Background and formation , a soul band fronted by
Delaney and
Bonnie Bramlett. Derek and the Dominos came about through its four members' involvement in the American
soul revue
Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. The group were anchored by the musical duo
Delaney and
Bonnie Bramlett with a rotating ensemble of supporting members. Delaney & Bonnie and Friends supported
Blind Faith,
Eric Clapton's short-lived supergroup with
Steve Winwood, on a US tour in the summer of 1969. While on that tour, Clapton was drawn to Delaney & Bonnie's relative anonymity, which he found more appealing than the excessive fan worship lavished on his own band. In addition, the entire band backed him on his debut solo album,
Eric Clapton, Gordon, Radle and other Friends personnel, including drummer
Jim Keltner, immediately joined
Joe Cocker's
Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour with
Leon Russell, but Whitlock remained with Delaney and Bonnie for a short time. Whitlock travelled to England to visit Clapton. Whitlock subsequently lived in Hurtwood Edge, Clapton's house in
Surrey, where the two musicians
jammed and began to write the bulk of the Dominos' catalogue on acoustic guitars. Many of the new songs reflected Clapton's growing infatuation with
Pattie Boyd, who had joined Clapton as a guitarist on Delaney & Bonnie's European tour in December 1969. Soon after Whitlock's arrival, he and Clapton were eager to form a new band and contacted Radle and Gordon in the United States. Although their first choice for a drummer was Keltner – like Radle and Russell, a native of Tulsa – he was busy recording with
jazz guitarist
Gábor Szabó. before going on to serve as the backing band on much of Harrison's album. Clapton and Whitlock considered adding the Delaney & Bonnie
horn section to their new band, but this plan was abandoned.
Concert debut Towards the end of the sessions for the basic tracks on
All Things Must Pass, – joined the Dominos at Clapton's home. With the lineup expanded to a five-piece band, Derek and the Dominos gave their debut live performance on 14 June 1970. The event was a charity concert in aid of the
Dr Spock Civil Liberties Legal Defence Fund, held at London's
Lyceum Theatre. The group had been billed as "Eric Clapton and Friends", but a discussion ensued backstage just before their appearance, with Harrison and pianist
Tony Ashton among those involved, in an effort to find a proper band name. having taken to calling the guitarist "Derek" or "Del" since the Delaney & Bonnie tour the previous year. The reception afforded the band from critics and fans was mixed. Together with the unfavourable reviews for Clapton's eponymous solo album, particularly in Britain, this reaction was reflective of a widespread reluctance to view Clapton as a singer and frontman, rather than as the virtuoso guitarist synonymous with his role in bands such as
Cream and
The Yardbirds. In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton wrote that his main recollection of the Lyceum show was consulting
New Orleans–born musician
Dr. John, a self-styled practitioner of
voodoo, and receiving a package made of straw that would serve as a means of winning Boyd's affection.
Recording with Phil Spector In return for the Dominos' assistance on
All Things Must Pass, Clapton and Harrison had agreed that the latter's co-producer,
Phil Spector, would produce a single for the new group. On 18 June, the five band members, together with Harrison on guitar, took part in a session for the single at the Beatles'
Apple Studio in central London. With Spector producing, two Clapton–Whitlock compositions were recorded that day – "
Tell the Truth" and "Roll It Over" After this London session, Mason departed from the lineup; he later told
Melody Maker that he was impatient to see the band start working full-time whereas Clapton was committed to helping Harrison complete
All Things Must Pass. Clapton and Whitlock then contributed to the
overdubbing phase of Harrison's album, including adding backing vocals with Harrison (as "the George O'Hara-Smith Singers") to tracks such as "
All Things Must Pass" and "
Awaiting on You All". In addition, while continuing to rehearse at Hurtwood Edge, all four band members participated in London sessions for Dr. John's album
The Sun, Moon & Herbs (1971).
UK summer tour Early in the summer of 1970, Clapton asked former
Apple Records employee Chris O'Dell to find accommodation for Whitlock, Gordon and Radle in
central London, telling O'Dell that they were "going bonkers" out in the Surrey countryside. The band then moved into a two-storey flat at 33
Thurloe Place, close to
South Kensington tube station. The flat also served as a meeting place for Clapton and Boyd, who found herself flattered by Clapton's attention in light of her husband's infidelities In his autobiography, Clapton wrote that he was both inspired and "tormented" by his feelings for Boyd, which he channelled into his music, beginning with a UK tour by Derek and the Dominos. For three weeks from 1 August, the group performed in clubs and other small venues in Britain, where Clapton chose to play anonymously, still weary from the fame that he felt had plagued Cream and Blind Faith. Admission for the shows was set at £1, and clauses in the contract with each venue stipulated that Clapton's name was not to be used as a crowd-puller. Shapiro writes that the band had "made great strides" since the Lyceum concert; covers of
Billy Myles' "
Have You Ever Loved a Woman" and
Jimi Hendrix's "
Little Wing", and songs such as "Bottle of Red Wine" and "Don't Know Why", Clapton has said of this UK tour, "no one knew who we were, and I loved it. I loved the fact that we were this little quartet, playing in obscure places, sometimes to audiences of no more than fifty or sixty people." sessions took place at
Criteria Studios for what became the double album
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. On 26 August, Dowd, who was also producing
the Allman Brothers Band's album
Idlewild South, took the Dominos to an Allman Brothers concert, where Clapton, already a fan of the Nashville-born guitarist, first heard
Duane Allman play in person. After Clapton invited the whole band back to Criteria that night, he and Allman formed an instant bond that provided the catalyst for the
Layla album. Allman's
slide guitar playing elevated the album's
blues covers, Clapton invited him to become a member of Derek and the Dominos, The album's best-known track, "Layla", was compiled from recordings from two separate sessions. The main, guitar-oriented section was taped on 9 September, after the band had recorded their version of Hendrix's "Little Wing"; the closing section was added several weeks later, after Clapton had decided that the song lacked a suitable ending. The answer was an elegiac piano piece composed by Gordon (and an uncredited
Rita Coolidge) Whitlock recalled of their drug consumption during the tour: "We didn't have little bits of anything. There were no grams around, let's just put it like that. Tom couldn't believe it, the way we had these big bags laying out everywhere. I'm almost ashamed to tell it, but it's the truth. It was scary, what we were doing, but we were just young and dumb and didn't know.
Cocaine and
heroin, that's all and
Johnny Walker."
Elton John, who opened for them, said that despite the reports of drugs and booze, "They were phenomenal. From the side of the stage, I took mental notes of their performance ... it was their keyboard player Bobby Whitlock that I watched like a hawk ... You watched and you learned, from people that had more experience than you." In 1973, a live double album, titled
In Concert, was released, culled from the band's October 1970 shows at the
Fillmore East in
New York City. Six of the recordings from that album were digitally remastered, remixed and expanded with additional material from the same shows to become
Live at the Fillmore, released in 1994.
Album release Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs was issued in November 1970. According to Shapiro, relative to the band and Dowd's high expectations, it was a "critical and commercial flop". Although it received favourable reviews in
Rolling Stone and
The Village Voice, the album missed the top ten in the United States and failed to chart at all in the United Kingdom, until a reissue on CD resulted in a one-week stay at number 68 in 2011. It garnered little attention, partly as a result of a lack of promotion by
Polydor, and partly due to the public's ignorance of Clapton's presence in the band. Dowd said that he "felt it was the best album I'd been involved with since
The Genius of Ray Charles" and was disappointed at the lack of acclaim it initially received. The success of the title track in 1972 led to a reappraisal of
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. It has since received widespread critical acclaim and has been ranked among the best albums of all time by
VH1 (at number 89) and
Rolling Stone (number 115).
Layla is considered one of Clapton's most outstanding achievements.
Tragedy and dissolution Tragedy and misfortune dogged the group throughout and following its brief career. In September 1970, Clapton was devastated by the death of his friend and professional rival Jimi Hendrix; having just recorded a version of "Little Wing" in Miami, the Dominos included the track on
Layla as a tribute to Hendrix. In October 1971, Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident. Clapton later wrote in his autobiography that he and Allman had been inseparable during the sessions at Criteria. In addition, Clapton took the lukewarm critical and commercial reception to
Layla personally, which accelerated his spiral into drug addiction and depression. In 1985 when talking about the band, Clapton said: In February 1971, Radle and Gordon participated in sessions, produced by Spector and Harrison, for a
planned solo album by
Ronnie Spector. Later that year, the Dominos disbanded acrimoniously in London, just before they could complete their second LP. In a subsequent interview with music critic
Robert Palmer, Clapton said the second album "broke down halfway through because of the paranoia and tension. And the band just dissolved." This three-year career hiatus was interrupted only by his participation in Harrison's
Concert for Bangladesh shows in August 1971, along with a large cast of musicians, including Leon Russell, Keltner and Radle; a guest appearance at Russell's December 1971 show at London's
Rainbow Theatre; and his own
Rainbow Concert, in January 1973. The latter event was organised by
Pete Townshend of
The Who to help Clapton kick his drug habit and build momentum for his return. Whitlock signed with the US record label
ABC-Dunhill, for which he recorded the albums
Bobby Whitlock and
Raw Velvet. Both albums were released in 1972 and included contributions from all the Dominos (recorded in early 1971), along with Harrison, the Bramletts, Keltner, and the former Delaney & Bonnie horn section. Following Clapton's return as a solo artist in 1974, he and Radle worked together until 1979, when Clapton abruptly dismissed him from his band. Radle died in June 1980 of complications from a kidney infection associated with alcohol and drug use. Whitlock and Clapton did not work together again until 2000, when they performed on
Jools Holland's BBC show
Later... with Jools Holland. In 1983, Gordon, who had undiagnosed
schizophrenia at the time, killed his mother with a hammer during a psychotic episode. He was confined to a mental institution in 1984, until his death in 2023. Recordings from the 1971 sessions for the band's cancelled second album were included on Clapton's four-CD/cassette box set
Crossroads, released in 1988. It meant that Eric Clapton was the sole surviving member of the band. ==Band members==