We watched the other night the somewhat interesting* documentary Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars. One thing that popped out was how poorly the Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album as well as the single Layla did supposedly because it wasn’t widely known that this was Eric Clapton’s new band.
What the what???
I certainly knew it at the time. The radio stations I listened to talked about the upcoming album, the band name, etc. in advance. That Clapton and Duane Allman were working together was big news. Layla didn’t become a “hit” until two years later when it was on a compilation album.
Was this really true?
I blame the overall poor quality of the album. I listened to the whole thing again a couple years ago and it had too many poor tracks on it.
The doc. is fairly good, but spent most of its time getting up to DatD. After that it just rushed through the remaining 40+ years.
Oh. I forgot. Clapton is God. Everybody happy now?
Just looked at my copy of the CD, and Clapton’s name is right on the back. Not to mention his easily identifiable singing and guitar playing. So that this was news to anyone is weird. I knew it was Clapton’s band at the time also.
And of course Clapton is god. That’s why George Harrison hung out with him.
Not true. When it came out it was highly publicized that “Eric was Derek.”
The album was a success. It reached #16 on its first released. It didn’t do well as a single, but neither had Clapton’s Blind Faith, which was a #1 album. The length of the song was was cut, which may have affected things.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the documentary, but I thought Clapton was trying to stay out of the spotlight during that time. So maybe the lack of chart success was a consequence of that?
I saw the band in late November 1970 at Painters Mill Music Fair in Owings Mills, MD. My recollection of the event is that they played two shows there on the same day, and that a friend called me after attending the first show to tell me that Clapton was in the band, and that we needed to go to the second show.
This could be a revised, incorrect memory. It is possible that the guy called me before the only show that day to inform that this unknown band had Clapton in it. The album had been released a few weeks earlier. If you weren’t a regular Rolling Stone reader at the time, Clapton’s role in the band may have escaped your notice. The album really didn’t take off until a year or so later.
Sorry Eric is not god. He was a proficient guitarist, mostly jazzed up standard blues licks. He was very good but still highly overrated. In my opinion he not innovative enough to be a god much less god.
I did know that Eric was Derek. But what I didn’t know until attending a recent Dead & Co. concert, is that John Mayer is in that band, even though by the end of the concert you don’t really care.
I suspect that Voyager was referring to the famous “Clapton is God” graffiti from the '60s, which became a nickname that continued to be associated with Clapton.
Regarding the “Clapton is God” thing. I was being sarcastic-ish. I first learned about the whole thing from the liner notes of The History of Eric Clapton. So it’s something to goof on.
The documentary showed the graffito at a suspiciously early point in time. The documentary threw stuff around timewise too much. E.g., to set up the segment on a recording session at Atlantic Records in NYC in the 60s (Disraeli Gears-1967, I think), they ran a clip touring Atlantic the offices where you could clearly see artwork based on the cover of Bette Midler’s 2nd album from 1973.
Don’t they understand what sort of nerds watch these things?
It’s an incredible song. In my 20s, in a funk, I once put all of my quarters into a jukebox and played BBB a zillion times. Someone eventually complained to the bartender, pointing me out.
That was the first and last bar ever to toss me out.
I was old enough to remember that era distinctly and young enough that it made a difference. I was not aware of anyone who did not know who it was playing on that album. And everyone knew that Duane was playing with D&D as well.
