(Credits: Far Out / Showtime Documentary Films)
Tue 9 December 2025 17:22, UK
Most professional musicians usually know how to make their way through any song when playing live. Even if they haven’t heard the tune in their lives, having the right contact with the right musician next to you is key to getting through a song when flying blind. While a million rock fans would probably be fine with Eric Clapton shredding his way through almost any song in his catalogue, he admitted that he still gets tripped up whenever playing the song ‘Layla’.
Then again, any guitarist would give their left arm to play half as good as Clapton could in the 1960s. Before he had even formed Derek and the Dominoes, Clapton was already being heralded as a god among men in guitar circles, being one of the few people who could give fellow English guitar legends like George Harrison a run for their money.
While Clapton eventually had competition with Jimi Hendrix, the American guitar legend’s death came about right around the time Clapton was experiencing his own emotional Hell. Though he had contributed guitar to Harrison’s ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ with The Beatles, he quickly had his attention focused on something else: his friend’s wife, Pattie Boyd.
As Pattie Boyd would explain, “I wasn’t so happy when Eric wrote ‘Layla,’ while I was still married to George. I felt I was being exposed. I was amazed and thrilled at the song – it was so passionate and devastatingly dramatic – but I wanted to hang on to my marriage. Eric made this public declaration of love. I resisted his attentions for a long time – I didn’t want to leave my husband. But obviously, when things got so excruciatingly bad for George and me, it was the end of our relationship. We both had to move on.”
Being one of the most awkward love triangles in rock history, Clapton would start to secretly make inroads to talk with Boyd, eventually having an affair with her while she was still married to Harrison. Never being one for subtlety, the entire reason Clapton formed Derek and the Dominoes was to release the album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, which is a love letter from him to Boyd.
Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd. (Credit: Alamy)
Even though it’s clear that Boyd is the inspiration behind every single lead lick he played, the rest of the band are no slouches behind him. Clapton was already on top of the world, but bringing in newcomer Duane Allman was a marriage made in heaven, eventually trading licks on the title song with Allman’s amazing slide playing.
When talking about performing it live, Clapton said that he needs all the backing that he can get to pull it off effectively, telling Mike Hrano, “Layla” is a difficult one because it’s a difficult song to perform live. You have to have a good complement of musicians to get all of the ingredients going, but when you’ve got that … It’s difficult to do as a quartet, for instance, because there are some parts you have to play and sing completely opposing lines, which is almost impossible to do”.
‘Layla’ has a lot of grandeur in the world of guitar. addling up alongside standout hits like ‘Stairway to Heaven’, the tune is often considered a test of a six-string slinger’s skill, and it clearly pushes Clapton to the edge too. While on the live cirucit it proves nearly impossible to do, on the studio it was a push as well.
Given how much is going on in the final recording, it’s not like Clapton is lying. From the amazing rock body of the song to the piano-led outro, the entire track feels like an orchestral version of a rock and roll song, with every single person adding to the music so everything doesn’t fall apart.
Since there are a million moving pieces going on in the studio track, it’s no surprise that Clapton chose to go the easy route when performing it on Unplugged. There wouldn’t be his signature backing band, so Clapton served up what is practically a completely different song, including a laid-back feel that makes it sound like it’s being played in a coffeehouse. If you look at the amount of people on the studio track, pairing it down wasn’t just an artistic choice. It was out of necessity.
Related Topics