Two legendary albums recorded in the same year using the same musicians, but released by completely different artists... Such an abundance of musical riches could have happened only in the early 1970s, before rock became corporate and was still in a state of communal bliss.
We are talking, of course, about George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and Derek and the Dominos’ Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs. The two albums were created simultaneously, with the latter’s recording sessions taking place while Harrison was in the final stages of completing his first post-Beatles’ solo work.
It’s well known that Derek and the Dominos grew out of Harrison's backing band for All Things Must Pass. The Dominos — Eric Clapton, Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon — were among the many musicians who played on Harrison’s triple-LP magnum opus. Having just completed work on Clapton’s self-titled solo album that March, they joined the former Beatle in May to begin work on what turned out to be a three-album set, comprising two albums of new songs and a bonus disc of studio jams, dubbed Apple Jam.
On August 23, as work continued on Harrison’s album, Clapton, Whitlock, Radle and Gordon flew to Miami to begin work on their own debut, with Tom Dowd producing. But as Whitlock explained in an interview for the 40th anniversary edition of Layla, they had next to nothing to record.
“We didn’t have enough songs for one album, let alone a double,” Whitlock recalled.
He and Clapton had written some songs together the previous spring, before they worked on Harrison’s album. As Whitlock recalled, they had three originals: “I Looked Away,” “Anyway” and “Tell the Truth.”
But Whitlock had an idea that he managed to sell to Clapton. Throughout the recording of All Things Must Pass, producer Phil Spector kept the tape running. As a result, he captured many of the extended jams that took place between songs and during rehearsals. A selection of those were presented — including two from a June 18 session that marked the official formation Derek and the Dominos — on the Apple Jam bonus disc.
‘Keep the tape running!’ — that’s the one thing we did get from Phil Spector. He got all those jams on ‘All Things Must Pass.’”
— Bobby Whitlock
“‘Keep the tape running!’ — that’s the one thing we did get from Phil Spector,” Whitlock said, noting that was how the producer “got all those jams on All Things Must Pass.
“Eric and I discussed it and decided to also keep the tape running on our sessions, no matter what happened and who came in. That’s how we wound up with all those jams and alternate masters and stuff,” which were included in subsequent reissues.
Once Duane Allman joined the band’s sessions, the jams really came to life, with Clapton and Allman playing off each other like a pair of seasoned blues musicians.
“Eric and Duane just went off like a firecracker,” the late Butch Trucks, drummer for the Allman Brothers Band, recalled. “You could tell it was like long-lost brothers had found each other.”
Whitlock saw that bond up close, both in the studio and away.
“They were like two old, sage Black blues guys talking it over with a bottle of whisky, and then playing the music, right there,” he said of an impromptu gathering with Allman that took place in Clapton’s hotel room following one of their sessions. “It was the one time I felt truly privileged to be there, at the right time, the right place, and in the right frame of mind.”
In an era when listeners craved hearing guitarists rip it up together and play off one another, albums like Layla and Apple Jam were satisfying audio documents of those raw, unrehearsed moments where magic happens when the tape is rolling.
