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190 of 217 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Have You Ever Loved A Woman, December 5, 2003
Rolling Stone Magazine recently devoted a whole issue to the 500 best albums of all time. I was stunned that this album did not appear at least in the top 10. It drives me to drink that there are millions of rock fans out there who don't even know this music exists.It is well known what the back-story is for this record. Clapton fell for George Harrison's wife, Patty. They had a fling and then she turned her back on him. The resulting emotional devastation for Clapton wound up expressed as these songs. When the original album came out, we knew none of this. For the first couple of years, Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs was overlooked not only because the public didn't know the story but also because most didn't even know Eric Clapton played on it. But on first listen, we knew "something" happened. For all we knew, some girl who worked in a teashop could have dumped him. It didn't matter. Something real and wretched happened-this wasn't show business. Most women, unfortunately, do not know men can feel this way this deeply. This is not to fault them. They simply fall into the common human mistake of assuming that if men do not express it then they do not feel it. Most men know well that these "blues" are all too real-they just rarely speak of them among themselves. Sometimes they can pretend they are immune to them. But deep down men know that "that certain woman" can destroy them. For all too many the only way we can talk about these things is through the anesthesia of intoxication. While it is true that we often drink to forget, just as often we drink to remember because it is only with a numbness that we can deal and look at what's eating us. So it was with Clapton. He was taking large amount of drugs during the making of this album-heroin being just one. Some argue that it was only through the haze of drugs and alcohol that Layla could be made. Maybe yes. Maybe no. But even if were true that Layla had to have the "blessing" of intoxication to be made, it does not explain why this music is so beautiful. I have listened to this album ever since 1971. Along the way, every single song at one time or another has become my favorite. "I Looked Away" is the nice, gentle quiet before the storm. It is deceptively a "light" beginning; but it immediately tells the listener what's going on. "Bell Bottom Blues" is more dynamic but interestingly many dismiss it the first couple of listens. Upon repeated hearings one becomes aware just how much this song "cooks". Thematically, I would argue that Clapton's story is first summed up here. "Keep On Growing" seems to a positive, exciting "rave-up" except a few notes of self-doubt which seep in. The end of the first LP side of the album is wrapped up with "Nobody Know You When You're Down And Out". Compared to "Keep On Growing", "Nobody Knows You..." is more somber. It is a blues musing on how as times are good and bad friends come and go and after a while one is no longer so certain what those "friends" are worth. Side Two begins with "I Am Yours", an acoustic pleading that in spite the loved one's coldness the singers love still flows from the heart. This followed by "Anyday". I am surprised how many people do not care for this song; but you would have to have a heart of stone not the feel the combination of hope and anguish as the refrain is repeated: The second side finishes a long version of "Key To The Highway" and the third side opens with "Tell The Truth". These two songs may seem to have little to do with the main story until one recognizes that both deal with "leaving". The album then continues with "Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad". While good in its own way, this version seems to be a mere blueprint to the extended one which appears on the In Concert album: one of the all too few examples of where the "live" version is much better than the original. The third side concludes with "Have You Ever Loved A Woman". A sort of mediation and prayer over a love in which "the water is wide...I can't cross o'er". It seems it's all over. But there's more. The fourth side opens with "Little Wing". Clapton worshiped the ground Hendrix walked on and he cried at Hendrix passing not because he left but because Hendrix didn't take Clapton with him. So it has been all the more surprising and delightful that Clapton took Hendrix' sad, quiet and gentle song and made it raw, emotional and thunderous. It is a successful example of two contrary emotions being expressed at the same time: the lyrics are worshipping and loving while the music is heartbreaking and cries of desperation. "It's Too Late" is a relatively simply and "clean" realization that "that one last chance" is gone. It is a little gem. Then we end with "Layla". "Layla" restates the story of the whole album and begs the lost love to take the singer back. "Layla" ends with a dreamy, grand instrumental suggesting a sweet reconciliation of the two lovers. The time of distress and torment is over. But with "Thorn Tree In The Garden" we realize that dreamy reconciliation existed only in the hopes of the singer. It is a new day and our lover is still gone. This is one of the greatest rock and roll records ever made. Do yourself a favor and get it. Listen to it a lot. Make it yours. You will love it. And then maybe after twenty years you'll begin to understand it. May you never have to experience something like it for yourself someday.
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84 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Consummate blues, born out of the pain of unfulfilled love., August 27, 2001
"Have you ever loved a woman, so much you're tremblin' in pain, and all the time you know she bears another man's name - but you just love that woman so much, it's a shame and a sin ... and all the time you know she belongs to your very best friend!" If you'd never heard this album's title track, you would swear that "Have You Ever Loved A Woman" was the song that Eric Clapton wrote for Pattie Boyd Harrison; not only do the lyrics of Billy Myles' blues classic fit so perfectly, Clapton positively pours his heart out as he sings them, and his guitar screams with the pain of unrequited love. And even before get to this song, Clapton's own "Bell Bottom Blues" lays bare similar feelings and recalls his infamous heroin ultimatum to Pattie ("Either you come with me or I'll take that"): "Do you wanna see me crawl across the floor to you? Do you wanna hear me beg you to take me back?" And as the man pleads with her, so does his guitar, and you wonder what woman could possibly have resisted such an impassioned plea.
Until of course, almost at the end of the album, you hear "Layla," this record's motto more than a simple title track and, in many respects, its reason for being. Torn by personal insecurity, Clapton used the cover and seeming anonymity of yet another band, and the parable of a medieval Persian love story ("Layla and Majnun" - reportedly, "majnun," in Persian, means madman) to put into music what he couldn't put into words alone. From its opening riff to its last note the song is pure blues, Clapton audibly on the brink of the madness he sings about, and his guitar wailing, moaning and crying out all that was in his heart: "Layla ... you got me on my knees - Layla ... I'm begging darling, please - Layla ... won't you ease my worry now?" Sparks must have been flying in the studio while Eric Clapton and Duane Allman, recruited by manager Tom Dowd to add inspiration and take some of the lead guitar weight off Clapton's shoulders, drove each other to ever greater heights, simultaneously feeding off and to each other.
Like most of the album, "Layla" was recorded live in the studio, and only a live recording could transmit this feverish outbreak of passion. Merely listening to the song is emotionally exhausting, and you can only imagine what must have gone on in the studio and inside Clapton during its recording. To hear the Allman Brothers' drummer Butch Trucks tell the story (in an interview for "Off the Record"), Duane Allman gave "Layla" its finishing touch when he added the five notes immediately following its signature riff. Yet, Allman is not credited as a writer (if that story is true, though, how much more than those five notes would it have taken I wonder?); only drummer Jim Gordon is, for having written the song's piano closing - which he had to be persuaded to allow to be used.
While Eric Clapton continued to perform the song unaltered for years after its initial recording, he spontaneously decided to include it in the setlist of his MTV "Unplugged" appearance where, deprived of all its riffs, even its signature beginning toned down to a few simple notes, and Clapton's voice unexpectedly reflective, Layla assumed a different personality although not a word of the lyrics was altered. Yet, just as Eric Clapton's and Pattie Boyd's marriage was over by then, Layla was now less an object of burning desire than somebody the singer thought about - thought back to maybe, or sought a conversation with, possibly cautioning her about the consequences of her actions, or recalling his experiences with her: "What will you do when you get lonely, no one waiting by your side? You've been running, hiding much too long - you know it's just your foolish pride ..." And although Clapton has gone back to performing the song in its "plugged in" version during his recent tour in promotion of "Reptile," he has confined himself to talking only about its musical values, commenting on the technical difficulties of playing riffs and chords that are virtually opposite to what you are singing in an interview for the "Reptile" tour's official program.
Besides Eric Clapton and late addition Duane Allman, Derek And The Dominos consisted of the musicians "left over" by the breakup of Delaney and Bonnie, with whom Clapton had briefly found shelter after yet another supergroup of his (Blind Faith) had disintegrated way too quickly: Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon. Like virtually all of Eric Clapton's albums, solo as well as with his various bands, this record combines material written by Clapton himself and covers of songs he liked; and of course, there is much more to it than "Layla," "Have You Ever Loved A Woman" and "Bell Bottom Blues." As always, Clapton makes his mark with every song alike, and as always, he needs and has found (or Tom Dowd found for him) a cast of outstanding musicians to work with. Segar/Bronzy's "Key to the Highway" becomes an extended blues jam session as there ever was one, and Jimmie Cox's "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" forecasts the feelings which, among other things, later compelled Clapton to establish the Crossroads foundation.
Eric Clapton has said about Derek And The Dominos in the interview for the "Reptile" tour program: "[That] was a band I really liked - and it's almost like I wasn't in that band. It's just a band that I'm a fan of. Sometimes, my own music can be like that. When it's served its purpose to being good music, I don't associate myself with it any more. It's like someone else. It's easy to do those songs then." Hearing the raging pain of "Layla"'s original recording, you wonder whether this is maybe also the only way for him to do it now ... at least "plugged in."
Also recommended:
Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert
Crossroads
Unplugged
One More Car: One More Rider (CD & DVD Set)
Riding with the King
The Allman Brothers at Fillmore East
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clapton's Magnum Opus, August 8, 2002
After wrapping up his first solo album early in 1970, Eric Clapton pulled together the core of his session musicians -- Carl Radle, Bobby Whitlock and Jim Gordon -- to create Derek & the Dominos. Later, Duane Allman temporarily signed on too, and this monumental album was the result.LAYLA really is a concept album of sorts. He wrote and recorded it at a time when he was desperately in love with Patti Boyd Harrison, wife of his best friend George Harrison. (That was one strange friendship). Almost every song brims with a kind of determination and passion that Clapton has rarely shown before or since. "Bell Bottom Blues" and the title track "Layla" are raging epics of love. The cover songs, especially "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," and "Key to the Highway," are chock full of invigorating instrumental interludes. It's as if Clapton's and Allman's guitars are talking to one another. Then there is the cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing." Hendrix passed away around the time this album was recorded. It was actually one of his more subdued songs, but the Dominos turned it into a roaring and moving tribute. Yet through it all, it's Bobby Whitlock's acoustic solo ballad "Thorn Tree in the Garden" that puts the icing on the cake. In the summer of 1970, the Dominos worked as session musicians on yet another classic album: George Harrison's ALL THINGS MUST PASS. Clapton's CROSSROADS box set has a couple of outtakes from those sessions. One is a song called "Roll It Over" which was written by Clapton and Whitlock featuring Harrison and Dave Mason on guitars and backing vocals. The other is an early incarnation of "Tell the Truth" that was performed at a faster tempo than the LAYLA version. CROSSROADS also has five tracks from the Dominos' abortive second album. The more dedicated Clapton fans might want to look into these to get a more fully rounded view of this prime phase of his career.
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