Layla part 1
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What with the release of Steve Winwood's new CD and the MSG concert of Winwood and Clapton I decided to revisit and explore Derek and the Domino's Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.It may be some what wordy but it was fun doing.Most of the info is from the book Derek and the Dominos - Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Jan Reid.Following the rise and fall of Blind Faith, Eric Clapton holed up in his Surrey estate with some american sidemen steeped in southern rock.When Clapton met them, they had been playing behind a popular white soul revue, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends. The sidemen quit or were fired and cast their lot with Clapton. None of them would become a household name, but together they generated one of the endearing legends of rock and roll.Carl Radle was a laconic bass player who was balding and wore glasses. He had grown up in Tulsa and had helped make the Oklahoma oil town into an intriguing subcapital of rock and roll, playing in a variety of clubs and bands with players who included Leon Russell and J.J. Cale. Radle was the definitive laid-back southern rocker, and he had extraordinarily strong and fast hands-the kind of bass player who could steal a show.Jim Gordon had established himself as one of the premier drummers in the Los Angeles recording industry. Since his teens, he had brought sharp beats and sheer muscle to recordings by the Everly Brothers, the Monkees, the Byrds, Mason Williams, Judy Collins, Hoyt Axton, Merle Haggard, and Randy Newman, and he had been ushered into the Bramletts, band and Clapton's circle of professional acquaintances by Leon Russell. Gordon was a tall, rangy guy, and he was always drenched in sweat; playing the drums for him was an athletic event. He had enormous talent and an equally hugh entourage of demons.The third musician was a boy-wonder keyboard player, singer, and songwriter named Bobby Whitlock. With dark curls and a baby face, he was the son of an itinerant Baptist preacher in Arkansas who left his family chopping cotton, for it was the only way they could eat. Whitlock came of age under the watch of famed musicians and producers of a Memphis rhythm and blues label, Stax Records. Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett had plucked Whitlock out of a Memphis honky-tonk when he was barely old enough to drive.Though they had no inkling yet, Clapton and the three Americans were Derek and the Dominos, minus one. In November 1969 and January 1970, they played in sessions for Clapton's debut solo album. Since the Beatles' demise, George Harrison had been brooding and adrift, but he broke out of his funk and in mid-1970 asked Clapton and his friends to help him record All Things Must Pass. "We made our bones, really, on that album with George," Clapton said of the band.They made their bones all right, working as session players on one of the best albums of the decade. And in answering that call, Clapton got a second shot at his best friend's wife. When the sessions with Harrison wrapped, Clapton and the boys started touring in small clubs across England. The band's name, Derek and the Dominos, was an inside joke: They were about to go out for their first show in a London ballroom when Clapton and an old friend worked up the band name as if they were carrying on a skit for a radio program they listened to as children, The Goon Show. "It was a make believe band," he would say, looking back. "It wasn't me, it was another band. We were all hiding inside it. Derek and the Dominos - the whole thing was... assumed. So it couldn't last. I mean, 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."But Clapton was also creating music born of desperation. He went about it as if it wasn't enough just to know and play the blues - to have a chance at winning Pattie; he had to write and sing them too.Duane Allman's addition as the fifth Domino was as much a fluke as the band's name. Tom Dowd, a top engineer and producer had helped oversee of Atlantic Records base of operations to Criteria Recording Studios in Miami. When Derek and the Dominos arrived and started recording, the Allman Brothers happened to have a concert booked in Miami, and Dowd took Clapton to the concert; they sat on the floor right under the stage. As Allman started playing a solo, he recognized Clapton and for a few beats was awestruck.After the concert, Allman and the rest of the band went back to the studios, and they jammed with Derek and the Dominos all night. Unlike the rest of the Allman Brothers, Duane hung around and kept playing. Though one can say he was only a session player - his schedule allowed him to appear in just a handful of concert dates - his bottleneck play was all over the record, complementing and elevating Clapton's style. Allman became a band leader in a way, always riffing and improvising, and it was his suggestion that gave Clapton the signature lines of the defining song of his career. For all the pain of it's themes there was an uplifting sweetness in the melodies and harmonies the guitarists composed. Clapton would never be a Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen or Bruce Springsteen. As poetry, his lyrics have always lain somewhat flat on the page. But he understood that the magic of songwriting lies in deceptive simplicity, and his genius is his ability to find enormous breadth and range within the few notes and basic chords of an electric lead guitar. During the sessions Clapton heard the drummer Jim Gordon on a piano plunking a tune he hoped to put on an album of his own someday. Clapton prevailed on Gordon to let them have it. Splicing in the coda was a delicate task for Dowd, and it carried the song over 7 minutes, a risky venture that might result in the song not receiving airplay because of length. But after all these years, you hear Clapton's voice breaking with raw sorrow and the piercing then soaring notes of those guitar's on "Layla" and you know what's coming next. And you know what to do - you turn it up.
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