About the Album
“Backed by a tight (but not showy) backing band” IGN Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs gave Clapton “his greatest album” AM and made for “one of the all-time classic dual-guitar albums.” VH1as well as “arguably the greatest blues-rock album ever made.” JD “With passion and power to spare, this is the album that proved Clapton was much more than a Guitar God.” EW’93 “There can be little doubt that Layla is perhaps the greatest and most emotional love letter ever recorded by a rock musician.” CC
The Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs album was their only studio recording, but it proved to be “one of the few blues-based classic rock albums which avoids dull predictability or Led Zep-ish testosterone riffs.” PK Clapton reportedly told bandmate Bobby Whitlock at the time that this album would be the epitome of his career. JR-124
In 1969, Clapton had tired of the superstar status he’d achieved, thanks to “some of the most stunning, groundbreaking blues-based guitar work of the rock era” PK in stints with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, The Yardbirds, Cream, and Blind Faith.“Clapton’s deification had become such a burden to him…that he felt forced to seek anonymity.” PR One of those avenues was to throw his hat in the ring essentially as a session player, working with John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, the Crickets, King Curtis, Howlin’ Wolf, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr, Stephen Stills, and others.
Delaney & Bonnie
Working with Delaney & Bonnie helped Clapton “reconcile his spiritual connection with the American South that had given birth to Clapton’s beloved blues.” VH1 Clapton was on tour with Blind Faith. Delaney & Bonnie, “a roughshod hippie honky-tonk band,” VH1 opened for them and Clapton befriended Delaney Bramlett. Clapton toured with Delaney & Bonnie and they released the live album, On Tour with Eric Clapton. The live album would “convey the sound of Derek and the Dominos, and ironically, in some ways it was a better and more accurate preview of Layla than Clapton’s solo debut, which immediately followed.” JR-75
“Considering its intensity, his friendship with Delaney Bramlett rather quickly cooled…The lasting creative and persona bonds he made were with the Bramletts’ sidemen.” JR-78 On Tour and Eric Clapton both featured keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, drummer Jim Gordon, and bassist Carl Radle. Along with a slew of others, they also served as session players on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, released about the same time as the Derek and the Dominos album. “In a 30th anniversary rerelease of his record, Harrison credited…[those four] as the indispensable core band.” JR-93
A New Supergroup
Clapton and his newly assembled group started rehearsals at Clapton’s house near Ewhurst in the Surrey Hills. CC Clapton’s intent was to “form a new combo that, instead of being an ensemble of ever-soloing virtuosos, was actually a band in the sense of the great American R&B groups.” JD As he said, “They were serious American musicians with pedigree…My criterion was Booker T. and the MGs.” CM Indeed, he “assembled one of the best bands in the history of rock and roll and they execute…everything with soulful blues rock majesty.” CM
“Though he was still unsure of his abilities as a vocalist (Bobby Whitlock would double many of his parts on the album), Clapton’s singing was never stronger or more soulful.” JD “Whitlock deserves a place just below Booker T. Jones on any list of rock’s great organists, and Carl Radle was a sensitive and melodic bassist. But the MVP was Jim Gordon.” JD His “simple but expressive drumming creatively propels ‘Bell Bottom Blues,’ ‘Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad,’ and Clapton’s dramatically different reinterpretation of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Little Wing.’ The percussionist also added the stately and breathtakingly beautiful piano part that introduces the second half of the classic title track.” JD
The album captured Clapton “trying to get his guitar to talk right, trying to get his voice right, trying to hease his worried mind, trying to keep trying. Clapton’s personal life was a wreck when he cut this album (drugs, barbed romance, more drugs) and perhaps that’s why he found solace in the cathartic blues and blues-derived cuts on this record.” JG
“The original idea was to issue an album as the pseudononymous ‘Derek and the Dominos,’ packaged in a cover…devoid of any other info. But the group’s true identity was never really a secret to anyone, and few rock fans could mistake that signature Stratocaster sound, which had never been more intense.” JD
Tom Dowd
Producer Tom Dowd was vital to the sound of Derek and the Dominos. He ”followed the simple approach of capturing the music in an unadorned and straightforward way as it came together before his microphones.” JD
He was “emerging as the top engineer and producer in the business.” JR-xv He’d been with the Memphis-based, rhythm-and-blues-oriented label Atlantic Records since 1954. His “studio resume ranged from John Coltrane to Ray Charles, from Bobby Darin’s ‘Mack the Knife’ to Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect.’” JR-17 He’d also engineered Otis Redding’s classic Otis Blue album. He worked with Clapton as an engineer on Cream’s Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire. He also mixed the version of Eric Clapton’s debut solo album which was initially released in 1970.
In 1969, he moved to the new Miami-based operation. In August 1970, he was working with the Allman Brothers Band on their second album, Idlewild South. He’d worked with Duane on some of his session work for Atlantic in Muscle Shoals. When Dowd got a call that same month that Clapton was putting together a new band and wanted to work with Dowd, Dowd said sure. When Dowd told Duane, the response was, “You mean the guy from Cream? Man, are you going to record him? Oh, man, yeah, I gotta meet him. Do you think I could watch?” JR-115
Duane Allman
When Dowd told Clapton that Duane‘s band would be playing a benefit concert in Miami, Clapton said, “We have to go.” JR-120 After the show, “the musicians partied all night, eventually repairing to the studio the next afternoon.” TM “Those jams – furious marathons based loosely on blues songs…and simple riffs – set the stage for Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.” TM
The pair had “wondrous guitar interplay” IGN and Allman’s “spectacular slide guitar pushed Clapton to new heights” AM – “his greatest recorded singing and playing ever.” EW’93 Originally Dave Mason, who’d also been on the Delaney & Bonnie and George Harrison albums, was going to be a second rhythm guitarist but his solo aspirations pulled him away. Now Duane assumed the role as a second guitarist. “It’s often hard to tell which guitarist is playing which solo – the dueling lines wrap around each other like limbs at a frenzied orgy.” JD
Duane Allman and his brother Gregg were just 4 and 2 respectively when their father was shot and killed in a robbery. He’d been a military man who’d been party of the storming of the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. JR-52-3 Duane “emerged from the shadow of his dad’s murder and the harsh experience of military school with a James Dean haircut, a give-a-shit look in his eye, and a smart mouth.” JR-55 However, he also had “charisma…such that when he walked in a room, it was as if somebody flipped on the lights.” JR-55
Duane dropped out of high school, but Gregg toughed it out. The pair were playing as the Allman Joys by 1965 and released two albums as the Hour Glass in 1967 and ‘68. Duane then got a call to do session work with Wilson Pickett and later Aretha Franklin in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. He also played with Delaney Bramlett and they even shared an apartment in New York. By 1969, Duane was back with his brother Gregg to form the Allman Brothers Band.
Sadly, Duane died in a motorcycle crash less than a year after Layla was released.
George Harrison and Pattie Boyd
The “long legged, blonde and blue-eyed” JR-vii model Pattie Boyd was 20 years old when she was cast as a school girl with one line (“Prisoners?”) for the Beatles’ movie A Hard Day’s Night. She hoped to hit it off with George Harrison. It worked. They married in 1966. Harrison wrote the classic Beatles’ song “Something” about her.
Eric Clapton started hanging out with the Beatles in 1967 and “came to think of Harrison as his best friend.” JR-vii He even worked in the studio with the Beatles, lending his guitar prowess to the Harrison-sung “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Harrison also lent a hand in helping Clapton write “Badge” for Cream.
Unfortunately, Clapton also fell in love with Harrison’s wife. Boyd, however, kept it platonic. “Clapton was tortured, and, like all bluesmen, he sought catharsis via music. The result was an interweaving cycle of 14 songs, most of them about heartbreak and unrequited love.” JD
He was angry that Harrison took her for granted, devoting his energy to multiple affairs and quest for religious enlightenment. JR-98 Clapton begged her to leave him JD and “fantasized that he might win her over with the sheer power of his new music.” JR-xv They did sleep together for the first time in 1970, but she stayed with Harrison until their divorce in 1977. She married Clapton in 1979.
The Album Cover
While staying at the house of his friend Emile de Schonberg, a painting caught Clapton’s eye. It was done by Emile’s father, Frandsen de Schonberg. “It was uncanny how much the artist’s image resembled Pattie. Clapton saw the painting and decided it had to be the cover art for the Derek and the Dominos’ album.” JR-108
The Songs
“The basic concept was rock, pitched at the whiplash frequency of Memphis soul. The band worked up nontraditional approaches to old blues” TM and Clapton managed to “make standards…into his own while his collaborations with Bobby Whitlock…teem with passion.” AM
“A big part of what makes this “such a powerful record is that Clapton, ignoring the traditions that occasionally painted him into a corner, simply tears through these songs with burning, intense emotion.” AM “Extraordinarily instinctive vocal and instrumental arrangements dominate the record, especially on the titanic ‘Layla.’” JG “Pain drips from the grooves of this seminal record that has something for everyone – hard-driving rockers, stormy blues, wailing solos.” ZS
Here are details about individual songs.
“I Looked Away”
“Wearing his heart on his sleeve, Clapton opens with a beautiful love ballad, as sad as it is innocent.” CC I Looked Away “evokes some guy who might be in a bar, remembering how good his life was and wondering how it went so wrong. Clapton’s voice sounds as if he is trying not to break into tears. Whitlock’s baritone muscles in with the explanation and fatal complication, that messy, old-fashioned business of loving another man’s woman.” JR-125
“Bell Bottom Blues”
Next up is “the erotic slow dance of Bell Bottom Blues,” JR-125 “another hauntingly romantic song” CC on which Clapton and Whitlock “sing like Sam and Dave.” JG “It’s a blues song…one that Robert Johnson would have been proud to sing.” JR-125 It features “Carl Radle ambling alongside in his calm, sure, good-humored stride” JR-125 and “Whitlock contributes harmony at times, but through most of the lines,he just jabs the keyboard and lets his partner sing with newfound confidence and power.” JR-125
As preoccupied as Clapton was with Pattie, it didn’t keep him from meeting and falling in love with other women. While Derek and the Dominos were in France, Clapton met a woman who spoke no English but was a member of some Middle Eastern royal family. Clapton fell for the “Persian princess” who wore bell bottoms. She inspired a new song which the band wrote and added to their repertoire while still in France. JR-109
“Keep on Growing”
Clapton and Allman initially composed this as an instrumental and then Whitlock added lyrics in less than 20 minutes when there was a risk the song was going to be cut from the album. JR-126 “Clapton chops his way into a song highlighted by textured layers of intertwined guitars reminiscent of the Delaney & Bonnie sound.” CC Whitlock actually sings the lead and Clapton provides harmony.
“Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”
This “down-and-dirty rhythm and blues song” JR-126 was credited to Tin Pan Alley writer Jimmie Cox in 1922. Multiple artists have covered it, including Sam Cooke, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, and Bessie Smith. However, “Allman’s sorrowful bottleneck and the bitterness and self-pity in Clapton’s voice and guitar work make it their own.” JR-127 “Whitlock provides some suitably bluesy Hammon sounds before Clapton offers up a throaty solo on his trusty Strat.” CC
“I Am Yours”
For this song, “Clapton turns to a quiet and tender voice that directly links…to the story of Layla” JR-127 by adapting lines from Nizami Ganjavi’s poem, “The Story of Layla and Majnun.” CC, which also inspired the song “Layla.” I Am Yours features “some of the album’s best Whitlock and Clapton vocal tradeoffs in the Memphis style of Sam and Dave.” JR-127
“Anyday”
This is “an address to George Harrison. In some of the strongest writing and singing on the album, with a metaphor of breaking glass and twisting knife – intimations of someone literally tearing at his guts – Clapton voices a brutal, mocking, yet respectful challenge to the other party in the love triangle.” JR-127 It is “a strong, self-assured number that again features rich, textured layers of guitars over which Clapton and Whitlock sing in unison about lost love.” CC
“Key to the Highway”
This “made it onto the record as a fluke.” JR-128 Domingo Samudio, who had the hit “Wooly Bully” with Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs, was also in the studio for a session. The Dominos heard him singing “Key to the Highway,” a song Clapton had loved since he first discovered Big Bill Broonzy as a teenager. Duane had also done the song when with his band the Hour Glass. They started playing it while Dowd was in the bathroom and the tape wasn’t rolling. Dowd ran into the room and yelled, “Hit the god-damn tape machine!” JR-128
This “is a fine example of Clapton and Allman having fun with a blues jam. Their interplay is dynamic and unselfish, each giving the other plenty of space in which to stretch out. Clapton’s vocals are authentic in feel, but take second place to his fluid and intense solos.” CC
“Tell the Truth”
Whitlock wrote Tell the Truth and then sang it for Clapton. They finished it together. JR-104 It used “the call-and-response routine that Whitlock so admired in his Memphis rhythm and blues upbringing.” JR-104 It was first recorded with legendary producer Phil Spector during the sessions for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. Clapton was dissatisfied and it was re-recorded with Dowd in Miami at a much slower pace. CC It featured “Clapton and Allman both playing slide guitar to great effect and the rhythm section of Carl Radle and Jim Gordon keeping the backing solid, as they did throughout the album.” CC
It was released as a single to promote the upcoming album. Interestingly, the song’s B-side, “Roll It Over,” featured Dave Mason in the early days of the band before he left for a solo career. JR-105
“Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?”
On “Tell the Truth” and this song, the “interplay of Clapton and Allman almost gets away from them, but Radle and Gordon’s pacing calls them back.” JR-129 This is “a fast, guitar-led number with a title succinctly summing up Clapton’s feelings. His playing is incendiary – as though he were exorcising some demon from his soul.” CC
“Have You Ever Loved a Woman?”
“The autobiographical quotient on this emotional blues song seemed almost too apt for a man who’d fallen for the wife of his best friend.” CC It is “perhaps the ultimate Clapton vehicle for sheer intensity.” CC In the book 25 Albums That Rocked the World! Marc Roberty calls it “the true highlight of the album.” CC
The song was originally by Billy Myles, a singer and songwriter who had some success during the doo-wop era. He wrote Have You Ever Loved a Woman?, which was later covered by Clapton’s idol, Freddie King. John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers did the song when Clapton was with them, but Clapton only played guitar on it. For Derek and the Dominos, however, he sang and arranged the song, claiming “it as his personal blues, making it into a cry of love and pain.” JR-99
“Little Wing”
Clapton covered Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing as a tribute to his peer. “Eric had been in awe of Jimi Hendrix’s playing ever since they met shortly after the latter arrived in London in 1966.” CC Clapton recorded the song two weeks before Hendrix died. They’d planned to meet up at a Sly & the Family Stone show on August 18, 1970. Sadly, Hendrix died that morning, choking on an overdose of the powerful downer Vesperax. He never got to hear Clapton’s version of “Little Wing.” JR-136
Hendrix said he wrote the song “about a girl walking through the clouds. The girl in question is, in fact, an apparition.” JR-129 He was out “to convey the ethereal atmosphere of the pop festival in Monterey, California, in 1967. But Clapton’s singing and his guitar play with Allman give the woman a face and heart and beauty, in addition to all the pain she and a man are putting each other through.” JR-129
“It’s Too Late”
This cover was Carl Radle’s idea. The song was first recorded by the black R&B artist Chuck Willis in 1956. Radle heard “the sway of country music in the song, and Derek and Dominos play it that way.” JR-129 It has “a typical theme of lost love. Allman slides and Clapton sings.” CC
“Layla”
Of course, the album standout is the title track, “unquestionably [Clapton’s] best-known song.” CC It is “the album’s centerpiece and emotional core.” JD “You can almost literally hear Clapton ripping his heart out and placing it at the feet of the woman he loves.” JD It didn’t become a hit until the summer of 1972, nearly two years after the album’s release.
Its “stunning opening riff” ZS “endures as a rock and roll national anthem.” TM It became “Clapton’s lifelong signature, but in the studio Allman was the one who conceived and played it.” JR-130 He had the idea of adapting a riff from the Albert King song “As the Years Go Passing By.” The original is a slow song, but Allman sped it up. JR-130
As for the piano coda, it was performed by Jim Gordon, who otherwise stayed behind the drum kit. Whitlock was disgusted by the idea, thinking the song was already great and this felt phony. Dowd edited versions by Gordon and Whitlock together to form the final version. JR-131
Lyrically, the song was inspired by a classic Romeo-and-Juliet-like Arabic and Persian love story which dates back a thousand years. JR-x The story was passed down in oral tradition until 1188 A.D. and a poet named Nizami Ganjavi was commissioned to write a poem based on the story. It took him nine years to finish his story of Majnun falling for Layla. JR-xi When Clapton read the poem, he projected “himself into Nizami’s narrative and verse” JR-100 about unrequited love.
Clapton claimed Boyd ignored the song, but she says, “He played ‘Layla’ to me two or three times," she has said. "His intensity was both frightening and fascinating.” JD
“Thorn Tree in the Garden”
At the end of the sessions, Dowd told the band they might be able to squeeze in one more song. Clapton said, “Hey, Bobby. Why don’t you sing that song of yours, the one about the thorn tree?” JR-132 The “gentle acoustic love song” CC is seemingly “about a boy pining over a lost love,” JR-50 but was actually about a dog. While staying at Leon Russell’s Plantation, Whitlock adopted a dog and a cat to keep him company. Jimmy Karstein, a friend of Radle’s, insisted the pets had to go. When he announced he’d taken care of the dog, Whitlock wrote the song and performed it for Karstein. Whitlock said, “Someday I’m going to record it, and every time you hear it you’re going to feel really bad, because you’ll remember what you did to my dog.” JR-50
Notes: A 1990 20th anniversary reissue saw a box set comprised of a remastering of the original album along with a disc of alternate masters and a third disc of studio jams.
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