Song of the Week #80 – “Layla”
Written by admin on November 14, 2011 – 10:43 am -| Eric Clapton’s signature song “Layla” is “Song of the Week” on Classic Pop Icons.
“Layla” was released in 1970 on the album “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,” which was Clapton’s one and only album with his band Derek and the Dominos. |
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Eric Clapton formed Derek and the Dominos in 1970 with a group of musicians who he had already worked with on the Delaney & Bonnie & Friends project, his first solo album, and George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” triple album.
“Layla” is a song of two parts, with the brilliant guitar-led rock song merging into an extended piano piece penned by drummer Jim Gordon. In 1988, Clapton told Rolling Stone how the classic guitar riff came about:
| “That riff is a direct lift from an Albert King song…It’s a song off the ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’ album. It goes, ‘There is nothing I can do/If you leave me here to cry.’ It’s a slow blues. We took that line and speeded it up. I’ve tried to recreate the sense of that again and again when I’ve done albums. And it cannot be done. It pales in significance. I’ve realised it’s pointless. Just leave it be.” |
The piano part had been intended as a solo project by drummer Jim Gordon, but he was convinced that it would make a fine addition to “Layla.” With the final song coming in at over seven minutes, its first appearance on single in 1971 was an edit featuring just the first part of the song. A year later, the full length version would storm the charts.
“Layla” took its name from the book “Nizami Ganjavi’s The Story of Layla and Majnun,” which told the story of a young man’s love for a princess who was married to another. This story echoed Clapton’s feelings for Pattie Boyd, who the song was written about and who was at the time married to his friend George Harrison. Clapton and Harrison had been friends since they met at the Beatles Christmas Show at the Hammersmith Odeon in December 1964. Clapton was on the bill with his band The Yardbirds. George and Pattie had also met that year when Pattie appeared in The Beatles movie “A Hard Day’s Night.”
By the early 1970s, Clapton and Harrison were close friends and occasional collaborators in the studio – Clapton had played the lead guitar part on the Harrison-penned Beatles track “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and was among the army of musicians on George’s solo album “All Things Must Pass.” It was around this time that Clapton’s feelings for Pattie Boyd came to a head. In her 2007 autobiography, “Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me,” Pattie Boyd remembers how Clapton used his newly written song “Layla” to declare his feelings for her:
| “We met secretly at a flat in South Kensington. Eric Clapton had asked me to come because he wanted me to listen to a new number he had written. He switched on the tape machine, turned up the volume and played me the most powerful, moving song I had ever heard. It was Layla, about a man who falls hopelessly in love with a woman who loves him but is unavailable. He played it to me two or three times, all the while watching my face intently for my reaction. My first thought was: ‘Oh God, everyone’s going to know this is about me.’ |
| I was married to Eric’s close friend, George Harrison, but Eric had been making his desire for me clear for months. I felt uncomfortable that he was pushing me in a direction in which I wasn’t certain I wanted to go. But with the realisation that I had inspired such passion and creativity, the song got the better of me. I could resist no longer.” |
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Clapton now went all out to prise Boyd from Harrison, even admitting to his friend that he was in love with his wife, but Boyd decided to end the brief affair and try again with Harrison. This rejection is thought to have played a big part in Clapton’s self-imposed exile over the next three years and his escalating heroin addiction.
In 1974, Boyd finally left Harrison for Clapton and the pair married five years later. |
“Layla” became one of Eric Clapton’s signature songs and has been an important part of his live shows for decades. In the 1988 Rolling Stone interview, he told of his continued respect for the song:
| “I’m incredibly proud of that song. To have ownership of something that powerful is something I’ll never be able to get used to. It still knocks me out when I play it.” |
Derek and the Dominos – “Layla”
In 1992, Clapton surprised fans with an acoustic blues reworking of the song for his appearance on “MTV Unplugged.” This hit number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and helped the album from the TV special hit number one on the Billboard album chart.
Recording date/location
“Layla” was recorded at Criteria Studios, Miami, in September 1970.
Musicians
The following musicians appeared on “Layla”:
- Eric Clapton – guitar, lead vocals
- Duane Allman – guitar
- Jim Gordon – drums, percussion, piano
- Carl Radle – bass
- Bobby Whitlock – organ, piano, background vocals.
Eric Clapton, Bobby Whitlock, Jim Gordon and Carl Radle
Duane Allman of The Allman Brothers was not originally scheduled to play on the sessions, but Clapton hit it off with the guitarist when introduced to him at a Miama gig by producer, Tom Dowd.
Unfortunately, there were troubled times ahead for these musicians. Allman was killed the following year in a motorcycle accident, Clapton endured several years of heroin addiction, Radle died of heroin-related kidney failure in 1980, and Gordon fell victim to acute paranoid schizophrenia at the end of the 1970s. Gordon was imprisoned in the mid-1980s for murdering his mother during a psychotic episode and he now resides in a mental institution.
Chart performance
The short-edit of “Layla” peaked at a lowly number 51 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971, but following its appearance on the 1972 compilation album “The History of Eric Clapton,” the complete version was released on single and reached number 10.
“Layla” hit number seven on the UK singles chart in 1972 and number four when re-released in 1982.
There will be a new Song of the Week on November 21.
The 40th anniversary of “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” was marked earlier this year by a single disc remastered edition, a two-disc deluxe edition and a super deluxe edition with four CDs, one DVD and two LPs.
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Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (CD) |
Buy Now | Buy Now | Buy Now | Buy Now |
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Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (2 CDs) |
Buy Now | Buy Now | Buy Now | Buy Now |
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Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (4 CDs/2 LPs/DVD) |
N/A | Buy Now | Buy Now | N/A |
Tags: Derek and the Dominos, Eric Clapton, Layla, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
Posted in Song of the Week |
