“Layla” by Derek and the Dominos

"Layla" is the thirteenth track on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, the only studio album Derek and the Dominos ever made, released in 1970, and it's Eric Clapton pouring out a desperate, forbidden love and daring you not to feel it. He wrote it with drummer Jim Gordon, the pair writing its contrasting sections separately, and the joins only make it more dramatic: a snarling, frantic guitar charge that gives way to a long, aching instrumental coda.

The story behind it is pure romantic agony. Ian Dallas had given Clapton a copy of Nizami Ganjavi's 12th-century poem The Story of Layla and Majnun, drawn from a 7th-century Persian tale of a young man driven mad by love, and Clapton saw himself in it. He was hopelessly in love with Pattie Boyd, who was married to his friend George Harrison. (After Harrison and Boyd divorced, she and Clapton did marry.)

The band produced it themselves, with Tom Dowd as executive producer, and the players are on fire: Clapton and Duane Allman's guitars tangling and crying, Carl Radle on bass, Bobby Whitlock on organ, piano and vocals, Gordon on drums and percussion. It charted in 1972, charted again 20 years later as an acoustic Clapton Unplugged performance that won the 1993 Grammy for Best Rock Song, and Rolling Stone put it at 27 on its 2004 list of the 500 greatest songs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.