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Derek & The Dominos

Eric Clapton's one-album band of 1970, with Duane Allman on slide guitar: a double album cut in Miami that sold slowly and became a landmark of blues rock.

Origin
England and the United States
Years active
1970-1971
Genres
blues rock, rock
Labels
Polydor, Atco
Also known as
Derek and the Dominos

Delaney & Bonnie to the Lyceum

Derek and the Dominos grew out of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, the soul-rock revue in which Eric Clapton, keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon all played. Between November 1969 and March 1970 the four toured Europe and the United States with that group and backed Clapton on his first solo album. In April 1970 Whitlock came to England and moved into Clapton's house, Hurtwood Edge, in Surrey, where the two wrote most of the new band's songs on acoustic guitars. Whitlock said they wanted a plain rock 'n' roll band, with no horns, singing back and forth the way Sam and Dave did.

In May the four reunited in London and served as the backing band on much of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass. Clapton said in 1990 that they "made our bones" on that album. The band's first show was a charity concert at the Lyceum Theatre in London on 14 June 1970, with Dave Mason as a fifth member. Four days later, at Apple Studio and with Phil Spector producing, they cut Tell the Truth and "Roll It Over". A club tour of Britain began on 1 August, with Clapton's name kept off the billing. He said some audiences were no more than fifty or sixty people.

Miami

On 23 August 1970 the band flew to Miami to record with producer Tom Dowd at Criteria Studios. Dowd was also producing the Allman Brothers Band's Idlewild South. On 26 August he took the Dominos to an Allman Brothers concert, and that night Duane Allman came back to Criteria with them. He and Clapton jammed and traded licks. Allman then played on most of the rest of the record between dates with his own band, and he turned down an offer to join the Dominos. Only three songs, recorded before he arrived, are without him: "I Looked Away", Bell Bottom Blues and "Keep on Growing".

Engineers Ron and Howard Albert kept tape rolling through whole sessions. In a cramped live room, Clapton and Allman sat side by side with small Fender Champ amps balanced on a closed, quilt-wrapped piano. Some of the record's best moments were accidents. Key to the Highway began when the band started playing along with a song they could hear from a neighboring studio, and Dowd told the engineers to roll tape. The title track was pieced together from two separate recordings, with a piano ending played by Gordon.

The record

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs came out as a double album on 9 November 1970. It reached number 16 in the United States and did not chart in Britain. The labels handed out badges reading "Derek is Eric" because the press and public were unaware of Clapton's involvement. Reviews split. Melody Maker's Roy Hollingworth heard everything from the magnificent to stretches of boredom, while Rolling Stone's Ed Leimbacher concluded it was "still one hell of an album". Robert Christgau gave it an A+ and later called it Clapton's most carefully conceived recording.

The single of "Layla" had stalled at number 51 in 1971, but a 1972 re-release of the full-length version reached number 10 in the United States and number 7 in Britain, and the album was reappraised. It joined the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000, and Rolling Stone placed it at number 226 on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums.

On the road, and after

The Dominos toured the United States from 15 October 1970, with Elton John opening. Shows at the Fillmore East on 23 and 24 October were recorded and became In Concert (1973), which reached number 20 in the United States. Allman joined them on stage for two dates in December. The band's only television appearance, on The Johnny Cash Show, was broadcast on 6 January 1971.

The Dominos broke up in London in 1971, before a second album was finished. Sessions at Olympic Studios that April and May surfaced later, some on Clapton's Crossroads box set in 1988. The 1990 box The Layla Sessions added jams and outtakes, and Live at the Fillmore followed in 1994. Clapton and Whitlock did not work together again until 2000, on the BBC's Later... with Jools Holland. When Clapton toured with Derek Trucks in the 2000s, he said it felt like being in the Dominos again, and the first half of the show was songs from Layla.

Members

Records

Songs

Eric Clapton, The Allman Brothers Band, George Harrison, Delaney & Bonnie, Jimi Hendrix

Where to go next

Reference

Discography and data

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Sources

  1. Derek and the Dominos, Wikipedia
  2. Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Wikipedia
  3. Classic Tracks: Derek & The Dominos 'Layla', Sound On Sound
  4. Derek and the Dominos, Consumer Guide, Robert Christgau
  5. The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, Rolling Stone (2020)
  6. Bobby Whitlock obituary, The Guardian (2025-08-13)
  7. Dave Mason obituary, The Guardian (2026-04-28)