Derek & The Dominos
Layla

The 45 RPM record in question was marketed in our country by the Italian branch of the multinational (the international version had a different cover and another song as the B-side) at the beginning of 1971 and achieved modest success, similar to the double album from which it was extracted, namely "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs". Already, Clapton was still considered a niche musician in Italy, with the exploits of Cream reaching us in a very muted manner... but above all, the clever idea of disguising himself under the pseudonym of Derek with his Dominos couldn't help but prove lethal, especially in less informed and attentive markets like ours.

Typical Bel Paese, a bit frivolous: the statement on that striking red band on the bottom right is a fair hoax. The single wasn't having a particularly good run in Great Britain nor in the USA, where at least the corresponding album had the satisfaction of entering the charts. But the most curious affair in this regard is that "Layla" was re-released as a single in Anglo-Saxon countries a couple of years later (with Clapton out of the scene, in crisis, and holed up at home) and this time it had a flattering response! Not to mention when an Eric, now middle-aged, reworked it in the 90s, delivering a touching acoustic version within his best-selling album "Unplugged" and in that guise reprising it a third time as a single, with enormous and definitive acclaim.

Returning to the mother album for a moment, the aforementioned "assorted love songs" were each and every one dedicated by the guitarist to the woman for whom he’d lost his mind, namely the model and photographer Patty Boyd, at the time the wife of his friend and colleague George Harrison. Unable/unwilling to declare the object of his torments at the time, enamored Eric opted for this Layla, the protagonist of a Persian romantic tale, a woman for whom a certain Manjun was infatuated to the point of madness, after her father stubbornly and repeatedly denied him her hand.

The very blonde Patty made poor Clapton experience quite a turmoil, initially behaving as a responsible woman attentive to her marriage, then starting to give herself away left and right (even to the Faces and then Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, for instance) once she'd grown tired of George's chronic infidelity, but not to him! Hence the great Eric spent three years in hell barricaded at home, constantly attached to the bottle and powders, without the desire to play anymore; until finally she relented to his courtship, left the ex-Beatle (consenting, and a friend of Eric's more than before) for him, freeing his desire to make music once again and for good (while maintaining the habits of drinking and heroin, mind you), resulting in the substantial series of Clapton's records from 1974 onwards.

The song "Layla" was born more or less as it is heard in the more recent unplugged version: a poised and bittersweet acoustic shuffle with a fine sequence of verse in C-sharp minor that resolves to the chorus by raising the setup by half a tone and moving to D, a theoretically idiosyncratic harmonic solution, but in this case rendered more than pleasantly and indeed capable of oozing personality and charm. The distressed Clapton describes the sad and not infrequent story of someone who went to console, found himself madly in love but got considered just a friend, and thus frets and destroys himself to see the object of his desires with head and heart still and only for the man who is demeaning her.

The music is magnificent as it is, the lyrics are created with the heart genuinely on the sleeve, yet at this point, two external "little helpers" arrive, capable together of turning the piece inside out like a glove and elevating it further to an immortal rock anthem. Looking closely, the friends' helping hand is an essential component of this musician's success, with many colleagues to whom Clapton, certainly not a prolific composer, must acknowledge significant credits: Jack Bruce (the principal author of Cream), Steve Winwood (same role in Blind Faith), Bob Marley ("I Shot The Sheriff"), J.J. Cale ("Cocaine")... likely the most striking of them.

The first contribution is from guitarist Duane Allman to whom, a few days earlier while he was performing with his Brothers at an outdoor concert, Clapton showed up right under his nose, all alone on the lawn between the stage and the barriers of the front row. This gave him quite a shock and, by his account, "...for a good five minutes I couldn't hit a chord!". Eric's recollections of the same evening are along the lines of "...I was approaching the stage as the band was going full throttle and I heard, like a siren, a sublime slide guitar singing soaring high above all the rest. So I jumped the security and sat down under the guy responsible for so much magnificence, never taking my eyes off him for the rest of the evening!". Once the music was over and introductions had taken place backstage, Duane agreed to temporarily join the Dominos for the album recordings, ending up playing on eleven of the fourteen tracks, but his most important contribution remains the wonderful guitar riff invented for "Layla" as a counterpoint to the chorus, as well as the parallel and consequent, sensitive acceleration of the song's tempo, from slow moderate to fast andante. The "Layla" riff is a work of the Fine Arts, it is now classical music, what more is there to say?

The second significant contribution comes from the Dominos drummer Jim Gordon, who also enjoyed playing the piano and had presented Clapton with a very lyrical and pastoral chord sequence he had found on the instrument. It pleased his boss so much that he thought of using it as an instrumental coda to the already prepared base song. It was therefore quickly recorded in a dedicated rehearsal session leaving producer Tom Dowd with the task of "attaching" it to the sung portion: not an easy task considering that the piano progression was in C, a tone below. By speeding up the tape but not completely to avoid making the piano sound unnatural, an accommodation was found, and thus, this masterpiece comes to have two very different sections and last over seven minutes, with that "suture" shortly after the third minute faintly audible if you have a keen ear... precisely the same thing that happens with the Beatles in "Strawberry Fields Forever", another wonderful intersection and adaptation of two different recordings, of different tonality and spirit as well as a different number of beats per minute.

Not everything is perfect in this production: the piano is played by a drummer and is therefore mechanical, not very fluid... and frankly, even on the slide flights of the great and lamented Duane, there is some criticism, being fairly out of tune here and there! Furthermore, Clapton's voice, stretched to the upper limits of its natural range, strains quite a bit and occasionally loses control (in the acoustic version "Layla" will be sung an octave lower and thus divinely, oh yes): these were other times, one went on instinct and sometimes in a hurry. There was more camaraderie and more indulgence, occasionally at the expense of professionalism. It's worth noting that the guitarist credited the song to himself and to Gordon while overlooking Duane's decisive compositional contribution, but I believe this was solely due to copyright legal issues at the time.

This extraordinary song has suffered significantly during live performances: the reason being that Eric struggled to sing it properly while simultaneously performing the main riff. It took the revival of the original acoustic draft to bring "Layla" frequently back to the stage. My preferred performance is the one at the beginning of the free 1996 Hyde Park concert in London, immortalized also on DVD. Clapton takes the stage, acoustic in hand, improvises freely in D pentatonic for a minute, then starts with the famous cadence of the chorus, welcomed by the roar of approval from the two hundred thousand present: what a thrill!
A couple more words again on the 45 RPM in question: meanwhile, the version present in the Italian publication lasts only three minutes: they cleverly thought of fading out the piece on the chorus's repetition so that it extinguished just before Gordon's piano entry. No longer having its dreamy and romantic coda, the song thus conveys only the lover's urgent and dramatic plea to the reluctant object of his torments.

As for the "Italian" B-side, which is "Bell Bottom Blues", another prominently visible episode from the double album of origin, it is not really a blues but rather a pop rock ballad with descending chord sequences roughly in the manner of the Beatles' "Something" (without having the same unheard-of perfection). After all, friend George Harrison has authentically been one of the musicians who most influenced good Eric: in this track, even Clapton's own style of singing, striving to be as sweet, round, and ethereal as possible, pays homage to the Beatle's style on his famous and inspiring contribution to "Abbey Road".

Finally, a backdrop note: when you go to see an Eric Clapton concert it is easy to catch the performance of this "Layla," a 1970 track depicting his unreciprocated love for Patty, and shortly afterward to indulge in the revival of "Wonderful Tonight," a sugary ballad from 1977 describing an evening at a party with friends together with beloved Patty, now his woman, and later on catch "Old Love" too, a splendid and bitter blues ballad that captures his mortification in seeing the love between him and Patty long gone, published in 1989 while they were divorcing and he was dealing with Del Santo. In short, the before, the during, and the after: legendary Clapton!