Even in the 1960s there were rules. Of sorts. There was a new morality, which was to some extent a vast immorality as ‘free love’ (read: free sex) became the slogan of the era. Now you always have to pay for love. One way or another.

I’ve been watching the Eric Clapton rockumentary. It’s brilliant. He’s brilliant. Was, is and always will be. I only watch it in small doses because although Mel is interested in such things, a 10-minute Ginger Baker drum solo during a Cream gig is probably more than she wants to endure. To me its like watching Glen Hoddle’s greatest goals.

Eric had a problem. He was madly in love. With Patti Boyd. Who, unfortunately for him, was married to his best mate, George Harrison. So he did what any decent person would do and got hooked on any/all the drugs he could find. And in the 60s and 70s, he could find plenty. And then he was ‘cured’ by substituting them with alcohol. Which was deemed ‘much better’ but is in fact ‘much worse’ as its available everywhere, its legal and totally acceptable, until you’re finishing a bottle of brandy before breakfast.

So Eric wrote a song for Patti. In fact he wrote a whole album dedicated to her, but Layla, his pet name for her, was his heart-felt outpouring of emotion. And because Eric was and always will be, first and foremost, a blues artist, and blues is synonymous with pain and suffering, and because Eric is possibly the most emotive guitarist that ever lived, (I don’t have to apologise to BB King or Jimi Hendrix), ‘Layla’ has to be the finest love song ever written. And there have been many.

Layla has a ‘hook’. The opening riff is so powerful, so recognisable, so intense as it repeats through the song, that I need just 3 of those 7 notes to start crying. So whilst ‘unchained melody’ is sublime and ‘ain’t no mountain high enough’, immensely bold, and ‘when a man loves a woman’ just reduces prop forwards to pulp, Layla just is the one. Endless Love makes me want to be sick. Anything that will make it stop. But I also love ‘you look wonderful tonight’, also by Eric, and ‘while my guitar gently weeps’, the George Harrison number on which Eric played the guitar in that way he does.

Eric eventually got together with Patti, and they married in 1979. Ahhhhhhh. Then divorced in 1989. Awwwwwww. But the song endured way longer. There’s a message there somewhere but you need to be cleverer than me to read it.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx