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The curse of the Dominos
The astonishing story of Eric Clapton’s greatest band encompasses a love triangle, drug abuse, early death, violence – and murder.
Even at a time of unconventional arrangements in the lives of millionaire rock stars, in early 1970, the domestic lives of Eric Clapton and George Harrison were decidedly odd. By day, Clapton and members of his new band, the Dominos, played on sessions for Harrison’s forthcoming album, All Things Must Pass. By night, Clapton shut himself away in his Surrey mansion, Hurtwood Edge, and sought a way to express in a song the fact that he was desperately in love with Harrison’s wife, Pattie.
“When you heard Layla, you knew right away what it was all about,” says Bobby Whitlock, keyboard player and co-vocalist of the Dominos. “It was understood Eric was totally in love with Pattie. It was understood by everyone, but no one said anything.”
Forty years after its release, if there’s a set of relationships that helps to explain the bittersweet tone of the sole Derek and the Dominos album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, then the odd ménage of Harrison, Clapton and Boyd is undoubtedly important. But the juxtaposition of great music and emotional conflict wasn’t only a feature of Layla – it has also come to be the defining feature of this great Clapton band.
As little as 12 years later, only Eric Clapton was thriving. Of the other Dominos, two members were dead, one had fallen off the music business radar entirely, and one had been convicted of murder. If the band’s coming together had been a blessing, as time went on it increasingly came to seem as if the band was cursed.
Derek and the Dominos were born of a desire to leave the limelight behind and found Eric Clapton rejecting his guitar-hero status. “I thought Eric was an incredible player,” recalls Bonnie Bramlett, with whose band Clapton had guested in the winter of 1969. “But people calling him 'God’? That embarrassed him. ”
After his stint with Bramlett’s band, American soul-rockers Delaney & Bonnie, Clapton began writing songs with Bobby Whitlock, Delaney & Bonnie’s 21-year-old keyboard player. Quickly, the pair recruited other American musicians: bass player Carl Radle, and drummer Jim Gordon, while in the studio they were joined by virtuoso guitarist Duane Allman, of the Allman Brothers Band.
The album sessions produced a double album of soulful blues-rock, and some of the finest music of Clapton’s career. Yet, despite the relaxed, improvisational music-making, there was a certain intrigue mounting, centred on Layla itself.
Realising that the song required more than simply the rocky first section, ideas were sought for a second, more contemplative part. This section – an extended piano coda – featured some lachrymose slide-guitar-playing by Allman, which has retained its heartrending quality but has come to seem more and more jarring on the ear.
“Duane was a good addition to the band,” says Bobby Whitlock, “but I can tell you one thing – if Eric had played those parts, they would all have been in tune.”
Jim Gordon, to whom the second section of Layla is credited, was, meanwhile, proving something of a liability. Although an accomplished session drummer, when he went out on the road, the exposure to vast quantities of drink and drugs brought out an extremely troubling side to his personality: at best ambitious and manipulative, at worst violent.
“Cocaine and heroin and whisky will make you one crazy dude,” says Whitlock. “Eric and I managed to come out relatively unscathed. But Jim’s alcohol and drug intake was way over the top. It was pretty scary what was going down.”
Gordon had ambitions to write songs – an ambition he was not readily able to fulfil. And, when things didn’t go his way, he could quickly turn nasty. “I’d been in a relationship with Jim,” says the singer Rita Coolidge, “and that had fallen apart because he had gotten violent with me once. I just wanted him away from me.”
Gordon’s personality disorder was a major factor in the demise of Derek and the Dominos. More seriously, in 1983, it led to Gordon’s conviction for murder. On June 3, Gordon drove to the Hollywood home of his 72-year-old mother, Osa, attacked her with a hammer and then fatally stabbed her. He has been in prison ever since.
For Clapton, the anonymity he had craved worked rather too well: the release of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs did not spark the interest that had been hoped for, as record buyers failed to realise who exactly “Derek” was. Nor did Layla the single fare much better: only when it was re-released to promote a Clapton compilation in March 1972 did it make any impact. By that time, the band had broken up, and Allman, whose playing had so invigorated the song, had died in a road accident, aged only 24.
After a generally successful US tour, Derek and the Dominos tried to make a second album, but the band, frayed by drug use, frustrations and conflicts, were doomed. After an argument in the studio with Gordon , Clapton put down his guitar and walked out. “It was frustrating,” says Bobby Whitlock. “Eric just went ahead and locked the door at Hurtwood and stayed home for two years and did heroin.”
The lifespan of the band was short, but left a deep imprint on its remaining members. Whitlock’s career never reached the same heights again, but he remains active musically . Carl Radle, a quiet and private man, died in 1980, his death linked to drink and drug use.
Only Clapton has enjoyed the spoils of Derek and the Dominos, although it’s a part of his career about which he has mixed feelings – his part in the latest reissue of the album has been minimal . Yet for fans the album remains a high point of his career.
“It was spontaneous, but structured,” says Bobby Whitlock. “And it still sounds incredible...”
A deluxe edition of 'Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs’ is released by UMC on Monday
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