Credit: Far Out / Showtime Documentary Films
October 25th, 2026 · 5:30pm GMT
By the 1970s, Eric Clapton could have gone in a million different directions if he wanted to.
Some of the biggest rock and roll stars at the time considered him a guitar god, and even though he tended to agree with them most of the time, he was still thinking that no one could have held a candle to the blues purists who blew his mind wide open when he was a kid. There was so much more that people had to explore, and it took the right people to help see the greater picture of what his music was supposed to be.
He was a child of the blues, but there was so much more for him to explore when he formed Cream. Keeping up with someone like Jack Bruce or Ginger Baker wasn’t going to be easy for him to do all the time, but when you look through some of the best solos that they all played together, it’s easy to see how all of them complemented each other perfectly. They were ready to take on the world, but there was so much more for them to explore when they ventured out on their own.
‘Slowhand’ couldn’t take the idea of fighting with his bandmates day in and day out, and getting the chance to work with people like Steve Winwood was a much better outlet for him. Blind Faith was the kind of group that he had always wanted, but since they had to grow up way too fast, he wasn’t about to be thrilled about having to play the same six songs and expected to play stadiums around the world.
Besides, there was already a lot of baggage that he had to work through on his own. His unrequited love for Pattie Boyd was wearing him heavy, and even though he had contributed to George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass fairly nicely, there were also the bones of something new when he first began jamming with people like Jim Gordon and Bobby Whitlock at those sessions.
The beginnings of Derek and the Dominos were starting to come into view, but what really sealed the deal for Clapton was getting Duane Allman into the fold. He had already heard what Duane could do with a slide guitar in the Allman Brothers Band and absolutely loved it, so the next best thing was for him to get him in the studio to lay down some tracks for this musical love letter he was going to write.
And while Duane gave his all to make the album sound pristine, the fact that he was only in the band for a little over a month is insane. Clapton did remember wanting to go after his new best friend, but he knew that he couldn’t tear him away from his musical brothers, saying, “After we’d made ‘Layla’ it was the end of the Dominos. I tried to get Duane to leave the Allmans. But he said he had to be loyal to what he called ‘the family’.”
Further reading: From The Vault
Then again, Duane more than made up for it by coming up with the central riff for ‘Layla’. That riff is still one of the greatest riffs ever recorded, and aside from being one of the highest-selling singles of all time, it also shows the dexterity of a guitar player, especially considering that Clapton doesn’t even bother playing the riff live when he’s trying to play and sing at the same time.
That’s something that was practically trademarked to Duane when he walked into the studio, and while he only joined the rest of the Dominos only a few times when he walked out of the studio, he wasn’t meant to be with the band very long anyway. The entire story of Duane Allman is already tragic enough as it is, but Clapton already knew the genius that he was working with well before he passed away in a motorcycle accident.
