Derek and the Dominos

Derek and the Dominos formed in the spring of 1970 out of a touring band that already knew how to play together. Guitarist and singer Eric Clapton, keyboardist and singer Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle, and drummer Jim Gordon had all spent late 1969 and early 1970 on the road backing Delaney and Bonnie's soul-rock revue, and that shared history gave the new group an unusually tight chemistry from the start.^[1]

The band's name came together almost by accident. Backstage before their debut show at London's Lyceum Theatre on June 14, 1970, pianist Tony Ashton, who had nicknamed Clapton "Derek" during the Delaney and Bonnie tour, suggested calling the new group Derek and the Dominos. Clapton liked it immediately, even as his American bandmates worried it sounded too much like a doo-wop act.^[1] Whitlock later summed up the band's guiding idea plainly: they wanted a stripped-down rock and roll band, with no horn section and no backing singers cluttering the sound.^[1]

The group traveled to Criteria Studios in Miami in late August 1970 to record their only studio album with producer Tom Dowd. Partway through the sessions, Clapton met slide guitarist Duane Allman at an Allman Brothers Band concert and invited him to sit in. Allman ended up contributing lead and slide guitar to most of the record, and the resulting double album, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs," was released that November.^[2] Its centerpiece was Clapton's anguished, only partly disguised confession of his feelings for Pattie Boyd, the wife of his close friend George Harrison, a subject that runs through nearly every song on the record.^[2]

The album was not an immediate success. It failed to chart in Britain and only reached number sixteen in the United States, and early reviews were mixed. Its reputation grew steadily over the following years, helped along when "Layla" itself became a hit single in 1972, and the record is now regarded as one of the defining rock albums of its era.^[2]

The band did not last long enough to enjoy that reappraisal. Heavy drug use, heroin and cocaine especially, took hold during and after the Miami sessions, and Clapton's addiction deepened through the following year. Attempts to record a second album in 1971 fell apart, and Derek and the Dominos dissolved by that May, with Clapton retreating from public life for roughly three years afterward.^[3][1]