Play Guitar Along with Eric Clapton Layla with sheet music, Noten, partition, partitura

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“Layla”: the nights of love and heroin Eric Clapton

These days, celebrating 52 years of the legendary song that Eric Clapton to Pattie Boyd, who was in love and was the partner of his friend George Harrison; by then, the guitarist was an artist out there, handed over to the drug and without self-confidence.

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Many masterpieces of art history have been born from the devastation, anguish and madness. This is what happened with the legendary album “Layla & Other Assorted Love Song”, the heaven and hell of Eric Clapton, an album that today marks 52 years of life and glory .

The summary of the story is more or less known. Eric Clapton and George Harrison were close friends, played the guitar together and appeared in the disks of the other. However, Eric was also in love with Pattie Boyd , the wife of ex-Beatle, and in a state of deep emotional turmoil, he wrote a lengthy and torn love letter to musical about their pain and desire.

The germ philosophical it is to be found in the story of Layla and Majnun, the Azerbaijani poet of the XII century Nizami, in which a young man is crazy for his unrequited love.

Lyrics:

Layla

Eric Clapton

What will you do when you get lonely
No one’s waiting by your side?
You’ve been running and hiding much too long
You know it’s just your foolish pride

Layla
You’ve got me on my knees, Layla
Begging darling please, Layla
Darling, won’t you ease my worried mind?

Tried to give you consolation
When your old man, he let you down
Like a fool, I fell in love with you
You turned my whole world upside down

Layla
You’ve got me on my knees, Layla
Begging darling please, Layla
Darling, won’t you ease my worried mind?

Make the best of the situation
Before I finally go insane
Please don’t say we’ll never find a way
Or tell me all my love’s in vain

Layla
You’ve got me on my knees, Layla
Begging darling please, Layla
Darling, won’t you ease my worried mind?

But how do you arrive here? By then, Eric Clapton hated Eric Clapton. I hated that model of guitar hero, which –in all fairness– had been forged around him .

It all had begun in 1963, when he was 18 years old, he entered the Yardbirds. Without having recorded a single album, on a wall in London appeared the words “Clapton is God” (Clapton is God). And then joined the Bluesbreakers John Mayall to show the purity of the electric blues and touch him as a veteran of 70 years. And later it reached the sky with the blues-rock progressive Cream. So, he continued with another supergroup, Blind Faith, alongside Steve Winwood. Everything was superlative in his career.

But Eric Clapton listened to the “Music from Big Pink” by The Band, and what changed his life. Fell in love with the modesty of the music as a concept and anonymous group. Also changed the way you see yourself. He just wanted to be the type of back who plays the guitar. And that’s why he asked for the absurd utopia to ask The Band to form part of the group. And also why he joined Delaney & Bonnie as a “simple” guitarist. Those who were going to the concert exclaimed, incredulous: “But that is not Eric Clapton?”.

He didn’t want to be Eric Clapton. Or that Eric Clapton. That’s why he recorded in the early 1970s first solo album, titled as its name, that remains a stunning work however did not sound to that style abrasive, which had given him fame. It was practically a disk of soul that puzzled many. Meanwhile, he continued to participate with friends as a guitarist, including his magnificent contribution to “All things must past”, the top of George Harrison. And then was when he came of Layla.

In a new gesture elusive, Eric Clapton hid under the name of Derek and called Dominos the awesome band that met building on the momentum of Delaney & Bonnie, and his own solo album. Included drummer Jim Gordon and bassist Carl Raddle, that the guitarist would qualify as “the best rhythm section” that would come to play. Bobby Whitlock was on keyboards and backing vocals to complete a combo truly magical.

All of them were installed in the modest but comfortable, Criteria Studios in Miami to begin to record things without a very clear idea. To them he would join after Duane Allman, the terrifying guitarist of the Allman Brothers Band, the man who redefined the definition of any concept existing until then about the use of the technique of the “slide”.

Eric Clapton had been impressed by his participation in the “Hey Jude” by Wilson Pickett and agreed that the Allman Brothers Band were going to give a couple of concerts in Miami. It was the opportunity to bring Eric and Duane, who immediately clicked together. On a personal, musical and lysergic way.

Both of them sat together, and the rest of the band apiñaba in the small room where the creativity is soaring. For three weeks they recorded in endless sessions, many of them at night, in the that used the old method: put-started the tape and record everything. Then you would choose the shots good. The least was how it sounded; it was what it sounded like.

By then, Eric Clapton had not been particularly prolific as a composer and quite insecure with his voice. But this album was his “tour de force” . Every day was almost a new riff for a song and completed the lyrics in the studio while the group worked on arrangements and designs. In his head he was still Pattie Boyd, whose presence had become a constant in the last year, and more from the recording of “All things must pass”. Each verse that she wrote and sang was more desperate than the last.

The first thing you hear on the album is: “

She took my hand
And tried to make me understand
That she would always be there,

But I looked away
And she ran away from me today;
I’m such a lonely man.”

And there was more: “why love it’s so sad?”, asked in another topic. Or showed a pathetic hope on to say: “Any day I will see you smile.”

Few times it has achieved excellence in the world of music. For nearly 80 minutes, the band set out on passages terrifying as Eric Clapton and Duane Allman took the guitar to a few limits rarely explored and achieved by any human life until today. Each song was a monument. Nothing was left over in this double disc. Clapton had everything to spare except music.

They were early morning of music, but also heroin. Clapton had already tested in times of Cream, but here he became addicted. It is said that one day he looked at Pattie Boyd in the eyes, put a hand on his heart, and with the other lifted a bag of heroin. He said: “You choose.” The wife of George Harrison returned with the ex-Beatle, and Eric Clapton opened the bag.

The publication of the album simply fed the confusion of the guitarist. Initially sold very little and up a song just as amazing as “Layla” went relatively unnoticed. Clapton ashamed of his role in the music and hid behind Derek, but at the time I needed the mass recognition to protect themselves from their own insecurities. There was a deep emotional conflict that only managed to sedate with heroin.

The tour later just add glory artistic and commercial failure. He played in small sites that are not filled simply because people didn’t know who they were Derek & The Dominos. But the music that came out of there every night was wild and pure as the drug that Clapton was putting on his spoon several times a day. The recordings from the Fillmore as well attested, authentic, top sound of this era.

What would come after would be the terror: three years of self-reclusion in his mansion in Surrey, under a strict regime of heroin and burgers. Just would participate in the concert for Bangla Desh his friend Harrison, but he does not remember that he was there.

Eric Clapton was a ghost inside a living ghost. Terrible years. And what marvel, the inhuman, is that he survived. When he returned to open the doors of her mansion and saw that there was still sun discovered, not without surprise, that “Layla” was already a legend.

Three songs in one

Eric Clapton had the riff, the lyrics and the electric music of “Layla”. But I didn’t know how to finish the song. Then the drummer Jim Gordon stood at the piano and played a simple but beautiful chord progression in a different tone. Clapton’s eyes lit up.

In a time when everything was possible, he decided to fuse his furious guitar with the lyricism of the piano. And it worked! In such a way that “Layla” became almost three different songs. Or one with three movements: the voice and the riff, the solo piano and all the band resolved to escape. “Owning something so powerful, it is something that I can never get used. Still leaves me unconscious when I play”, I would say Eric Clapton on “Layla”.

What is so powerful, you can enjoy today fully with a new anniversary edition includes two CDs with extra material from those sessions and what they recorded the Dominos. Essential.

Jim Gordon is one of the great forgotten of rock and roll. Not only is he one of the best drummers in the history of music, but their contribution can be heard on huge albums. After the brief affair with Dominos became quoted a session musician and participated in the great works of people as diverse as Tom Waits, Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, Roger McGuinn, Randy Newman, and much more. But also is the protagonist of one of the stories more sad. At the end of the 70’s, she began to have hallucinations and hear voices. The doctors diagnosed her with alcoholism, but they forgot about the main thing: he was schizophrenic. In 1983, killed his mother with a hammer. He remained incarcerated until his death in 2023.