How George Harrison Inadvertently Helped Eric Clapton Write “Layla” (And No, Not Because He Was Married to Her)

Artists can influence other artists without even realizing they’re doing so, and few songs embody this invisible phenomenon quite like “Layla”, which Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon first wrote and recorded as the blues supergroup Derek and the Dominos. From the song’s inception to the driving, rock ‘n’ roll form it adopted through subsequent jam sessions, it’s hard to find a song as star-studded as “Layla”. Multiple celebrities and notable creatives played a role in the development and arrangement of this classic rock track, including George Harrison.

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Harrison influenced the track in many ways, the most obvious being that the ex-Beatle was married to the woman who inspired Clapton to write “Layla” in the first place. Clapton spent most of the 1970s in love with Harrison’s wife, English model and photographer Pattie Boyd. “Layla” was a sonic profession of this adoration, but that wasn’t the only part Harrison played in the song’s production.

According to fellow Dominos member Bobby Whitlock, the supergroup took notes from their time as Harrison’s backing band for his debut solo album, All Things Must Pass. Harrison had engineer Phil Spector record the entire sessions, not just individual takes, so that they could save any potential ideas, jam sessions, or otherwise. When it came time for Derek and the Dominos to record their debut album, Whitlock convinced Clapton to utilize the same practice.

How This Studio Trick Helped Open the Musicians up for “Layla” Recording

As most musicians who have ever recorded a song can attest, there’s a certain sense of pressure that comes with tracking one song at a time. The pregnant pause before the recording commences, the demanding tick-tick-tick of the metronome, the intrusive thoughts that scream, “don’t mess this up”…all of these factors can be the difference between a usable take and a junk one. By allowing themselves to record entire sessions, Derek and the Dominos opened themselves up to impromptu creation and expression. Had they not taken this practice from George Harrison, things might have felt much stiffer for a band that knew they didn’t have enough material when they first got to the studio.

This much-needed freedom lent itself to greater improvisation among players, and there was no collaboration more definitive for “Layla” than the one between Eric Clapton and Duane Allman. The two guitarists hit it off immediately upon meeting in 1970, and Allman was the one who came up with the distinctive riff that turned “Layla” from a wistful ballad to a bona fide rocker. “He wrote the riff,” Clapton later said of Allman, per Crossroads: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton. “I just had the main body of the song. It wasn’t enough. It needed an intro, a motif.”

Everyone in the studio knew they were breaking into something special during the making of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Engineer Tom Dowd would later recall walking out of the studio and saying, “That’s the best g**damn record I’ve made in ten years.” He added, “I was high as a kite.” Even Allman knew that he had just contributed something significant, saying, “I’m as proud of that as any album I’ve ever been on.”

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