"There are few moments in the repertoire of recorded rock where a singer or writer has reached so deeply into himself that the effect of hearing them is akin to witnessing a murder, or a suicide... to me, 'Layla' is the greatest of them."
Dave Marsh, The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll
In late 1969 a fame-weary Eric Clapton was craving anonymity. Fresh off stints in back-to-back supergroups Cream and Blind Faith, and as Britain’s reigning guitar god, he was more than just a little embarrassed by the cult-like attention he'd attracted. The guitar virtuoso longed to step out of the musical spotlight and simply blend in.
After touring as a sideman for the R&B-based rock act Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, Clapton recruited fellow Delaney bandmates Bobby Whitlock (keyboards), Carl Radle (bass), and Jim Gordon (drums) and put together the blues-rock ensemble Derek and the Dominos in the spring of 1970. Without his name attached to the project, Derek and the Dominos played incognito in small clubs and halls around the UK to audiences of no more than fifty or sixty people. The quartet's set consisted of songs from their days with Delaney & Bonnie as well as some blues numbers. No one knew who they were, and Clapton liked it that way.
Clapton, at the time, was obsessed with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his best friend and Beatle, George Harrison. Tormented by his then-unrequited love, he wrote an album's worth of songs for Boyd, and in late August 1970, Derek and the Dominos headed into a Miami recording studio with Atlantic Records producer Tom Dowd, who had worked with Clapton on Cream's Disraeli Gears (1967).
A few days into the Layla sessions, Dowd—who was also producing The Allman Brothers Band—introduced Eric Clapton to Duane Allman, whose band happened to be performing in Miami at the time. After the two guitarists spent the night jamming together, Clapton invited Allman to guest on the Dominos' album. In his autobiography Clapton writes that he and Allman were inseparable during the sessions in Florida. He calls Allman the "musical brother I'd never had but wished I did."
Allman added his slide guitar to "Tell the Truth" and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." In a four-day period, the Dominos recorded "Key to the Highway," the blues standard "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," and "Why Does Love Got to be So Sad." Allman then briefly left the sessions in September for gigs with his own band. In his absence the four-piece Dominos recorded "I Looked Away," "Bell Bottom Blues," and "Keep on Growing." Duane returned to record "I am Yours," "Anyday," and "It's Too Late," as well as the Jimi Hendrix song "Little Wing" and the album's title track.
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs was recorded in six weeks and released in November 1970. The album's most critically acclaimed song was that shattering masterpiece of romantic agony, "Layla," whose title was inspired by the Persian poet Neami Ganjavi's The Story of Layla and Majnun. The classic Arabic tale is based on the real story of a young man named Qays ibn al-Mulawwah from Naid (the northern Arabian Peninsula) who falls passionately in love with Layla upon sight. When Layla's father prevents him from marrying her, al-Mulawwah goes mad. For that reason, he came to be called Majnun, meaning "madman." The book was given to Clapton by a friend and moved him profoundly.
"Layla," with its immortal lick, captures Clapton at the peak of his lust and anguish over Boyd. The two parts of the song were recorded in separate sessions: the opening guitar section was recorded first, and for the second section, laid down several months later, drummer Jim Gordon composed and played the piano part.
It's hard to imagine now, but Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, with its heavy blues influence and the twin lead guitars of Allman and Clapton, met with a lukewarm reception at best. It failed to break the top 10 in the US and didn't even chart in the UK. Some blame the record company for its lack of promotion as well as the general unawareness of Clapton's presence in the band. Clapton took the weak album sales and tepid reviews especially hard. To compound matters, he also suffered the devastating losses of first his friend and professional rival, Jimi Hendrix, only eight days after the Dominos had cut their version of "Little Wing," and then Duane Allman a year later to a motorcycle accident. Reeling from loss and sinking into depression, Clapton's drug addiction spiraled.
Derek and the Dominos seemed to have come together solely to deliver Layla to the world for in under a year, the band had flamed out. Battling a severe heroin addiction, Clapton abandoned the group and went into seclusion before they could complete their second LP. Aside from guest performances at George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 and the Rainbow Concert in 1973, which was organized by The Who’s Pete Townshend, Clapton quit touring and recording altogether to focus on kicking his habit. Music from the sessions of the aborted second album was later released on the Crossroads box set.
When talking about the band in 1985, Clapton remarked, "We were a make-believe band. We were all hiding inside it. Derek and the Dominos—the whole thing…assumed. So it couldn't last. I had to come out and admit that I was being me. I mean, being Derek was a cover for the fact that I was trying to steal someone else's wife. That was one of the reasons for doing it, so that I could write the song, and even use another name for Pattie. So Derek and Layla—it wasn't real at all."
Although Radle worked with Clapton for several more years, the split between Clapton and Whitlock was apparently a bitter one. Radle died in 1980 of complications from a kidney infection associated with alcohol and drug use. Jim Gordon, who was an undiagnosed schizophrenic, killed his mother with a hammer in 1983 during a psychotic episode. He was confined to a mental institution in 1984, where he remains today. After overcoming his heroin addition, Eric Clapton returned to the charts in 1974 with his second solo album, 461 Ocean Boulevard. He and Pattie Boyd married in 1979 and divorced a decade later.
Despite the fact that the Layla album failed to impress upon its release in 1970, the record has aged remarkably well. The title track was included in the 1972 compilation LP, History of Eric Clapton, and issued as a single. This time out, it was a smash hit, charting at #10 in the US and at #7 in the UK. Clapton also reworked "Layla" as an acoustic ballad twenty years later for his MTV: Unplugged album, an effort that earned him a Grammy Award in 1993 for Best Rock Song. All these many decades later, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is consistently named one of the best rock albums ever recorded.
To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, now a rock classic and considered to be Eric Clapton's greatest musical achievement, a host of releases paying tribute to the historic album are hitting the streets that began last month with the release of the digital versions of the album, the single CD remaster, the two LP vinyl, and the double CD Deluxe Edition, which includes music from what was to be Derek and the Dominos' second album as well as the Layla sessions outtake, "Mean Old World," the legendary acoustic duet performed by Eric Clapton and Duane Allman.
The centerpiece of these tributes, set for release on April 26, is the Super-Deluxe Edition featuring some pretty cool extras like the newly remastered and expanded 2-CD set of Derek and the Dominos: In Concert, recorded live in October 1970 at the Fillmore East and released January 1973; the band's sole television appearance on The Johnny Cash Show on November 9, 1970, which includes Clapton's famous jam on "Matchbox Blues" with Cash and rockabilly legend Carl Perkins; and a hardcover book of rare, never-before-seen photographs and interviews with Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, and producer Tom Dowd. There are also facsimiles of Derek and the Dominos concert tickets and various promotional items, including the famous "Derek is Eric" button created to assure fans of the identity of the group's lead singer and guitarist, and a high quality Layla art print based on the oil painting that graced the original album cover—"La Fille Au Bouquet" by Emile Theodore Frandsen de Schomberg—which has achieved cultural significance in its own right.
