasts. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says, she's gone, she's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do.

You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Christmas morning rabbit hunting was a tradition in Germantown, North Carolina, which is in part why Charles, Lawson sent his oldest son, 16-year-old Arthur, into town to purchase shotgun shells. The other reason was that he didn't want Arthur around. The voices in his head warned him that Arthur, being big for 16 and bigger now than his father

Charles, might stop him from doing what needed to be done. When the shots rang out from Charles' shotgun, the ones that he fired to kill his two daughters, Carrie and Maybell, they were heard, but no one, not Charles' neighbors, not the rest of his family and his home, thought anything of the sound of gunfire. This was, after all, Christmas morning. This was Germantown, and this was Stokes County, which meant rabbits were being hunted and shot for sport with shotguns blasting from all over, from Winston-Salem to the county seat and Danbury.

The sound of gunfire on that particular morning was not a surprise. In fact, it was to be expected. The sounds of screaming children, on the other hand, that wasn't to be expected. which is why Charles Lawson shot his daughters before bludgeoning them. Out in the field where their prone bodies lay partially submerged in deep, freshly fallen snow, Charles Lawson gazed down at his dead daughters, and for a moment there was quiet. At long last, no voices, no gunshots, just the wind quietly moving across the field, gently sifting the top level of snow.

But then, burbling up from some of the sun, Somewhere deep inside, rushing forward into his consciousness like a gathering storm, a tornado of whispers turned to a violent vortex of demands, and the voices all said one thing. Finish them. Charles pounced, straddling Carrie's body, he raised his fist and pummeled, bashing her young face until it was unrecognizable. But when he was done, he moved over to Maybell and did the same, and then he grabbed both girls by the collars, one in each arm, and dragged their bodies toward the tobacco burn.

The voices were quieter but no less insistent. Finish them. Charles moved on from the tobacco farm toward the house, shotgun in hand, trudging heavily through the snow. His wife Fannie was on their porch. She saw Charles walking toward her. Immediately she knew something was very wrong. His gait was all off.

His head was hung low, chin down, pressed to his chest. His eyes pitched up to his brow, his shoulders hunched. He was lumbering. He was determined. He was all menace. The shotgun at his side was not a good sign. Fannie feared the worst. Charles saw the look, the recognition, the fucking judgment in her eyes.

And the voices wouldn't allow it. Charles raised his shotgun, took quick aim, and blasted his wife away with one shot. Immediately, with the sound of the shotgun from such close range, Charles Lawson's daughter, Marie, from inside the house, let out a violent scream. Miami, 1970, Criterio Studios Derek and the Dominoes were stuck. The blast of brief inspiration provided by the recent studio edition of Allman Brothers guitarists, the sublime bluesman Dwayne Allman, had momentarily come to a halt.

The drugs had taken over, cocaine, loads of it, and even more heroin. The band simply did not stop. Eric Clapton was lower than he'd ever been. He was completely and totally hung up on the wife of his best friend, George Hauer, Harrison, and Patty Boyd Harrison wasn't having it. The heartache was all consuming for Eric. He attempted to outrun it through his playing. But when the inspiration dried up or plain old fatigue set in, the only plan B was drugs. And in Miami, in 1970, the kind of drugs, adult drugs that Eric Clapton needed, were plentiful. When he didn't have a guitar in hand, he chopped up lines

and leaned into the switchblade shoved under his nose, snorting cocaine and heroin. And then, of course, he and the rest of his band would nod out. Music-making would stop. The promise Derek and the Domino's displayed in the studio with George Harrison had become a mess of drug-induced false starts brought to life momentarily by the outside influence of Dwayne Allman, who at the moment was losing to his own demons like the rest of the band. And to this point, they'd actually made decent progress on a blistering new track.

Of course, another send-up of unrequited love to Patty Harrison. This one, based on a book by the Persian poet Nizami, called The Story of Lela and Majna. It is, of course, a tragic love story where the protagonist Majna is destined to a loveless life of solitude after having been spurned by the love of his life, Layla. Needless to say, Eric Clapton could relate, and Dwayne Allman could relate to Eric Clapton. As guitar players, there were instant soulmates. Eric was introduced to Dwayne by producer Tom Dowd in Miami at an Allman Brothers concert. Dwayne was soon after hurried to Criteria Studios to jam,

and the connection between the two guitarists was instant, inspiring, and indelible. Dwayne effortlessly drove Eric's already stellar playing to new heights and set Eric off deeper into the depths of his depression to mind for lyrics that were raw and undeniably real. The story of Lela and Majum paired with Dwayne Allman's unforgettable severance, A note riff and stellar bottleneck slide playing became Eric Clapton's most memorable pop-hit, Layla. Half of it anyway. In a separate room,

away from his bandmates who were at the moment funked out on the floor, nodded off after running into a wall with Layla, unable to finish the song, to bring it home to make it anything more than a three-minute verse chorus-verse romp with soaring slide guitar. Derek and the Domino's drummer Jim Gordon

was sitting at a piano. The riff he was playing was a melody. he and his ex-girlfriend Rita Coolidge used to mess with up in the John Garfield guesthouse they stayed at in Hollywood. It was moody, dramatic. Rita used to hum it and then play it on the upright in the guest house. It was an earworm of the highest magnitude in the best possible way. Jim taught himself the chords on the piano and added to the progression in melody and was now secretly off recording it in the studio's B-room for what he hoped would be his solo record,

while the rest of his drugged-out bandmates slept off their dope eyes. And those piano notes rang out. Eric Clapton heard them. He discovered his drummer at the piano. What he wanted to know was this. Jim Gordon told him, it was his. It was going on his record. This riff, this melody, this piece,

was too good for any sideman hustle. Eric Clapton wanted the piano piece. He needed it. He made Jim play it for Dwayne Allman. And Dway nodded in agreement with Eric and called him producer Tom Dowd, whose jaw hit the floor. And the rest of the band,

They needed this piece. Jim didn't want to give it up. The band pleaded. It was the missing piece that the piece of music that would complete Layla, the piece of music that would make the song better. You can do better, Jim. That's what the voice has always said. And they were right.

He knew it. So he gave the piece up. Derek and the Dominoes quickly recorded Jim Gordon's and his ex-girlfriend's majestic melody on piano as the coda to Layla. Jim plinked out the notes. Keyboardist Bobby Whitlock recorded his own. track to steady the ship. Eric Clapton and Dwayne Allman went to work applying their dual guitar genius over the heavy emotional melody. What they came up with is as close to symphonic as rock

instrumentation can get. The finished piece directly resembles the heartbreaking emotion at the core of Eric Clapton's lyrics. The song, Lela, now with Jim Gordon's piano contribution, is in a word, a masterpiece. Jim Gordon allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. upon listening to the playback of Leila. Despite all of his success to that point, he couldn't actually believe where he was at, what he was accomplishing. And this was different.

This wasn't just drumming. This was composing. Conducting a symphony with God himself, Eric Clapton, and his disciple, Dwayne Allman. But deep down, Jim Gordon heard the whispers. He knew he wasn't done. They wouldn't let him finish. There was more for him to do,

and the voices kept telling him, you can do better. We'll be right back after this world, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no.

I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Jee, I'm not you. Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever.

My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like, making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going,

and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead.

Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tana Monsu. Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea

on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling telling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened.

His father just grabs him and says, she's gone, she's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things You never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network.

Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The scream from Marie, Charles Lawson's daughter, cut through the tiny farmhouse. Her two younger brothers, James and Raymond, darted off to hide. Within seconds, their deranged, father burst through the front door. Marie took one look at him and knew this was it. She was all too familiar with what her father, Charles Lawson, was capable of. Charles stood in

the front of the doorway, frozen, his eyes fixed on his oldest, prettiest daughter. He clenched his lips, focused his eyes, waited for her to say something, waited for further instruction. Marie accepted what was about to happen. She put one hand on the bottom of her belly, breathed a sigh of relief there would be no more pain, no more shame. Lucened suddenly from these constantly oppressive twin emotions,

Marie's body slackened as she began to walk to almost saunter slowly toward her father, who stood stone still like a rabbit out in the field, caught in the sights of its hunter, frozen briefly before making its next move. Marie's approach taunted Charles, like most everything is attractive 17-year-old daughter,

did. And then, the voices did what they always did. They rose up quick from within their host and gave Charles that familiar party line. Charles quickly raised his shotgun and fired a roundoff into Marie at close range. After the shot echoed out, Charles heard the whimpering. He quickly located his two hiding sons, James and Raymond, and pumped one bullet to each of them. Mary Lou, his lone surviving daughter, just four months old. The voices in his head, had gathered again, and they were screaming and following the lead of the loudest voice among them, the voice of a stern, domineering, judgmental woman. No loose ends. Finish the job. Be better. Charles Lawson murdered his baby girl on Christmas morning with his bare hands.

Be better. Be better. Be better. It was all Charles Lawson heard. Five decades later, it was all Jim Gordon heard, too. The voice of Jim's mother was in his head. His mother, who, by all accounts, was a loving mother, a maternity ward nurse who, along with his father and accountant, raised Jim in Sherman Oaks, California and what was an upper middle class upbringing. Her son, Jim Gordon, drummer for Eric Clapton's early 70s disappearing act, Derek and the Domino's, perhaps the greatest living professional drummer on the planet at the time, was caught in the grip of drug and alcohol abuse and undiagnosed.

schizophrenia and fast spinning out of control. Just like the wheels on Dwayne Allman's 1970 Harley Davidson Sportser spinning out of control. Down making Georgia's Hillcrest Avenue, Dwayne's head was spinning too. Freedom was in the Southern Boy's DNA, which meant he was not averse to rolling his powerful Harley down the highway exactly as he wanted, at whatever speed he wanted. Cruising down the road, his long hair trailing behind him, off into a blessed music musical future, one that Dwayne Allman's youth and immense talent all but guaranteed, Eric Clapton's one-time domino, Jim Gordon's one-time bandmate, had little to worry about. And then, the flatbed semi-tracked a trailer up ahead stopped suddenly as it took a wide turn.

Dwayne, on his sportsster, moving at top speed, swerved to avoid hitting the truck, but his reaction came too late. He hit the semi and was thrown from his bike, and the momentum rocketed his body down paved highway, and the bike rocketed into the air upon impact with the truck, and when it came down, it came down hard on top of Dwayne. The force and momentum of the bike dragged Dwayne underneath it on the pavement for a full 50 feet before coming to a stop. Dwayne Allman died later that evening at Middle Georgia Hospital of massive internal damage to his heart, liver, and other organs from a collapsed chest. Upon hearing the news, Jim Gordon was sunk. Derek and the Donner Domino's had broken up earlier that year in 1971, but who was to say it was final?

Jim half expected a reunion, but with Dwayne Allman, their part-time lightning rod of True Blues inspiration now gone, and Eric Clapton's drug, alcohol, and heartbreak freefall now speeded by grief over Dwayne's loss. Any hopes of a reunion quickly faded. Jim Gordon, drummer for Derek and the Domino's co-writer of God's Coda, Eric Clapton's Layla was sunk. He quickly spiraled into his own drug and alcohol funk. He tried playing through it on sessions with Jackson Brown,

but by the time Bob Dylan came calling, Jim was in too rough a shape and had to pass. And throughout the 70s, Jim's behavior grew increasingly erratic, and for the first time in his professional life, the steadiness of his gig started to slip. But the voices never dropped the beat. The voices were steady. The voices got loud.

The drugs and alcohol helped drown the mo. Jim graduated from snorting heroin to shooting heroin. It was self-medication for the undiagnosed schizophrenic, because the voices were becoming unbearable. One in particular, with every day grew louder, more persistent, more insistent. It was a familiar voice, the voice of his mother, imploring him to always be better.

But how could he? He tried that. He'd done that. There was no one better. By any quantifiable standard, Jim Gordon was the best at his chosen profession, rock drummer. But his mother's voice in his head gave him no quarter, no credit, no relief, day and night, be better, be better, be better, be better, something, someone had to make the voice stop. By the time Stokes County authorities had found the bodies, Charles Lawson was long gone.

But not before he had arranged the bodies of the Lawson children and their mother neatly within the blood-soaked walls, of the family home. Charles placed them gently on the floor, taking care to cross their arms and prop their heads up for eternal comfort by placing large rocks from his tobacco barn under their heads. Once the coda to the Christmas massacre was near complete, Charles Lawson set out to the woods.

He stopped at a nearby creek to wash the blood from his hands. Clean hands were better than bloody hands and there was always room to be better. And the source of his shame was now gone. His 17-year-old daughter would taunt him no more. His other children would whisper about him no more. His judgmental wife would judge him no more, and the voices were at long last quiet.

Charles Lawson paced around the poplar tree, satisfied now that he was free of the voices, and he sat down on the wooded ground and propped himself up against the poplar's trunk. He turned his shotgun toward his face, reached down, and pulled the trigger. 53 years later, Jim Gordon, like Charles Lawson, had reached the end of his rope. Unlike Charles Lawson, Jim Gordon had no family.

He had driven away two wives and a daughter with his career and then his erratic behavior. He wasn't close with his older sibling and his father had died in 1973. Throughout his life, music, not family, centered him. The sessions, the tours, and even his brief stint in a band, and Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes. But now, all of that was gone. Jim's state of mind was too shot to perform consistently, to work with others,

and his addiction to alcohol and drugs too consuming. By the time 1983 rolled around, all Jim Gordon had was his 72-year-old mother. Jim's mother worried about her son and cared for him, helping him kick drugs and alcohol at various times. But Jim would always find his way back, to his addictions. And then the voices would get real loud, admonishing him for his vices, gilting him for squandering his talent, taunting him for his inability to live a normal life,

pushing him always to do the impossible, to do what he'd been trying to do his whole life, to do what he knew he could not do, be better. Destined to fail, the shame of it was unbearable. The voices, all of them, a chorus of disapproval inside of his head, were conducted by the voice of his mother, The woman who in reality took care of him, who worried about him, who helped him get on the wagon when he tried to stop the drinking and drugs, who visited him those times when he checked himself into the hospital for when the voices were too much. His mother was the only one left in the world who actually cared about Jim Gordon.

But that was reality. In his head, Jim Gordon knew there was no reality where he could actually be better so his mother needed to be silenced. She wouldn't stop. She wouldn't shut the full. fuck up. She wanted to control him. She wanted to own him. She wanted him to be something he wasn't. Didn't she know he was a rock and roller and outlaw of free spirit? There was no controlling him. There was no owning him. There was no making him be better. He was the best. He was Jim Gordon and

he had finally snapped. On June 1st, 1983, Jim Gordon's mother answered her telephone. On the other end was her son. He told her, you're bugging me again. I'm going to kill you. Despite the warning, when Jim showed up at her apartment, his 72-year-old mother opened the door to let him in, most likely to calm him down, to do what mothers do for their children, to take care of him. But there was no taking care of Jim Gordon. Like Charles Lawson, the voices were in control. The voices in Charles' head had told him to kill, but Jim was at war with the voices in his head. When his mother opened her apartment door, her son brought a hammer down onto her head and bashed her skull open. He then grabbed a butcher's knife and savagely stabbed her violently ending her life. The neighbors could hear her screaming.

And the voices in Jim Gordon's head had gone silent. For a moment anyway. But they'd be back. Jim Gordon, murderer, undiagnosed schizophrenic, one of the best drummers of all time. A drummer for Eric Clapton's Derek and Sterrick and the Domino's. Now spends his days rehearsing with the inmate band in California State Prison Medical Facility because one can always be better.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it.

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and Facebook at DisgracelamPod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at DisgracelandPod. Rockerola. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that, trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off.

And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yello.

I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.