My favorite album of all-time falls into the "one-off album" category. It is Derek & The Dominos' 1970 double-LP masterpiece Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. You might be asking why I used an ampersand for the group name but "and" in the album name. To tell you the truth, I have no idea, and I've just wasted all our time by bringing that discrepancy to your attention and then writing the last two sentences about it.
This is another album that hangs in my office, but here's a photo of both records, like a glorious vinyl bosom, especially right below the photo of the album cover. Thanks in large part to the Z202 class I took with the recently retired IU School of Music professor Glenn Gass, I discovered this album in the spring of 1997. Before that, I had heard "Layla" and "Bell Bottom Blues," but nothing else. I was immediately captivated with the album itself, but also the backstory.
In 1970, Eric Clapton found himself in a bit of a pickle. After having ruled the rock world in supergroups Cream and Blind Faith, he wanted a little bit of a reprieve, so he briefly joined Delaney & Bonnie and Friends (notice the duel use of the ampersand and "and"), but then they split up. Then Clapton and D&BandFs' keyboardist Bobby Whitlock hung out and wrote some songs. Oh, and at this time, Clapton was madly in love with his best friend's wife, Pattie Boyd Harrison, the then-wife of George Harrison. But he struggled with this because, as you would expect, he was torn between his feelings for Pattie and his friendship with George. He could either (a) keep his feelings quiet and live in misery or (b) break up his best friend's marriage and lose a close friend. He chose (c), which was to pour his heart out in song.
That is the backdrop for Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. This album is as close to voyeurism -- or schadenfreude, if you enjoy others' agony -- as one can get listening to music.
Bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon -- also both formerly of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, and who also toured with Joe Cocker -- joined Clapton and Whitlock in England, where they played a few small clubs in August 1970. Clapton chose the name Derek & The Dominos because he wanted to remain somewhat anonymous and didn't want his fame to get in the way of the band's music or popularity.
In late August 1970, the band went to Miami to record the album. The album was produced by Tom Dowd, who was also working on The Allman Brothers Band's second album, Idlewild South, at the time. Dowd relayed to Duane Allman that Eric Clapton was in Miami to record an album, and the two guitar gods eventually met up and jammed. Allman was then invited to join the band for most of the album.
And holy shit, what an album it is. The combination of heartache, rock gods, south Florida, and enough booze, coke, and heroin to kill an army of horses made for great music. With Clapton's heartbreak, Allman's slide guitar, Whitlock and Clapton's songwriting (and some other guys' contributions), and the rhythm section's muscle, this group churned out a combination of blues and frantic love songs that is the best post-breakup-crying-alone-in-a-dark-room-while-downing-a-bottle-of-Jack album ever made. Whitlock's hearty, blue-eyed-soul voice provides great backing vocals (and lead vocals at certain times), and Duane Allman's guitar on the album's last eleven songs perfectly complements Clapton's guitar, allowing both guitarists to do things they would not have been otherwise able to do alone (especially on the blues covers, "Little Wing," and "Layla").
The album starts out with "I Looked Away," which sets the stage for the kind of emotion the album is going to have, as well as the subject matter ("And if it seemed a sin / To love another man's woman, baby / I guess I'll keep on sinning / Loving her, Lord, till my very last day."). It doesn't get any cheerier the rest of the way out, as the album features ten originals and four covers, including the nearly ten-minute cover of Big Bill Broonzy's "Key to the Highway," which starts with a fade in because the engineer just decided to roll the tape when he heard the band jamming. The penultimate song on the album is the iconic "Layla" -- which may as well be called "Pattie" -- with its frenetic first half and then that take-a-deep-breath-because-maybe-everything-will-be-okay coda, where Gordon's piano and Allman's crying slide guitar take you home. The album ends with the acoustic, Whitlock-written-and-sung "Thorn Tree in the Garden." It's the perfect ending to the album. The song literally aches. And with good reason: Whitlock wrote it years before the Dominos were formed, after one of his roommates got rid of Whitlock's dog while he was out. The fact that it's the saddest song on the album makes it even sadder knowing that it's about a dog and not a woman.
Simply put, you can't manufacture the kind of emotion that pours from this album, and I'd be hard-pressed to find another album as emotional as this one. It's essentially the sound of a man ripping his heart from his own chest, offering it to the woman he loves, and then laying it down on vinyl after she rejects it. Yet somehow, it makes me feel good every time I listen to it, perhaps because I know that, no matter how bad I might feel, Eric Clapton felt worse when he made this album.
And perhaps the worst association with the album or the band is that it appears to have cursed its members. Clapton basically took three years off to immerse himself in heroin. In October 1971, Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident. In June 1980, Radle died from a kidney infection brought on by years of drug and alcohol abuse. In June 1983, Gordon murdered his own mother with a hammer and a butcher's knife, claiming voices told him to do it. He was then diagnosed with acute schizophrenia and has spent the last 37 years in prison or psychiatric prison. Whitlock was relatively unscathed, continuing to make music in the '70s before "retiring" to raise his kids. In 2000, he and Clapton reunited on Later . . . With Jools Holland, playing together for the first time in nearly thirty years.
Favorite song from Side 1: "Bell Bottom Blues"
"Bell Bottom Blues" was written for Pattie after she asked Clapton to buy her a pair of bell bottom jeans during a visit to the U.S. Even her asking him for a seemingly innocuous favor elicited a heart-wrenching song. But it does have a small ray of hope in it because the narrator at least sees joys in being in the woman's world, even if they'll never be together. When Clapton and Whitlock bawl out, "Do you wanna see me crawl across the floor to you? Do you wanna hear me beg you to take me back?," you are thinking to yourself, What fucking woman is this?! And then you realize this is, in fact, the same woman who not only inspired this entire album, but also The Beatles' "Something," "If I Needed Someone," and "For You Blue," and Clapton's own "Wonderful Tonight."
Favorite song from Side 2: "Anyday"
"Anyday" is my favorite song on the album. I get goosebumps every time I hear it. It's pure agony, with Clapton and Whitlock's call-and-response taunting the man (Harrison) who would accept his wife back "after she's left you for another," yet the singer still can't quite get the girl. After my girlfriend sophomore year of college fucked (or so I assume, since I wasn't there) her ex-boyfriend (who she has since married) the night after she told me I was "the one" (which I wasn't), this song provided some solace. Granted, it didn't undo the fucking, but it let me sing/yell along with someone who had experienced similar emotions. I'm not bitter or anything -- and frankly I'm better off because of it -- but I hope she got fat and that her husband cheated on her.
Favorite song from Side 3: "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?"
"Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?" is frantic -- both hopeless and hopeful at the same time. Clapton's trying to find a way to get back to yesterday, but also realizes that he would let her break his heart. Presumably, this was a coke-fueled song, rather than a heroin-fueled song.
Favorite song from Side 4: "Little Wing"
I love Hendrix's original version of this song, but Derek & The Dominos took it to another level. It bleeds emotion through Clapton and Allman's guitars, and Clapton and Whitlock's pained harmonies. If the entire band wasn't bawling their eyes out when they recorded this song, you wouldn't know it.
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