Derek and the Dominos

Anyone who ever said that Eric Clapton was "too technical" to jam with a soulful style can now pour themselves a nice hot cup of shut the hell up. The seventy-six minutes of studio jams (sans Phil Spector production) rock and flow as mellifluously as George Harrison's legendary "Apple Jam" from All Things Must Pass.

As a near fatality of the Wood-stock Generation's holy trinity – love, music and drugs – Eric
Clapton was more than qualified to sing the blues by 1970. Guitar-god superstardom had left
the twenty-five-year-old legend disillusioned and burnt; a smack habit and unrequited love
for Patti Boyd, the wife of his best friend, George Harrison, lent a hard dose of real-world
suffering. Searching for solace, Clapton expressed his pain in fourteen lengthy t... More >

Sloughing off the myth of the album as artistic unit and denying proven spendthrifts a face-saving shred of consumerly discrimination, CD boxes are invariably about marketing rather than music. But this triple smells. Supposedly necessitated by the slovenliness of Layla's first digital remix, still for sale as a "special-price" double-CD even though the same material squeezes onto one disc here, it pretends that Eric Clapton's finest pickup band--which as the notes inadvertently remind us begat George Harrison's endless All Things Must Pass (you remember "Apple Jam," now don't you?)--deserves the kind of genius treatment that's dubious even with great jazz improvisors. And since it unearths not much Duane Allman (no surprise, since he barely met the band), it cheats on the dueling-guitars fireworks that made Layla explode. This is pop, gang--arrangements matter. Outtakes are outtakes because the keepers are better. Jams take too long to get anywhere worth going. And when a mix trades raunch for definition, the exchange is usually moot. (Grade - B-)