Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is a rock album by Derek and the Dominos, released in December 1970. It is often regarded as Eric Clapton's greatest musical achievement.
It peaked at #16 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart and was certified gold by the RIAA. The album again made the Billboard 200 in 1974 and in 1977. It never made the charts at all in Britain.[1]
In 2000, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2003 the TV network VH1 named Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs the 89th greatest album of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 115 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.[2]
Background
The group which created Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs grew out of Clapton's frustration with the hype associated with the supergroups Cream and the short-lived Blind Faith. After their dissolution, he joined Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, whom he had come to know while they were the opening act for Blind Faith, for a British tour.
After that band also split up, a Delaney and Bonnie alumnus, Bobby Whitlock, joined up with Clapton; the two spent some months writing a number of songs "just to have something to play", as Whitlock put it. These songs would later make up the bulk of the material on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.
After a tour with Joe Cocker, some more of the personnel from Delaney and Bonnie joined up with Clapton; he attempted to avoid the limelight in a group dubbed Derek and the Dominos, and booked a British tour of small clubs. The group's name had reportedly resulted from a gaffe made by the announcer at their first concert, who mispronounced the band's provisional name – "Eric & The Dynamos" – as "Derek & The Dominos". In fact, Eric chose the name "Derek and the Dominos" because he did not want his name and celebrity to get in the way of maintaining a "band" image.
After the tour, they headed for Criteria Studios in Miami to record an album.
The other source for Layla was Clapton's personal life: he had fallen in love with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his friend George Harrison. Not even heroin, which Clapton had then begun to use, could dull the pain. Dave Marsh, in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, wrote that "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."[3]
Duane Allman joins
Clapton was eager to collaborate with Duane Allman, whose work he knew from recordings by Aretha Franklin and others. Allman, for his part, was likewise a fan of Clapton's work. Dowd, as a producer for both, was in a position to recruit Allman for the Dominoes.
When Clapton heard from Dowd that the Allman Brothers Band were due to play in Miami on August 26, 1970, he insisted on going to see their show, saying, "You mean that guy who plays on the back of (Wilson Pickett's) Hey Jude? You know him? .. We have to go." He was allowed to sit at the front of the stage, and made his way out while Duane had his eyes closed, playing a solo. When Duane opened his eyes and saw Clapton, he froze. Dickey Betts, the Allmans' other lead guitarist, assumed Duane had broken a string and decided to take up where Duane left off. When he saw Clapton, he turned his back, presumably to keep from freezing himself.
After the show, Duane asked if he could come by the studio to watch some recording sessions, but Clapton refused: "Bring your guitar; you got to play!" The two returned to the studio and formed a deep bond overnight; Dowd reported that they "were trading licks, they were swapping guitars, they were talking shop and information and having a ball – no holds barred, just admiration for each other's technique and facility."[4]
Although the original concept was that "I was just going to play on one or two", Duane said, he wound up contributing to almost all the tracks on Layla, even the ones on which work had already started – and lifting everyone's work onto a higher plane. "He brought out the best in all of us", said Whitlock.
Recording the album
Most of the songs were products of Clapton and Whitlock's writing co-operation, but a number of classics were included as well, including the blues standards "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "It's Too Late", "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" (a Billy Myles song originally recorded by Freddie King) and "Key to the Highway".
The last was a pure accident – the band heard Sam Samudio in another room at the studio doing the song for his album "Hard and Heavy". They liked it and spontaneously started playing it. Dowd told the engineers to start the tape recorder running — which is why that song fades in in the middle on the album.
"Tell the Truth" was initially recorded in June 1970 as a fast up-beat song and released soon after as a single. During the Layla sessions, "Tell the Truth" was recorded again, this time as a long and slow instrumental jam. The final version of the song that appears on the album is a combination of these two takes: the frantic pace of the single is slowed down to the laid-back speed of the instrumental. The two previous versions were later released on The History of Eric Clapton (1972).
Also included was the Jimi Hendrix cut "Little Wing". Though some think it was recorded as a tribute to Hendrix, it was recorded a week before he died.
The long lyrical piano coda which forms the second half of the version of the title track, "Layla", was composed independently by Rita Coolidge (appeared on an album "Time" recorded by Rita's sister). Jim Gordon who had been dating Rita at the time took the piece after trying in vain to do something with it with Bobby Whitlock. He had been disturbed about the fact that he wasn't a writer and began to insist that his songs be heard, and recorded. He finally persuaded Eric to add the coda to the end of Layla. "Layla" remains one of the most widely played rock songs of the 1970s.
The last track on the album is a Bobby Whitlock tune entitled "Thorn Tree in the Garden". Eric having heard the song, was struck by it and asked Bobby if he would play it as the last track. The recording was as Tom Dowd said "the perfect stereo recording". Bobby, Eric, Duane Allman, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon sat in a circle with the mic placed strategically in the center and they played live.
Assistant recording engineer Karl Richardson recalled that a couple of women came in and were hanging out in the control room and one of them spilled coffee on the master tapes, in which he and producer Tom Dowd had to pass the master tape back and forth through the reels to get the coffee spills out. As well a quirky tape player caused some tunes to have altered tempos.
The band's producer, Tom Dowd said of it that he "felt it was the best (...) album I'd been involved with since The Genius of Ray Charles" and was disappointed at the lack of acclaim it garnered in its release.
Performing the album live
Derek and the Dominos went on tour to support "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs." A live album, In Concert (January 1973), taken from the 1970 U.S. tour, was a strong seller.
Former Derek and The Dominoes keyboardist Bobby Whitlock recorded live acoustic versions of some songs from the Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album with Kim [CoCo] Carmel for their live album "Other Assorted Love Songs" in 2003. Bobby and CoCo can also be seen live at a popular live music venue performing these songs on Sunday nights in Austin, Texas.
Eric Clapton's 2006-2007 Tour set list featured many songs from "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" with Allman Brothers guitarist Derek Trucks recreating Duane Allman's slide guitar parts. One (slight) exception to this was the song "Anyday," in that the original slide-based rhythm guitar from the album is done by Eric Clapton -- with the impressive solo and secondary rhythm guitar coming from Derek Trucks. The songs performed on the 2006-2007 Tour were:
- "Bell Bottom Blues"
- "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"
- "I Am Yours"
- "Anyday"
- "Key to the Highway"
- "Tell the Truth"
- "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?"
- "Little Wing"
- "Layla"
Compact disc releases
There are at least five distinct releases of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs on compact disc:
- The 1983, two-CD set on RSO Records 16-bit
- The September 18, 1990 remixed CD version, which together with two additional "sessions discs" become
- The Layla Sessions (see below).
- The September 15, 1993 Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs 24-kt gold CD release
- The August 20, 1996 Polydor 20-bit as part of "The Clapton Remasters" series
- The November 9, 2004 Polydor hybrid SACD/CD remaster
The first CD release (manufactured in 1983 in Japan) is a two-CD version. Because this album is more than 77 minutes it did not fit onto early CDs, which had a maximum play time of approximately 74 and a half minutes. The first CD was a "noisy" version and was full of tape "hiss" as it was made from a tape copy that was many generations removed from the original 1970 stereo master. Because the first CD release was so disappointing to fans there was at least one more attempt to remaster the CD during the 1980s. However the improvements were not very significant because the original 1970 stereo master tapes could not be found at the time.
To mark the twentieth anniversary of the release in 1990, an extended version of the album was released as a deluxe 3-CD set, with extensive liner notes titled The Layla Sessions: 20th Anniversary Edition. The first disc has the same tracks as the original LP, remixed in stereo from the 16 track analog source tapes and digitally remastered. This 1990 remix, done by Polydor has also been released as a single CD apart from the box set. The remix has some significant changes including center placement of the bass, which in the original mix was often mixed into either the left or right channel. The other two discs of "The Layla Sessions" included a number of jam sessions, including the historic jam from the night that Clapton and Allman met. Also included were out-takes of some of the songs, and the previously unreleased tracks ("Mean Old World", "It Hurts Me Too", and "Tender Love").
In 1993 Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab gave the original 1970 stereo master tapes meticulous treatment for the first time and pressed the album on a high priced limited edition 24kt gold CD. This brought Layla up to 20-bit standards and preserved more of the fidelity of the original recordings. The Mobile Fidelity version was significantly cleaner than the first CD releases, but it also stripped out some of "Wall of Sound"-like technique that was added during mastering for vinyl. Polydor's 1996 remaster as part of the "Clapton Remasters" series was done in much the same manner as the Mobile Fidelity version, but on a standard aluminum CD at a normal price. The Polydor 2004 SACD/CD hybrid release remixed the album in 5.1 surround sound on the SACD side and remastered the 1970 stereo version yet again on the CD side.
Track listing
Side one
- "I Looked Away" (Eric Clapton, Bobby Whitlock) – 3:05
- "Bell Bottom Blues" (Clapton) – 5:02
- "Keep on Growing" (Clapton, Whitlock) – 6:21
- "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" (Jimmy Cox) – 4:57
Side two
- "I Am Yours" (Clapton, Nezami) – 3:34
- "Anyday" (Clapton, Whitlock) – 6:35
- "Key to the Highway" (Charles Segar, Willie Broonzy) – 9:40
Side three
- "Tell the Truth" (Clapton, Whitlock) – 6:39
- "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?" (Clapton, Whitlock) – 4:41
- "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" (Billy Myles) – 6:52
Side four
- "Little Wing" (Jimi Hendrix) – 5:33
- "It's Too Late" (Chuck Willis) – 3:47
- "Layla" (Clapton, Jim Gordon) – 7:05
- "Thorn Tree in the Garden" (Whitlock) – 2:53
All four sides of the original LP were combined into one disc in most CD versions. The LP was re-released on 180g vinyl by Simply Vinyl in the 1990s and re-mastered and re-released on 180g vinyl again by Universal Music in 2008.
Personnel
Personnel – production (Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs)
- Tom Dowd - Executive producer
- Ron Albert - Engineer
- Chuck Kirkpatrick - Engineer
- Howie Albert - Engineer
- Carl Richardson - Engineer
- Mac Emmerman - Engineer
- Dennis M. Drake - Mastering
- Emile Théodore Frandsen de Schomberg - Cover painting "La Fille au Bouquet" [1]
Personnel – production (The Layla Sessions)
- Bill Levenson - Producer
- Steve Rinkoff - Mixer
- Dan Gellert - Assistant Engineer
- Bob Ludwig - Mastering
- Scott Hull - Digital Editing
- Gene Santoro - Essay
- Mitchell Kanner - Art Direction
- George Lebon - Art Direction
Singles
References
- ^ http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6598683/115_layla_and_other_assorted_love_songs
- ^ http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5938174/the_rs_500_greatest_albums_of_all_time/2
- ^ http://www.superseventies.com/spderekdominoes.html
- ^ http://www.ericclaptonfaq.com/biographies-other-musicians/duane-allman-.html
Further reading
- The Layla Sessions liner notes (Polydor, 1990)
- Jan Reid, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos (Rock of Ages, 2007)
External links
