THE JAMS THAT IGNITED DEREK AND THE DOMINOS
By John Milward,
Special to The Philadelphia Inquirer,
Thursday, September 20, 1990,
Section: Features Home Entertainment,
Page: F01.
In the early '70s, those days that are suddenly the nostalgic rage,
undergraduates ushered in the weekend with a ritual sound: Around 4 o'clock on
Friday afternoon, somebody would invariably hoist the stereo speakers to an
open window, crank up the volume and put on "Layla."
The sonic rush of that 12-note opening, with Eric Clapton's lead guitar
ripping alongside Duane Allman's whooshing slide, was an invitation to grab a
Frisbee and let it fly. By the time the song cascaded into its unlikely piano-
based fade, the pressures of the week had given way to the pleasures of the
weekend.
Derek and the Dominos: The Layla Sessions (Polydor) is a 20th-anniversary
celebration of the '70s done up for the '90s. The three-disc set includes a
remixed, single-disc version of the original double album, Layla and Other
Assorted Love Songs; a disc of outtakes and alternate masters, and a third
disc of the lengthy jam sessions that served as a sketch pad for the ensemble
playing that distinguished the final recording.
All told, it adds up to more than 218 minutes of Derek and the Dominos, which
is a lot of dominos. This comprehensive approach reflects the current trend in
reissues, to make packages that are so exhaustive as to be exhausting. Tom
Dowd, who was the executive producer of the Layla sessions and who ranks it as
a high point in a most extraordinary recording career, puts the heft of the
collection in perspective.
The supplementary material is valuable historically, he says, because
something special always happens when players like Clapton and Allman pick up
their instruments. But, he continues, "I know the album is better than the
jams; otherwise, the jams would have been the album."
The Layla album is regarded as a capstone of '60s-style blues-rock, with
extended jamming, which had been epitomized by Clapton's earlier group, Cream,
attaining a new discipline informed by a deeper sense of bluesy restraint and
group identity. With a repertoire of blues standards and original songs, the
album captured Clapton in a moment of transition: Never again would he sustain
a performance that combined the fire of his youth and the subtle artistry of
his later work.
Dowd was in a perfect place to watch Clapton develop. Few recording engineers
and producers have resumes that compare to Dowd's - the 64-year-old has
recorded everybody from John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman to Aretha Franklin
and the Allman Brothers Band.
In 1967, he spent four days recording Disraeli Gears with Cream. His
comparison of those sessions with the 1970 recording of Layla says a lot about
both bands. "Recording Cream, I was confronted with three people who had a
great deal of professional respect for each other, but who did not
particularly like each other," Dowd recalls. "The motivating energy of the
Cream sessions was anger, whereas in the Derek sessions, it was more like
love."
When Dowd recorded Cream, Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce both played
through
double stacks of Marshall amplifiers while Ginger Baker whacked at a drum set
that included two bass drums. Clapton and Bruce wore headphones, not to hear
the other musicians - there was no way they couldn't - but to protect their
ears. When Clapton arrived to record Layla, he brought a small Fender
amplifier and set it up on a chair.
"If somebody sneezed in the studio, it drowned out the guitars," Dowd says.
"Where Cream had an aggressive, clenched-fist style of playing, the Dominos
were more like an intimate chamber group. When they played, it was like
feathers with the power of a cannonball."
The brief life of Derek and the Dominos followed Clapton's post-Cream
supergroup, Blind Faith, and his attempt to escape the spotlight by playing
guitar with Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, which contributed to his first
solo album, Eric Clapton. After a few months of Clapton's woodshedding with
Delaney and Bonnie's keyboardist, Bobby Whitlock, they made it a band by
adding Carl Radle on bass and Jim Gordon on drums. The quartet's first gig was
recording much of George Harrison's first solo album, All Things Must Pass.
But the Dominos were destined to become a quintet. In late-August 1970, they
arrived at Miami's Criteria Studios and started trying out songs with Dowd.
The magic didn't happen until they went to a benefit concert by another of
Dowd's clients, the Allman Brothers Band, and both entourages returned to jam
at Criteria. The presence of Duane Allman opened up the blues sound that, in
the quartet format, had been tight and formal but lacked an essential fire.
Allman lit the fuse, and the 12-minute jam that finds Clapton and Whitlock
playing with five of the Allman Brothers is a revelation.
(Dowd recorded two of the most famous live albums in rock and roll: the second
half of Cream's Wheels of Fire and the Allman Brothers Band's At Fillmore
East. With the exception of Clapton's riveting interpretation of Robert
Johnson's "Crossroads," the roaring thunder of Fire has not aged well. By
contrast, the Allman's Fillmore set, with a Southern blues-rock band wowing
the big-city crowd by playing with the open-ended intensity of jazzmen,
remains a vibrant landmark.)
Duane Allman added two essential elements to the Dominos: the crisp rhythms
he'd honed playing sessions behind soul singers such as Aretha Franklin and
Wilson Pickett, and the disciplined improvisations he was pursuing with his
own band.
Allman also took a lot from the Dominos experience - the recently released
Allman Brothers album, Live at the Ludlow Garage 1970 (Polydor), which was
recorded five months before Layla, lacks the laser intensity of the Fillmore
set, recorded early the following year.
The way that Layla evolved out of jam sessions suggests a method of jazz
composition, although Dowd says it was nothing like recording John Coltrane.
''Coltrane pieces," he says, "would evolve out of one man - Coltrane - and the
other players would work off his inspiration."
As the Dominos rehearsed, developing riffs and instrumental transitions, Dowd
would record particularly worthy sections, and these were refined as the songs
took shape. It was a communal, organic process.
"Layla" grew out of the now-famous guitar duet lines that framed the verses.
The song also sprouted from Clapton's unrequited passion for his future wife,
George Harrison's then-spouse, Pattie Boyd. Clapton's romantic angst,
presumably deepened by his growing dependency on heroin, provided the
emotional heart of the whole album, and his accompanists responded in kind.
So it must have been a surprise to Dowd when, nearly a month after wrapping up
the two-week sessions that produced Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, the
group members returned for a few days of additional work and said that they
wanted to add a new ending to the title song. At the time, the mechanics of
overdubbing were relatively primitive, but after much effort, the Dominos
newly recorded ending was bled into the original track. The fury of the
titanic twin-guitar riff would forevermore dissolve into a stoical piano solo
that was sweetened by the mournful cries of slide guitars.
Derek and the Dominos shot their wad in Miami. The Allman-less quartet went on
a tour that was characterized more by heroin and cocaine than memorable music.
Subsequent recording sessions in England were a washout. "Layla" wasn't even a
hit when it first hit the streets. By the time it had become a rock anthem,
the Dominos had fallen.