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
Length	76:43
Label	Polydor Records, Atco Records
Producer(s)	Tom Dowd
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Robert Christgau (A+) link
Derek and the Dominos chronology
	Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970)	In Concert (1973)
Eric Clapton chronology
Eric Clapton (1970)	Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970)	Rainbow Concert (1973)

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is a blues-rock album by Derek and the Dominos. It is now consistently regarded as one of the greatest rock and roll albums of all time, and one of the high points in Eric Clapton's career.

It was released in December of 1970; critical reception at the time was mixed, and it had mixed sales success. It peaked at #16 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart but, remarkably, in Britain it never made the charts at all.

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.

Contents 1 Background 1.1 Duane Allman joins 1.2 Recording the album 2 Compact Disc Releases 3 Track listing 4 Personnel 4.1 Personnel – production (Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs) 4.2 Personnel – production (The Layla Sessions) 5 Further reading 6 External links

[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, 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. It's thought that the group's name 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" context.

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."

[edit] Duane Allman joins

Clapton had long admired the work of Duane Allman, which he knew from recordings by Aretha Franklin and others, and he had long wanted to meet him. Allman, like many other musicians of the day, revered Clapton. Dowd, as a producer for both, was in a position to make it happen.

When Clapton heard from Dowd that the Allman Brothers Band were due to play in Miami, he insisted on going to see their show. 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, 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" [1]. Duane asked if he could come by the studio to watch some recording sessions, but Clapton refused: "Bring your guitar; you got to play!"

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.

[edit] 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 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, 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 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 in fact 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 Jim Gordon, who had to be convinced to allow the piece to be added. "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". Whitlock sings and accompanies himself on acoustic guitar.

Upon his return to England, Clapton was supporting a £1,000-per-week heroin addiction.

[edit] Compact Disc Releases

There are 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 September 18, 1990 remastered single CD version, which together with two additional "sessions discs" become
   1. The Layla Sessions (see below).
3. The September 15, 1993 Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs 24-kt release
4. The August 20, 1996 Polydor 20-bit remaster
5. The November 9, 2004 Polydor hybrid SACD/CD remaster

The first CD release (first released in 1983 in Japan) is a two-CD version, reflecting the limitations of CD disk length and is a "noisy" version, as it was a recording master-to-digital process that did not take into account the differences between transferring recording master output to vinyl and to the digital format.

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 is the original LP, digitally remastered from the original master tapes and re-mixed to studio-quality sound, with significant improvements including remixing the stereo placement of the bass, which in the early 70s was typically mixed into either the left or right channel, rather than in the centre. The other two discs—entitled "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"). While this version was significantly cleaner than the first CD release, it also stripped out some of "Wall of Sound"-like technique that had characterized the vinyl release. It did not sound like the vinyl either, however cleaned-up it was made.

In 1993, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab gave the original masters their meticulous treatment which brought Layla to 20-bit standards and preserved both fidelity to the original and the greater sound quality always promised by compact discs.

1996's Polydor remaster was done in very much the same manner, for a much lower price, part of the Clapton Remasters. Their 2004 SACD/CD hybrid release was yet another remastering project, both for the 5.1 separation required for the SACD side and some tinkering with the CD side.

[edit] Track listing

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" (Jimmie Cox) – 4:57
5. "I Am Yours" (Clapton, Nezami) – 3:34
6. "Anyday" (Clapton, Whitlock) – 6:35
7. "Key To The Highway" (Charles Segar, Willie Broonzy) – 9:40
8. "Tell The Truth" (Clapton, Whitlock) – 6:39
9. "Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad?" (Clapton, Whitlock) – 4:41
10. "Have You Ever Loved A Woman" (Billy Myles) – 6:52
11. "Little Wing" (Jimi Hendrix) – 5:33
12. "It's Too Late" (Chuck Willis) – 3:47
13. "Layla" (Clapton, Jim Gordon) – 7:04
14. "Thorn Tree In The Garden" (Whitlock) – 2:53

[edit] Personnel

• Eric Clapton - Guitars, Lead Vocal
• Bobby Whitlock - Organ, Piano, Vocals, Acoustic guitar
• Jim Gordon - Drums, Percussion, Piano
• Carl Radle - Bass, Percussion
• Duane Allman - Guitars (tracks 4 through 14)

[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
• Frandsen de Schonberg - Cover Painting
• Bruce McCaskill - "All got together"

[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 - Essay
• Mitchell Kanner - Art Direction
• George Lebon - Art Direction

[edit] Further reading

• The Layla Sessions liner notes (Polydor, 1990)

[edit] External links

• Longer description of Clapton and Duane's first meeting
• Collected reviews