Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs

I don’t think this needs to be on this list. Layla could be on a 1001 songs you need to hear before you die list…but idk I think there’s a lot of the same flavor of 70s rock on this album.

As per tradition, deducting one star for being a knob … so a solid 2 stars from me.

Eric Clapton:

“Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism. It’s much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back.”

The speech went on considerably longer.

“Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight?” he said, confrontationally. “If so, please put up your hands. So where are you? Well, wherever you are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. I don’t want you here, in the room or in my country.”

The song Layla is such a towering work on this that it's hard to think of it as more than "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs that No-One Cares About"

Some of the others - Bell Bottom Blues, Keep on Growing, Anyday, Why Does Love Got to be so Sad? - come pretty close to Layla's brilliance and I am Yours and Thorn Tree in the Garden are at least interesting near misses.

But the covers are unnecessary. When you've got Hendrix's Little Wing do you need Clapton's? Bessie Smith's Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out and Freddy King's Have You Ever Loved a Woman are not improved upon. And let's face it Keys to the Highway in one form or another is such a standard, but Bill Broonzy or Little Walter make other versions unneeded.

If you cut the covers and trimmed the jams this would make a fine dingle album, but there's quite a bit of bloat here.

3.5
Some great bits but the album (and a lot of the songs on it) just dragged on too much. Another that could have massively benefitted from a little restraint

Favorite track(s): Bell Bottom Blues, Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?, Layla

Clapton is a hack player like usual but Jim Gordon and Duane Allman hold it down.

I enjoyed this. Very strong opening but kinda lost its way a little on the middle. A strong 3.5

I really don’t like bluesy stuff and heard Layla on the radio as a kid enough times for my lifetime

I did not know that Layla wasn't an Eric Clapton solo. This is definitely an album that my parents would have played when I was growing up. Layla is one of my all time favourite songs.

overlong but most of the tracks with Duane Allman rip, an absolute virtuoso. ignore all the brave reviewers giving this one star due to Clapton's wrong headed opinions, if you're a fan of guitar music there's a lot to enjoy here. maybe 3.5

This was a combination of all the good things. Don't know if Eric Clapton is my favourite human being, but damn, this album is incredible.

YES

If you can separate the art from the artist, this album is great.

saved the best nearly for last. Layla is great, the rest is good i'd say

More showaddywaddy* than shugi oatis: white boomer blues where it’s more about showing how good a guitarist you are than anything meaningful or soulful.

I thought Yngwie Malmsteen was a dull fret masturbator, Eric Clapton somehow made even that look like a rising force.
I could not make it through this in one session - even with Layla as a carrot.

I seriously need to start tracking these classic double albums that could be a okay if it was a single - might have kept this from being 2 - but I doubt it.

* look up Leicester’s “finest” ( actually don’t) - who somehow had 10 top 10 hits - 7 year old me did love thier version of “under the moon of love”not knowing it to be the crappy camp cover it was

Nice instrumentals, vocals weren’t rlly that good. 4 is generous btw

Crazy good. authentic and raw in places, balanced and sure in others. Stands up well today as love songs and rock n roll blues. 4+

Had a couple - three whiskeys. At home listening on the old stereo.

This is truly great, and I'm sorry Clapton turned into a judgemental weirdo. Because this has a sincerity and desperation that cuts to the bone. EVERY song has the best guitar solo you've ever heard. Clapton's voice is in perfect form. He still has some George Harrison in him. And it's ALL BLUES. Bell Bottom Blues and Layla are two of the best rock songs ever written. Colossal.

That's enough, Mr. Clapton, please, no more today.

Standouts: I Looked Away • Keep On Growing • Layla

At his rare best, Clapton marries the laidback w/ the desperate, effecting a sort of soft style of yearning, a self-weakening, self-deprecating passion. I usually wouldn't go for that kind of thing, being evidence of self-pity & all the bad qualities of white-boy blues. Indeed, it's often the downfall of solo Clapton, who's as underwhelming as any proclaimed god can be. But Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs is a justified classic, Clapton's most realized work this side of what he did w/ The Bluesbreakers, & that has to do w/ the fact that he can be his casual, heartbroken self. He'll never be a big deal in my listening life, & I'll never understand what all the fuss is about. But then again, I'll never 'get' Fleetwood Mac, tho I recognize Rumours for what it is.

A crap ton of Clapton guitar noodling 🥱🙄