Derek and the Dominos

Derek and the Dominos
Derek and the Dominos
	File:Picture of Dominos (without Allman).jpg The Dominos' Original Lineup: Eric Clapton, Bobby Whitlock, Jim Gordon and Carl Radle.
Background information
Origin	New York City, New York, US
Years active	1970–1971
Members	Eric Clapton; Bobby Whitlock; Carl Radle; Jim Gordon; Duane Allman ;

Derek and the Dominos was a blues-rock supergroup formed in the spring of 1970 by guitarist and singer Eric Clapton with Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon, who had all played with him in Delaney & Bonnie & Friends. The band would release only one album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs which featured "a guitar tour de force sparked by the contributions of guest artist Duane Allman",^[1] from the Allman Brothers Band. The album would go on to receive critical acclaim but initially falter in sales and in FM radio airplay. Although released in 1970 it wasn't until March 1972 that the album's single "Layla," (a tale of unrequited love inspired by Clapton's relationship with his friend George Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd Harrison) would make the top ten in both the U.S. and U.K. The album, which has received praise from both critics and fans alike, is often considered to be the defining achievement of Clapton's career.^[2]^[3]

Beginnings

The seeds of Derek and the Dominos can be found in their involvement with Delaney, Bonnie & Friends from which they were all members of including Duane Allman who had played prior to Clapton. The member's departures from the group were caused by the constant infighting between Delaney and Bonnie, Whitlock explains:

Delaney was a little James Brownish, real hard to work with, him and Bonnie fighting all the time and carrying on. Everyone got disenchanted with the situation.

^[4] After leaving Delaney, Bonnie and Friends, Whitlock was called by Clapton to visit him in England; Whitlock would subsequently live in Clapton's house and during that period the two would jam, hang out and write the bulk of the Dominos' catalog.

Soon after, they called the rest of their former Delaney and Bonnie musicians, Dave Mason, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon and together the quintet became the backing band for George Harrison's album All Things Must Pass ^[5]. The group officially debuted at the Lyceum Theatre in London on June 14 1970, where the previous performer, Tony Ashton of Ashton, Gardner and Dyke mispronounced their provisional name of "Eric and the Dynamos" as Derek and the Dominos.^[6] The band took up the new name and embarked on a summer tour of small clubs in England where Clapton chose to play anonymously, still weary from the fame and high profile chaos that he had felt plagued Cream and Blind Faith.^[7]From late August to early October 1970, working at Criteria Studios in Miami under the guidance of Atlantic Records producer Tom Dowd, the band recorded Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, a double album now regarded by many critics as Clapton's masterpiece. Most of the material, including Layla (which soon became an FM radio staple) was inspired by Clapton's unrequited love for Pattie Boyd who was married to his best friend George Harrison. It was not until several years that Pattie would consent to an affair and later move in with Clapton in 1974 and married him in 1979. They separated in 1985 when Clapton started a relationship with Yvonne Khan Kelly and they divorced in 1988. The most critically acclaimed and popular song off the album, Layla, was recorded in separate sessions; the opening guitar section was recorded first, with the second section following several months later. The second part was an elegiac piano piece composed and played by drummer Jim Gordon; early on, he objected to it being added to Layla, but finally agreed.

Duane Allman's Inclusion

A few days into the Layla sessions, Dowd, who was also producing for the Allmans for their album Idlewild South, invited Clapton to an Allman Brothers outdoor concert in Miami. Dowd remembers the meeting distinctly saying:

File:DuaneAllman.jpg

Image of Duane Allman

So that Saturday we went into the studio about two or three in the afternoon, fumbled along till about six or seven, and called down to get in. They snuck us in. They had a barricade between where the public was and the riser for the band, sandbags and gobos up there to keep the people back. They got us in the side of the side stage and we crawled in on our hands and knees so we wouldn't obscure the stage and propped ourselves against theses sandbags sitting on our butts looking up with our hands holding our knees together.

Duane was in the middle of a solo; he opens his eyes and looks down, does a dead stare, and stops playing. Dickey Betts is chugging along, see Duane's stopped playing, and figures he'd better cover, that Duane must've broken a string or something. Then Dickey looks down, sees Eric, and turns his back. That was how they first saw each other.

The next day Duane arrived at the Criteria studios around 3 o' clock and would quickly befriend Clapton; Dowd says their easiness with one another was instantaneous ^[8], saying they were

trading licks, they were swapping guitars, they were talking shop and information and having a ball, no hold barred, just admiration for each other's technique and facility. We got back, turned the tapes on, and they went on for fifteen, eighteen hours like that. I went through two or three sets of engineers.

Those jams can today be found on the 3rd-CD 20th anniversary edition of Layla. After the jam sessions Clapton invited Allman to become the fifth and final member of the Dominos. When Allman and Clapton met, the Dominos had already recorded three tracks (I Looked Away, Bell Bottom Blues and Keep On Growing); Allman debuted on the fourth cut, Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out, and contributed slide guitar to the remainder of the LP. The dueling guitars of Allman and Clapton, with Allman's slide guitar played against Clapton's favourite Fender Stratocaster Brownie gave the album a heavy blues-influence.

The Layla album

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs

The Layla LP was recorded by a five-piece version of the group, thanks to the unforeseen inclusion of slide guitar virtuoso Duane Allman of The Allman Brothers Band. Although most commonly attributed to Clapton, the album was truly a group effort.^[9] Only two of the fourteen songs on the album were written by Clapton alone and Whitlock writing one of the tracks alone "Thorn Tree in the Garden." Four of the tracks were cover songs and even Layla was a co-written song; between Clapton and Gordon.

Live shows

After the recording of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, the group undertook a drug-riddled and vice-prone U.S. tour that didn't include Allman, who had returned to The Allman Brothers Band after the recording process. Whitlock recalls their drug situation as:

We didn't have little bits of anything. There were no grams around, let's just put it like that. Tom couldn't believe it, the way we had these big bags laying out everywhere. I'm almost ashamed to tell it, but it's the truth. It was scary, what we were doing, but we were just young and dumb and didn't know. Cocaine and heroin, that's all and Johnny Walker.

Despite the drugs, the tour resulted in a well received live double album, In Concert, which was recorded from a pair of shows at the Fillmore East in New York, New York. Six of the recordings from that album were digitally remastered and expanded with additional material from the same shows to become Live at the Fillmore, released in 1994. Several live bootlegs of the band are also available, including one with Duane Allman playing (dated December 1, 1970) and one of the double night at the Fillmore.

Tragedy and dissolution

File:ClaptonD&D.jpg

Eric Clapton performing at the Fillmore East for the recording of In Concert

Tragedy dogged the group throughout its brief career. During the sessions, Clapton was devastated by the death of Jimi Hendrix; eight days previously the band had cut a version of Little Wing, which was added to the album as a tribute. One year later, on the eve of the group's first American tour, Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident. Adding to Clapton's woes, the Layla album received only lukewarm reviews upon release; Clapton took this personally, accelerating his spiral into drug addiction and depression.

The band disintegrated messily in London just before they had completed their second LP. Although Radle worked with Clapton for several more years, the split between Clapton and Whitlock was apparently a bitter one. Radle would die of alcohol poisoning in 1981 and Jim Gordon, who was an undiagnosed schizophrenic, killed his mother with a hammer some years later during a psychotic episode. He was confined to a mental institution in 1984, where he remains today.

After the dissolution, Clapton turned away from touring and recording to nurse an intense heroin addiction ^[10] resulting in a career hiatus interrupted only by the Concert for Bangladesh in 1972 and the Rainbow Concert in 1973 (see 1973 in music), the former organised by George Harrison and the latter by The Who's Pete Townshend to help Clapton kick the drug.

Time has only added to the reputation of the group, which is now considered among Clapton's most outstanding achievements. The 1988 Eric Clapton box set retrospective Crossroads featured material from the abortive second album sessions. The Layla Sessions was a 1990 box set expanding that album across three CDs/cassettes. Live at the Fillmore (1994) offered an expanded version of the In Concert album.

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs has been named one of the best albums of all time by VH1 (#89) and Rolling Stone (#115).