A few months ago, I embarked on a personal project wherein I listen to all the music on my iPod in roughly alphabetical order. This idea was pretty much ripped off wholesale from Popless, a new feature on The Onion A.V. Club where professional reviewer Noel Murray has taken the year off from listening to any new music and is going through his one song at a time. My version is a bit more lenient, in that it's probably not going to take anywhere near that long and I'm still listening to new music (probably even more than before, but that's neither here nor there). When I was thinking of starting this blog, I was entertaining the notion of writing about my effort, one album at a time, starting back at the beginning with "A." I might still do that, but for now I wanted to talk about an album that I rediscovered about a week ago and haven't been able to stop playing since.
I first bought Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs, the lone album by Eric Clapton's gazillionth band, Derek & the Dominos, on vinyl a long time ago, while I was still in High School, spurred by a teenage interest in classic rock, my liking of the song "Layla," and the fact that it was only about five bucks. It sat on my shelf until about a year and a half ago, my first night of my second year of college. I hadn't a lot of stuff and I didn't feel like unpacking what I had, so I decided to listen to a record, and I picked this one because it was long and I had time to kill. I think I maybe got through the first LP. I then didn't listen to it until a week ago. And it blew me away.
I've never been much of a fan of Clapton (I'm still not); his mastery of the blues scale never really seemed like a vital and impressive skill, and as a songwriter he always left something to be desired. Well, not always. Before he injected away his creative spark, he and Bobby Whitlock crafted an endlessly impressive song cycle on unrequited love and yearning passion. Much has been said about this album subject - Clapton's love for George Harrison's wife, Patti Boyd, a woman whose sole claim to fame is the dubious position of having fucked two (possibly three) of the leading guitarists of the era, a position probably held by various unknown women around the world as well (now if it had been at the same time, maybe that would be something, but again, that's probably also a popular title). But what got me when listening to the record is how fucking obvious it was! The very first song, "I Looked Away," contains the bridge "And if it seemed a sin / To love another man's woman, baby / I guess I'll keep on sinning / Loving her, Lord, till my very last day." I mean, come on! And the whole album continues on like that. Bell Bottom Blues, the next track and possibly the best on the album (the tile track is just a bit overrated), was apparently inspired by Patti Boyd's request for a pair of Bell Bottom Jeans from America, has the great line "Do you want to see me crawl across the floor to you? / Do you want to hear me beg you to take me back?," fantastic, when sung, but desperate and sad when written down like that.
Layla is, to me, the best translation of the blues into rock 'n' roll. The album contains a few straight-ahead blues track (my least favorite on the album) but mainly it's just sort of rootsy, well, rock. And maybe that's the key to why the album works so well. Eric Clapton made his name in the british blues scene, playing in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and the Yardbirds, before they went pop. And yet at a time in his life when he could really say he had the Blues, he went ahead and rocked his fucking heart out. Layla is an album of supreme sadness, but it's an absolute joy to hear someone expressing themself so purely and so artfully, and it's a shame it never happened again.
Derek & the Dominos - I Looked Away (right-click and choose Save As)
I first bought Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs, the lone album by Eric Clapton's gazillionth band, Derek & the Dominos, on vinyl a long time ago, while I was still in High School, spurred by a teenage interest in classic rock, my liking of the song "Layla," and the fact that it was only about five bucks. It sat on my shelf until about a year and a half ago, my first night of my second year of college. I hadn't a lot of stuff and I didn't feel like unpacking what I had, so I decided to listen to a record, and I picked this one because it was long and I had time to kill. I think I maybe got through the first LP. I then didn't listen to it until a week ago. And it blew me away.I've never been much of a fan of Clapton (I'm still not); his mastery of the blues scale never really seemed like a vital and impressive skill, and as a songwriter he always left something to be desired. Well, not always. Before he injected away his creative spark, he and Bobby Whitlock crafted an endlessly impressive song cycle on unrequited love and yearning passion. Much has been said about this album subject - Clapton's love for George Harrison's wife, Patti Boyd, a woman whose sole claim to fame is the dubious position of having fucked two (possibly three) of the leading guitarists of the era, a position probably held by various unknown women around the world as well (now if it had been at the same time, maybe that would be something, but again, that's probably also a popular title). But what got me when listening to the record is how fucking obvious it was! The very first song, "I Looked Away," contains the bridge "And if it seemed a sin / To love another man's woman, baby / I guess I'll keep on sinning / Loving her, Lord, till my very last day." I mean, come on! And the whole album continues on like that. Bell Bottom Blues, the next track and possibly the best on the album (the tile track is just a bit overrated), was apparently inspired by Patti Boyd's request for a pair of Bell Bottom Jeans from America, has the great line "Do you want to see me crawl across the floor to you? / Do you want to hear me beg you to take me back?," fantastic, when sung, but desperate and sad when written down like that.
Layla is, to me, the best translation of the blues into rock 'n' roll. The album contains a few straight-ahead blues track (my least favorite on the album) but mainly it's just sort of rootsy, well, rock. And maybe that's the key to why the album works so well. Eric Clapton made his name in the british blues scene, playing in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and the Yardbirds, before they went pop. And yet at a time in his life when he could really say he had the Blues, he went ahead and rocked his fucking heart out. Layla is an album of supreme sadness, but it's an absolute joy to hear someone expressing themself so purely and so artfully, and it's a shame it never happened again.
Derek & the Dominos - I Looked Away (right-click and choose Save As)
