Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs

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Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
Studio album by Derek and the Dominos
Released December, 1970
Recorded August–September 1970, at Criteria Studios, Miami
Genre Rock, Blues-rock
Length 76:43
Label Polydor, Atco
Producer Tom Dowd
Professional reviews
Derek and the Dominos chronology
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
(December 1970)		 In Concert
(1973)
Eric Clapton chronology
Eric Clapton
(August 1970)		 Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
(December 1970)		 The Concert for Bangla Desh
(December 1971)

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[1] and was certified gold by the RIAA. The album again made the Billboard 200 in 1974 and in 1977. It never charted in Britain.[2]

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.[1]

Contents

[edit] 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 on 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.[citation needed]

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, Clapton chose the name because he did not want his name and celebrity to get in the way of maintaining a "band" image. When the tour was over, they headed for Criteria Studios in Miami to record an album.

A more personal 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]

[edit] Duane Allman joins

Clapton was eager to collaborate with Duane Allman, whose work he knew from recordings by Aretha Franklin and others; Allman 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'?...I want to see him play...Let's go." Clapton and company managed to sit in front of the barricade separating the audience from the stage. When they sat down, Allman was playing a solo. When he turned around and opened his eyes and saw Clapton, he froze. Dickey Betts, the Allmans' other lead guitarist, took up where Duane left off, but when he followed Allman's eyes to Clapton, he had to turn his back to keep from freezing himself.[4]

After the show, Allman asked if he could come by the studio to watch some recording sessions, but Clapton refused: "Bring your guitar; you got to play!" Overnight, the two bonded; 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."[5] Clapton wrote later in his autobiography that he and Allman were inseparable during the sessions in Florida; he talked about Allman as the "musical brother I'd never had but wished I did."[6]

[edit] Recording

[edit] Song selection

Most of the songs were products of Clapton and Whitlock's writing co-operation, but a number of classics were included.

[edit] Covers

The covered songs 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 the Sham 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 running the tape, which is why that song fades in in the middle on the album. Also included was the Jimi Hendrix cut "Little Wing," recorded a week before Hendrix died.

[edit] Original songs

Main article: Layla

The long lyrical piano coda which forms the second half of the version of "Layla" was composed independently by Rita Coolidge (it appeared on the album Time, recorded by Rita's sister, Priscilla Coolidge). Jim Gordon, who was dating Coolidge at the time, took the piece after trying in vain to do something with it with Bobby Whitlock, and finally persuaded Clapton to add it as a coda to "Layla."

"Tell the Truth" was initially recorded in June 1970 as an up-beat song, with George Harrison's producer, Phil Spector. It was issued as a single, with "Roll It Over" on the B-side. However, as Bobby Whitlock recalls, Spector's Wall of Sound production did not fit the band's style, and they had the single pulled.[7] 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 individual versions were later released on The History of Eric Clapton (1972).

The last track on the album is a Bobby Whitlock tune "Thorn Tree in the Garden." The recording was, as Tom Dowd said, "the perfect stereo recording": Whitlock, Clapton, Allman, Radle, and Gordon sat in a circle with the mic placed strategically in the center and they played live.[citation needed]

[edit] Technical problems

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, after which he and producer Tom Dowd had to pass the master tape back and forth through the reels to get the coffee spills out. Reportedly, a quirky tape player caused some tunes to have altered tempos.

[edit] Live performances

Derek and the Dominos went on tour to support Layla and performances from the 1970 US tour were released in January 1973 on In Concert.

Former Derek and The Dominoes keyboardist Bobby Whitlock recorded live acoustic versions of some songs from the Layla with Kim [CoCo] Carmel for their live album Other Assorted Love Songs in 2003.

Clapton continued to play the song live, such as in 1985, at Live Aid (in Philadelphia).[8] In 2006, Clapton and J.J. Cale recorded The Road to Escondido, on which Allman Brothers guitarist Derek Trucks played guitar; following that album, Clapton went on tour with Trucks as part of his band. Clapton explained later that the presence of Trucks made him feel like he was playing as Derek and the Dominos again, and as the tour progressed, the set changed to where the first half of the show consisted entirely of songs from Layla, the show ending up with the song "Layla" itself.[9]

[edit] Compact disc releases

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There are at least five distinct releases of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs on compact disc:

  1. The 1983 two-CD set on RSO Records, 16-bit;
  2. The Layla Sessions, the September 18, 1990, remixed CD version, with two additional "sessions discs";
  3. The September 15, 1993, Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs 24-kt gold CD release;
  4. The August 20, 1996, Polydor 20-bit release, part of the Eric Clapton Remasters series;
  5. 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 full of tape hiss, since it was made from a tape copy many generations removed from the original 1970 stereo master. Because the first CD release was disappointing to fans,[citation needed] there was at least one more attempt to remaster the CD during the 1980s. Improvements, however, were not very significant because the original 1970 stereo master tapes could not be found at the time.

To mark the album's twentieth anniversary 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, issued 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 include 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 and pressed the album on an expensive, 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 Eric 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.

[edit] Track listing

[edit] Side one

  1. "I Looked Away" (Eric Clapton, Bobby Whitlock) – 3:05
  2. "Bell Bottom Blues" (Clapton) – 5:02
  3. "Keep on Growing" (Clapton, Whitlock) – 6:21
  4. "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" (Jimmy Cox) – 4:57

[edit] Side two

  1. "I Am Yours" (Clapton, Nezami) – 3:34
  2. "Anyday" (Clapton, Whitlock) – 6:35
  3. "Key to the Highway" (Charles Segar, Willie Broonzy) – 9:40

[edit] Side three

  1. "Tell the Truth" (Clapton, Whitlock) – 6:39
  2. "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?" (Clapton, Whitlock) – 4:41
  3. "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" (Billy Myles) – 6:52

[edit] Side four

  1. "Little Wing" (Jimi Hendrix) – 5:33
  2. "It's Too Late" (Chuck Willis) – 3:47
  3. "Layla" (Clapton, Jim Gordon) – 7:05
  4. "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 by Universal Music in 2008.

[edit] Personnel

[edit] 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"[10]

[edit] Personnel – production (The Layla Sessions)

  • Bill Levenson - Producer
  • Steve Rinkoff - Mixer
  • Dan Gellert - Assistant engineer
  • Bob Ludwig - Mastering
  • Scott Hull - Digital editing
  • Gene Santoro - Notes
  • Mitchell Kanner - Art direction
  • George Lebon - Art direction

[edit] Singles

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "115: Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs."
  2. ^ Gambaccini, The Top 100.
  3. ^ Robbins, "Review."
  4. ^ Poe, Skydog, 160.
  5. ^ "Allman, Duane."
  6. ^ Clapton, The Autobiography, 128.
  7. ^ a b Poe, Skydog, 159.
  8. ^ Clapton, The Autobiography, 224.
  9. ^ Clapton, The Autobiography, 307.
  10. ^ "Derek and the Dominos - "Layla."

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] 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)

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Derek and the Dominos
Duane Allman · Eric Clapton · Jim Gordon · Carl Radle · Bobby Whitlock
Studio album
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
Live albums
Reissues
Songs
Related articles
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