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Layla

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                           "Layla"
   "Layla" cover
               Single by Derek and the Dominos
     from the album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
   Released    Originally 1970, as a single 1972
   Format      Vinyl album
   Recorded    Criteria Studios, Miami, August–September 1970
   Genre       Rock
   Length      7:02 – 7:11
   Label       Atco Records
   Producer(s) Tom Dowd
                       Chart positions
     * #7 (UK)

     * #10 (US)

   "Layla" is the title track on the Derek and the Dominos album Layla and
   Other Assorted Love Songs, released in December 1970. It is considered
   one of rock music's definitive love songs, featuring an unmistakable
   guitar figure, played by Eric Clapton and Duane Allman, as lead-in. Its
   famously contrasting movements were composed separately by Clapton and
   Jim Gordon.

   Inspired by Clapton's unrequited love for Pattie Boyd, the wife of his
   friend George Harrison, "Layla" was unsuccessful on its initial
   release. The song has since experienced great critical and popular
   acclaim. Two versions have achieved chart success, first in 1972 and
   again twenty years later.

Background

   In 1966, George Harrison married Pattie Boyd, a model he met during the
   filming of A Hard Day's Night. During the late 1960s, Clapton and
   Harrison, as two of the top English guitarists of the day, became firm
   friends. Clapton contributed guitar work on Harrison's song " While My
   Guitar Gently Weeps" on The Beatles's White Album, and Harrison played
   guitar pseudonymously on Cream's " Badge" from Goodbye. However,
   trouble was brewing for Clapton. His supergroups Cream and Blind Faith
   had broken apart, his growing drug use would lead to a life-threatening
   heroin addiction, and, when Boyd came to Clapton for aid during marital
   troubles, Clapton fell desperately in love with her.

   The title, "Layla", was inspired by a love story, The Story of Layla /
   Layla and Majnun (ليلى ومجنون), by the Persian classical poet Nezami.
   When he wrote "Layla", Clapton had recently been given a copy of the
   story by a friend (reportedly Ian Dallas) who was in the process of
   converting to Islam. Nezami's tale, about a moon-princess who was
   married off by her father to someone other than the man who was
   desperately in love with her, resulting in his madness (in Persian,
   Majnun, مجنون, means "madman"), struck a deep chord with Clapton.

   Boyd divorced Harrison in 1977 and married Clapton in 1979. Harrison
   was not bitter about the divorce and attended Clapton's wedding with
   Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney. During their marriage, Clapton wrote
   another love ballad for her, " Wonderful Tonight". Their marriage later
   developed difficulties over Clapton's alcoholism and his extramarital
   affair with Yvonne Khan Kelly, and in 1985 he left Boyd altogether for
   Italian model Lori del Santo, with whom he had a child. Clapton and
   Boyd divorced in 1989 after several years of separation. Boyd currently
   lives with the property developer Rod Weston.

   In an interview with Songfacts, Bobby Whitlock, who was a member of
   Derek and the Dominos and good friends with both Harrison and Clapton,
   explains the situation between Clapton and Pattie around the time he
   wrote Layla:


   Layla

   I was there when they were supposedly sneaking around. You don't sneak
    very well when you're a world figure. He was all hot on Pattie and I
   was dating her sister. They had this thing going on that supposedly was
    behind George's back. Well, George didn't really care. He said, 'You
   can have her.' That kind of defuses it when Eric says, 'I'm taking your
     wife' and he says, 'Take her.' They got married and evidently, she
     wasn't what he wanted after all. The hunt was better than the kill.
     That happens, but apparently Pattie is real happy now with some guy
   who's not a guitar player. Good for her and good for Eric for moving on
        with his life. George got on with his life, that's for sure.


   Layla

Recording

   After the breakup of Cream, Clapton tried his hand with several
   artists, including Blind Faith and a husband and wife duo, Delaney and
   Bonnie. In the spring of 1970, he was told that Delaney and Bonnie's
   backup band ( bassist Carl Radle, drummer Jim Gordon, and keyboardist
   Bobby Whitlock) was leaving the group. Seizing the opportunity, Clapton
   formed a new group, Derek and the Dominos.

   In mid-to-late 1970 Duane Allman of The Allman Brothers Band joined
   Clapton's fledgling band as a guest. Clapton and Allman, already mutual
   fans, were introduced at an Allman Brothers concert by Tom Dowd. The
   two hit it off well and soon became good friends. Dowd was already
   famous for a variety of work (including Aretha Franklin's cover of "
   Respect"), and had worked with Clapton in his Cream days (Clapton once
   called him "the ideal recording man"); his work on the album would be
   another achievement. For the making of his biographical documentary Tom
   Dowd and the The Language of Music, he remixed the original master
   tapes of "Layla", saying "There are my principles, in one form or
   another." With the band assembled and Dowd producing, "Layla" was
   recorded.

   One night some time later, Clapton returned to the studio. He found
   Gordon playing a piano piece he had composed separately and convinced
   him to let it be used with the song. Roughly three weeks after the
   recording of its first three minutes, "Layla" was complete.

Structure

   Due to the circumstances of its composition, "Layla" is defined by two
   movements, each marked by a repeated musical figure, or riff.

   The first movement, which alternates between the keys of D minor for
   choruses and C-sharp minor for verses, is centered around the
   "signature riff", a guitar piece utilising hammer-ons, pull-offs, and
   power chords. It contains the guitar solo, a duet of sorts between
   Allman's slide guitar and Clapton's bent notes. By placing his slide at
   points beyond the end of the fretboard, Allman was able to play notes
   at a higher pitch than would normally be possible. Tom Dowd referred to
   this as "notes that aren't on the instrument!"

   The second movement, Jim Gordon's contribution, is commonly referred to
   as the "piano coda." Originally played in C major, the coda was shifted
   in pitch microtonally and has no distinct key.

   As Clapton commented on his signature song:


   Layla

    'Layla' is a difficult one, because it's a difficult song to perform
   live. You have to have a good complement of musicians to get all of the
   ingredients going but, when you've got that... It's difficult to do as
   a quartet, for instance, because there are some parts you have to play
    and sing completely opposing lines, which is almost impossible to do.
    If you've got a big band, which I will have on the tour, then it will
  be easy to do something like 'Layla' — and I'm very proud of it. I love
    to hear it. It's almost like it's not me. It's like I'm listening to
    someone that I really like. Derek and The Dominos was a band I really
 liked—and it's almost like I wasn’t in that band. It's just a band that
      I'm a fan of. Sometimes, my own music can be like that. When it's
    served its purpose to being good music, I don't associate myself with
    it anymore. It's like someone else. It's easy to do those songs then.


   Layla

   Or, as his inspiration Pattie Boyd once said:


Layla

         I think that he was amazingly raw at the time... He's such an
     incredible musician that he's able to put his emotions into music in
     such a way that the audience can feel it instinctively. It goes right
                                 through you.


                                                                          Layla

Beyond the original album

   The album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs opened to lackluster
   sales (the album never reached the charts in Britain), as, with Clapton
   unmentioned except on the back, it appeared to be a double album from
   an unknown band. Also, the song's length proved prohibitive for radio
   airplay; as a result, an edited version of the song, trimmed to 2:43,
   was released as a single in March 1971 by Atco (U.S.). It peaked at
   only #51 on the Billboard Hot 100.

   However, when "Layla" was re-released on the 1972 compilation The
   History of Eric Clapton and then released as a single, it charted at #7
   in the UK and #10 in the U.S. Critical opinion since has been
   overwhelmingly positive. 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."

   In 1992, Clapton was invited to play for the MTV Unplugged series. His
   subsequent album, Unplugged, featured a number of blues standards and
   his new " Tears in Heaven". It also featured an "unplugged" version of
   "Layla". The new arrangement slowed down and reworked the original riff
   and dispensed with the piano coda. This version climbed to number
   twelve on the U.S. charts. In Britain this was the third time (and
   third decade) that "Layla" had charted, the original version charting
   in 1972, and again in 1982. "Layla" is featured on a number of
   "greatest ever" lists, including The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500
   Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, 27th place on Rolling Stone's The 500
   Greatest Songs of All Time, and 16th place on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs
   of Rock and Roll. "Layla" also has had an effect on popular culture,
   with the piano coda featured in the 1990 film Goodfellas. Covers have
   been fairly rare, including John Fahey's cover on his 1984 album Let
   Go.

   Beginning in 2003, the song's history came almost full circle in
   another direction, when The Allman Brothers Band began playing the song
   in concert. Warren Haynes sang the vocal, Duane Allman's brother Gregg
   played the piano part, and Derek Trucks played Duane's guitar parts
   during the coda. The performances were seen not only as a tribute to
   Duane, but to producer Tom Dowd, who had died the previous year.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layla"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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