Eric Clapton was always too afraid to revisit Derek and the Dominos: “It was cocaine and heroin”
It’s hard for any guitarist to even fathom the amount of accolades that Eric Clapton has received over his career.
He was only meant to follow in the footsteps of his musical heroes, but in trying to become the consummate bluesman, he somehow ended up turning rock and roll inside out every single time he started a new band throughout his classic run in the 1960s. But even if he worked best as a solo artist, there were bound to be a few bands that were almost too powerful for him to even describe.
Then again, it was going to take a lot of talent to even come close to hanging with ‘Slowhand’. The Yardbirds weren’t remotely interesting enough for him to continue on for too long, and while John Mayall offered him a nice halfway house between rock and roll and the blues, Cream was the moment he hit the ceiling. Everyone knew that he was a musical god, but he started to realise that there were more than a few musical deities working alongside him. Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker came from a jazz background, and there was no way that Clapton would be able to keep up with them.
That’s before even getting into all the fighting that happened in between records. It’s generally considered difficult to record when one band member is outwardly trying to harm their bandmates whenever they perform, but Baker and Bruce were practically sparring partners first and musicians second whenever they played together. So even if the jams were legendary, there was no sense in Clapton trying to be the man in the middle every single time they played.
Which is half the reason why Blind Faith was meant to be a bit more lowkey. The language was still blues, but even if Baker came on to play drums, Steve Winwood was a much better substitute for Bruce as a singer. He had the pipes to pull it off, and getting everyone under one roof gave Clapton more time to hone his craft as a songwriter, like on the tune ‘Presence of the Lord’.
He was already listening to bands like The Band coming from the other side of the Atlantic, and that rootsy approach to rock and roll is what fuelled him working with Delaney and Bonnie the first time. It was all about trying to make the best tunes that he could, but Derek and the Dominos were well above anything he could have hoped for. This was a supergroup for the ages, but Layla is one of the few perfect albums in Clapton’s discography that he never wants to talk about.
The raw emotion he felt for Pattie Boyd at the time is aching out of the record, but given how quickly the band fell apart afterwards, Clapton felt that the wounds were still too raw even years later, saying, “It frightens me to think about it. It was cocaine and heroin and it wore the band down and a hostility was released that hadn’t been there before. When drugs or medication enter the picture, something happens to relationships. They just dissolve. Whatever held us together got thrown out and the atmosphere was so bad you could cut it with a knife.”
A lot of that may have been down to his own vices, but it’s not like he was on the best of terms with the rest of the band, either. Duane Allman was always going to be tied to the Allman Brothers Band, but when Jim Gordon ended up having a falling-out with Clapton, the guitarist knew that it was only going to hurt him more if he tried to get in contact with him after he went to prison later on in life.
So while Layla stands as one of the greatest albums that Clapton ever made, there’s a good chance that he also hears all of the ugly moments in the background of the record as well. There’s nothing wrong with the solos, and the emotion is as pure as they come, but it’s not always shocking when the blues ends up taking hold of a band a little bit too much when they lay their instruments down.
