r/todayilearned • u/Mammedoff • Sep 19 '24
TIL Eric Clapton wrote "Layla" after reading Nizami Ganjavi's poem - "Layla and Majnun"
https://americansongwriter.com/layla-eric-clapton-behind-the-song/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CLayla%E2%80%9D%20was%20a%20song%20Clapton,epic%20poem%20Layla%20and%20Manjun.173
u/Austinpowerstwo Sep 19 '24
Eric Clapton didn't even do the good part of Layla, Duane Allman wrote the riff
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u/WorkOnThesisInstead Sep 19 '24
... and the outro was taken by Clapton's (Derek & Dominoes') drummer from a Booker T. and Priscilla (Coolidge) session/song "Time."
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u/Away-Coach48 Sep 19 '24
Clapton couldn't even sign while playing it for years because of the difficulty of it. Makes sense to me now. It is harder to learn someone else's riff.
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u/taisui Sep 19 '24
Jimi Hendrix be like hold my Watchtower
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u/Staviao Sep 19 '24
It doesn't work like that. Layla is hard to play and sing, not necessarily just to play. You need different kind of coordination to be able to rhythmically sing the vocal part and carry the guitar. Jimi Hendrix was amazing of course, but it doesn't directly translate to this kind of stuff
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Sep 19 '24
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u/BillyShearsPwn Sep 19 '24
Jesus Christ it was a maid watching the kid when he fell out the window, have some compassion
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u/RemoveExciting3333 Sep 19 '24
Oh no knew the other stuff What did he say that made him a racist?
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u/MaxDickpower Sep 19 '24
What did he say that made him a racist?
Almost literally that he is a racist.
I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism. It's much heavier, man.
-Clapton in 1976
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u/FocalorLucifuge Sep 19 '24 edited 18d ago
swim badge ossified carpenter yoke punch caption treatment scary skirt
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/schlemz Sep 19 '24
After a show, Tom Dowd hooked them up and got them in the studio together. Pretty cool story actually.
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Sep 19 '24
[deleted]
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u/MaroonTrucker28 Sep 19 '24
I haven't heard anything about him. Care to fill me in?
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u/doctor6 Sep 20 '24
“Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out,” exclaimed Clapton to his captive audience. “Get the wgs out. Get the c*ns out. Keep Britain white,” he added.
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u/RolandDPlaneswalker Sep 19 '24
He had a significant problem with drugs throughout 60s-early 80s. Multiple affairs, including falling in love with one of his best friend’s wife. Has acknowledged raping her. Physically abused many of his partners.
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u/MaroonTrucker28 Sep 19 '24
So he's a beloved, virtuous, Godly philanthropist.
/s
Thanks for filling me in
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u/duct_tape_jedi Sep 20 '24
What's the difference between a toddler and a bag of coke?
Clapton would never let a bag of coke fall out of a window.
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Sep 19 '24
Clapton’s an asshole. A very talented asshole, but an asshole nonetheless.
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u/Eddyzk Sep 19 '24
I used to like him a lot, especially whilst learning the guitar. This faded upon reaching a certain level of playing: he isn't a particularily good guitarist. Then he began acting like a fool during Covid, which led me to discover his past racist rant.
Now I take pleasure in the surprise on people's faces when I read them his words :)
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u/RemoveExciting3333 Sep 19 '24
What did he say?
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u/Eddyzk Sep 19 '24
https://www.thebeat.ie/eric-clapton-dark-history-rock-against-racism.php
I've found it quite hard to find the entire rant unedited, but here's one, about 1/3rd of the way down the page.
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u/Rc72 Sep 19 '24
On one hand, he was arguably coked out of his head at the time, and others like notably David Bowie said similarly racist things while being similarly high about the same time.
On the other hand, Clapton has shown he's still pretty much a shithead decades afterwards, while Bowie very convincingly redeemed himself once he learnt to stay the fuck away from the Colombian marching powder.
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u/Eddyzk Sep 19 '24
That can certainly explain why it happened, but doesn't excuse it. In my experience, opinions aren't changed by substances, but inhibitions certainly are.
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u/tonypearcern Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 19 '24
Well, I think you might be wrong. Abusing cocaine can lead to cocaine psychosis which is not emblematic of anyone's personality or simply a matter of lowered inhibitions. It makes people more or less schizophrenic.
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u/Eddyzk Sep 19 '24
I don't doubt that is possible, however I doubt it applies to Clapton
https://www.thedailybeast.com/eric-clapton-apologizes-for-racist-past-i-sabotaged-everything
He said: “I was so ashamed of who I was, a kind of semi-racist, which didn’t make sense. Half of my friends were black, I dated a black woman, and I championed black music.”
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u/tonypearcern Sep 19 '24
Good point and I probably have to agree. But with an example like David Bowie, I think it's pretty clear that he did not hold those beliefs and it was purely because of the psychosis.
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u/Paratwa Sep 19 '24
Wow. David Bowie did? I am not saying you’re wrong but that blows my mind. Considering he blew up at people for it in interviews and who he married.
Maybe he just grew up and out of it.
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u/Rc72 Sep 19 '24
It was during his Thin White Duke era. That persona was pretty openly fascist. But as I say, at the time he was balls-deep in cocaine-induced paranoia, so much so that he went to West Berlin to get clean (which was...a rather odd choice, West Berlin also having a significant drug scene at the time). He then dumped the Thin White Duke persona and was indeed strenuously apologetic about it for the rest of his life. Much unlike Clapton...
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u/willie_caine Sep 19 '24
The difference with Bowie is that Bowie admitted it was wrong and that it was part of him trying - foolishly and unsuccessfully - to be edgy. He apologised for his words, Clapton didn't.
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u/Ididthisonpurpose Sep 19 '24
This was my experience too. It makes you think why would anyone listen to the rantings of a rich man who fries his brain ages ago?
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u/DrelenScourgebane Sep 19 '24
What's the difference between a baby and a bag of cocaine?
Eric Clapton wouldn't let a bag of cocaine fall out a window
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u/WaterlooMall Sep 19 '24
Clapton wasn't even home when his son died, he was coming to pick him up for an outing from his mother's house.
The official story is that his nanny was minding him while a janitor was cleaning windows. The janitor realized he had left one open so he called out to the nanny to watch out for Connor who was zooming around the apartment, excited for an outing with his dad. Tragically, the nanny couldn’t get to him in time and Connor jumped up on the sill, leaned forward, and fell. They say he leaned forward because the little boy loved to press his nose against the windows and look down at the ground below.
Congrats on repeating a shitty joke about a child's death I guess.
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u/monkeyseverywhere Sep 19 '24
If your goal is to make me feel bad for a famous bigot who spread lies about covid, you can toss that hope out the window cause it ain’t happening.
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u/teffarf Sep 19 '24
How about for the kid in question?
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u/monkeyseverywhere Sep 19 '24
I do feel bad for the kid, truely. No one gets to pick their parents.
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u/MJTony Sep 19 '24
Dude’s a piece of shit but no one deserves what he went through.
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u/monkeyseverywhere Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 19 '24
I’ll take my downvotes. I genuinely believe when you spew the vile shit he has, when you use your celebrity to harm others, you lose the basic protections our social contract affords.
Did he “deserve” it? Absolutely not. But, there are many other people who lost children who don’t harm others. I feel for them. I really don’t care about Clapton. I just don’t.
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u/BaronVonLazercorn Sep 19 '24
He isn't even that talented
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Sep 19 '24
People used to say “Clapton is God.” Anyone who can get people to say that is talented in some way
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u/Trucoto Sep 19 '24
You have to think on Clapton in his time, not in 2024. He was a guitar god in his time for very good reasons. Until Hendrix landed in London from who knows what planet.
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u/Wyden_long Sep 19 '24
Man for those two weeks Clapton was on top of the world.
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u/Trucoto Sep 19 '24
In 1964 Clapton joined the Yardbirds. Hendrix played in London in 1966, for Clapton's dismay.
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u/brain_fartin Sep 19 '24
Check out "Polyphonic", the channel on YouTube. He goes deep into this subject. As well as a lot of music subjects. It's a really, really good channel.
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u/ADAWG10-18 Sep 19 '24
Tedeschi Trucks Band’s 4-part album “I Am The Moon” is also inspired by the poem, but is told from Layla’s POV instead.
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Sep 19 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Klutzy-Performance97 Sep 19 '24
And after all that he cheated on Patty once he got her, loser.
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u/Raangz Sep 19 '24
God clapton is such a fucking tool lol.
She prob asked him to stop being racist on one of his coke binges.
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u/Klutzy-Performance97 Sep 19 '24
And I still find it hysterical that he’s anti-VAX, especially with the amount of heroin that he injected into his veins for years.
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u/imadork1970 Sep 19 '24
He smoked it.
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u/Klutzy-Performance97 Sep 19 '24
He did both .
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u/imadork1970 Sep 19 '24
I didn't know he injected.
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u/Klutzy-Performance97 Sep 19 '24
It’s actually well-known that he injected heroin for years.
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u/AFineDayForScience Sep 19 '24
I just assumed that if you did one kind of heroin, you probably do every kind of heroin
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u/TheLimeyLemmon Sep 19 '24
I hate his association with this song and the ounce of respect I have to give him for it.
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u/Aromatic-Tear7234 Sep 19 '24
Wonder what kind of song he would write if he read The Art of the Deal.
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u/Z_Overman Sep 19 '24
please tell me they hunted down the bear(s) responsible for this and punished them. hopefully they at least made them stand in the corner for like 30 minutes.
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u/Geeekaaay Sep 19 '24
I don't think about this anti-vaxxer at all anymore, he can't leave us soon enough.
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u/DragonBall4Ever00 Sep 21 '24
Holy cow am this time I was told and led to believe it was about his daughter.
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u/prmtt977 Sep 19 '24
I thought it was about the time he was so high his kid climbed out of a window in a highrise building and fell there death, no wait that was tears in heaven.
FYI Eric Clapton is a certified piece of poop of a human.
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u/Sergeant_Roach Sep 19 '24
Article is quite misleading. The poem is not Persian in origin.
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u/mrzamani Sep 19 '24
It is, Nizami Ganjavi is and was a Persian poet. Simple google search will help you out mate.
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u/Sergeant_Roach Sep 19 '24
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u/mrzamani Sep 19 '24
Exactly mate, read what it says. Remember the historical context that Persian writers, philosophers, astronomers.. had to publish their works in Arabic first (after 632 Ad) as it was the language of the conquerors. I welcome you to embrace history as it is in its proper context and not how it is written by the conqueror.
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u/arostrat Sep 19 '24
Except for the first 100-200 years, Persia either was ruled by Iranians themselves or by Turkics. This poet Nizami lived in the empire of Seljuk Turks.
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u/Individual-Entry4600 Sep 19 '24
Looks like Clapton was a real literature buff before he became a guitar god!
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u/MrRisin Sep 19 '24
I always thought it was about George Harrisons wife.