Derek and the Dominos
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs

THE REVIEW

Among the many small or large myths created among rock music enthusiasts and guitarists, the one relating to this work has always been a point of personal rejection of the dominant thinking for me, given my convinced opinion of mediocrity about it. "Layla" the song is a masterpiece, without which "Layla" the album would be reduced to a state of complete disregard, in line with the commercial flop it experienced at the time.

Let me state that I consider Clapton an excellent guitarist, elegant, clean, and fluid. Nonetheless, the enormous fame and esteem he has always enjoyed despite his limitations make me view him as, absolutely, the most overrated axeman in the entire history of rock. There's a true legion of his colleagues who have given me more and continue to do so, even remaining strictly within rock blues, more or less pop, more or less hard.

Without bringing up the usual Hendrix, Page, Beck, Gilmour, and a few others with whom he's always competed at the top of category rankings, I'll name for the savvier ones a small list of names, the first that come to mind, of people who have played, and in several cases still play, rock blues guitar more interestingly and engagingly than Eric, and this for a constellation of different reasons, explainable case by case on request: Gibbons, Trower, Moore, Kossoff, Winter, Gallagher, Bonamassa, Angus, Bailey, Ralphs, Schon, Starr, Dharma, Scholz, Ronson, Halsall, McCarty, Nielsen, Kath, Blackmore, Morse, Walsh, Price, Thomasson, Campbell, Burns, Vaughan, Powell…

Clapton's career is divided into two distinctly different phases in terms of significance and interest. From 1964 and for five years, the young Eric is rightfully at the forefront; he plays the new British blues with Yardbirds, Mayall, Cream, and Blind Faith with a style and effectiveness, for the times, that's excellent despite some excessive self-indulgence, especially with Cream. With the latter, he also begins his coexistence with the pop, psychedelic, jazz elements introduced by his bandmates, particularly the much more versatile Jack Bruce. The same happens with Blind Faith, where it's mostly Steve Winwood who dictates the line, singing and composing better.

Once Cream and, if you will, Blind Faith ended, Clapton's significance for the guitar and rock ends. After insisting for years on playing as much as possible the classic blues of the black masters, annoying bandmates, musicians, and producers who tell him that he's ghettoizing himself in a dead-end track while rock is exploding in a thousand styles and colors, unfortunately, he ends up snapping forever, falling in love (besides the woman of another, which can happen) with a genre that makes mediocrity its essence.

This is the stuff definable as root or American, I don't know, that light yankee rhythm & blues stuff that always revolves around the same chords and melodies but not with the dignity, charm, the depth of true blues, rather with the mannerism and banality of that made by white people who don't have the flair to come up with genuinely compelling and incisive stuff. It happens that Clapton, while touring the USA with Blind Faith, buddies up with the infamous Delaney & Bonnie Bramlett, a couple livin' it up precisely with this ball-less rhythm&blues stuff that always sounds the same. As a reference, you might think of the scarcest and most filler portion of a Tom Petty or a Springsteen's repertoire.

So, in 1970, Eric debuts as a solo artist with a self-titled and anonymous album, accompanied by new American musician friends who range from insignificant (the Bramlett couple) to skilled craftsmen (more or less all their other accompanists). The record justly sells a few copies, but it's telling that it already fully contains the model of music the guitarist will follow from now on in his career, which is, and I repeat for hopefully the last time, bland pop/rhythm&blues with few exceptions, occasionally accompanied by some cover of old blues, just to not lose sight of adolescent loves.

And here we are with this album, his second career album (1971), even if psychotically he doesn't credit it in his name. Clapton therefore has Bonnie & Delaney's accompanists play (and compose and sing) in it, in the manneristic and generic style they are used to. Even the sound, the production, is weak: there's little "depth," little presence, everything sounds thin and without drive, almost jingle jangle like on Byrds records or many other half-country pop acts. Respectable stuff, God forbid, but Led Zeppelin, Free, Cactus, Jeff Beck Group records are already out for a while, which beyond the thematic consistency (minus Cactus) sound strong, deep, sonorous, dynamic, and Clapton himself with Cream was much more abrasive and "dangerous," with his Marshall amps set nice and high and the distortion always pressed.

And we come to the thorny Duane Allman chapter in my opinion another excellent, but in turn overrated musician. Among enthusiasts, there's a lot of talk about the supposed magic of poor Duane (he would die young in a motorcycle accident) with his Allman Brothers and even on this record. To my ears, he was just a good slide guitar player, but even here I count dozens that I care more about than him (Price, Walsh, Winter, Gallagher, Trucks…).

In this album, Duane, involved right on the spot by Clapton after they had just met backstage at an Allman Brothers concert, does nothing epochal except for one, single, important exception, and here we fall again into the usual "Layla" (the song), the pearl in a bowl of glass marbles. The mustachioed Allman takes the acoustic shuffle composed by Eric (exactly the one later recycled in the nineties and ended up in the best-selling "Unplugged" album) and turns it inside out like a sock, almost doubling its time and inventing the phenomenal guitar riff under the chorus. The hidden declaration of love to Harrison's wife contained in the lyrics thus becomes, from a melancholy lament, a fiery cry of pain and the text finds in this way its perfect musical frame.

The opportunistic Clapton then continues in his vice/need of relying on external composers, even his drummer on this occasion: the coda of "Layla" is indeed composed and played on the piano by Jim Gordon and you can hear that there's a non-pianist in action, because the touch on the keys is quite modest (melody and harmony are however wonderful). The renowned Duane messes quite a bit with the slide in this long coda of "Layla," sounding off-key here and there in a quite annoying way, for those who know how to listen. His contribution needed a few more takes, but maybe there was no time, the Allman Brothers were on tour and Clapton had Duane available for only two nights in the studio. And you can tell: in this work the blonde from Macon plays on eleven of the fourteen songs and, I say, there is nothing else really memorable from him in these grooves (or bits, in digital format), besides what's already described above.

I quote a statement from Bobby Whitlock, Clapton's keyboardist in this album and the composer of three-quarters of the original music related (not even many…, out of fourteen pieces present, a whole six are covers and Allman is not credited among the authors of "Layla"): "He played with us twice, and it was not good both times he played, because he was not a fluid player, a structured player. He could play parts, but he couldn’t sing with his guitar… He was a lovely guy, but he was unnecessary."

Indeed, Eric Clapton has never been a prolific composer, almost all of his biggest hits are covers. He relied on Bob Marley, J.J. Cale, Jack Bruce, Harrison ("Badge"), Robert Cray ("Old Love", wonderful!)… Nothing wrong with that, even Jeff Beck wasn’t a great composer, but how he played… my goodness! Of course, he has a few good songs, in sixty years of career, dozens of records and hundreds of pieces, belonging to him 100%, but few. In this work, he relies on the good Whitlock, American pianist; as for singing too, still insecure but will improve.

"Layla" the album is fully of the modest value of so many other Clapton's works, no more, no less; all filled with covers, with respectful and thus useless renditions of old blues from the American black masters, played too manneristically and lightly, without the drive and strong and digging sound production of the best British Blues. The magic of which lies in the contamination of the pure blues of the black masters with the musical moods of old Europe, with the addition of psychedelia, folk, urban glam, classical and opera, even Middle Eastern as Led Zeppelin did.

Clapton is a guitarist who doesn’t "sing," doesn't go from here to there in a solo, stays on the spot, doesn't add much melody. He plays for licks, for short and cyclical musical phrases. He knows a lot by heart, he recalls them one by one, makes a fruit salad and the solo is done. Nothing wrong with that… even Angus Young does this in AC/DC, for instance. However, what a terrific rhythm guitarist Angus is?! What a wonder of economy applied to the guitar, of ferocious staccatos, of command of the dynamics of a guitar part! I love him, and there’s no comparison with the correct but bland Clapton.

Eric is elegant, smooth, and precise, but he bores me too, and has always done so. From those ten-minute solos with Cream where he would clash with Bruce and Baker to stand out and wouldn’t finish. His only superlative solo of those times is that of "Crossroads" live. That one does sing! What was he on that night? Mind you, I’m referring to the "Crossroads" of "Wheels of Fire," because that other one at the farewell concert at Royal Albert Hall is dreadful. A bit like the whole concert, where it’s evident how fed up and over the three roosters are.

Of course, I own "Layla," naturally, along with three or four other discs by good Eric and all of Cream and Blind Faith's. It’s not rubbish, quite the opposite! It's the myth that accompanies this album that doesn’t touch me in the least.