Layla is Eric Clapton’s signature song, and the centerpiece of his greatest album by far. Clapton proves the adage that you’ve got to suffer to play the blues. All I can say is that booze, heroin, and suffering led to a helluva album featuring, of course, the guitar work of the late, great Duane Allman.
There’s another story that’s less well known, the selection of the cover art:
The album cover is a painting by French artist, Frandsen De Schonberg. The painter was the father of a friend whose house the band had stayed in when playing in France. Clapton chose this particular painting for the album cover because it reminded him of Pattie Boyd-Harrison, the inspiration for the title song. Eric Clapton had fallen madly in love with friend George Harrison’s wife and her rejection is at least partially credited with pushing Clapton into his heroin addiction. Ironically, the couple married in 1979, but Pattie divorced Clapton in 1988 as a result of his heroin addiction and alcoholism.
It was relatively easy to find a good scan of the cover, but that was not the case with the back cover or the interior photo montage. In short, I muddled through.
Here’s the back cover:
Here’s the interior gatefold:
Finally, the whole consarn album:
