Have you ever loved a woman? (Billy Myles) (LP 9)

Derek and the Dominos 
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (CD - Polydor, 1970) *****

Genre: Blues

Places I remember: This is a remixed CD version bought in 1990 from Marbecks Records in Queen St., Auckland - at the time the best record shop in New Zealand.

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Have You Ever Loved a Woman is amazingly emotional for Eric. He pours his heart and soul out in this song with passionate vocals and heart wrenching guitar. This slow blues is a standout on a classic collection of songs.




Gear costume: Extremely high quality here - Key to the Highway is a guitar feast/fest/master class from Duane Allman and Eric; the version of Hendrix' Little Wing is innovation on a stick and all that leads to Layla as the climax.

Active compensatory factors: Wow - Eric Clapton is in peak form here in a way that he could never reach again. 

His work in Cream, Yardbirds, Bluesbreakers, Blind Faith all seemed to be a precursor to this outpouring of raw lust, emotion, depression and elation.

The back story of his ultimately doomed love of Pattie Harrison (Pattie Boyd that was) is well known, but listening to this group of brilliant songs in 2016 is as refreshingly relevant as it was in 1970.

A remarkable achievement! Whether he could have done it without being fired up by Pattie AND Duane Allman is a moot point. Clapton and Allman are just on fire together.

Bit of a mystery as to why he hasn't thought to do co-lead guitars with a master musician in a studio setting since this. Maybe he realised he'd never top it.

This is the first bone fide Wozza classic in the countdown so far.

Where do they all belong? Next stop for Eric was his solo career - paradoxically a retreat of sorts away from groups to having assorted guests join in the fun.

This song has nothin' tricky about it (George Harrison) #138 - 142

George Harrison Ding Dong; Ding Dong/ Hari's On Tour (Express) (Apple, 48947, 1974)

George Harrison This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)/ Maya Love (Apple, A 11017, 1975)


George Harrison This Song/ Learning How To Love You (Dark Horse, DRC 8294, 1976)

George Harrison Crackerbox Palace/ Learning How To Love You (Dark Horse, DRC 8313, 1976) 

George Harrison Blow Away/ Soft Hearted Hana (Dark Horse, DRC 8763, 1979) 

These next five singles move from the nadir of This Guitar...(and the parent album Extra Texture) to the resurgence four years later with the gorgeous Blow Away (from the reborn Harrison album simply called George Harrison). The ark replicated the transition from Pattie Boyd (who began her disastrous relationship with Eric Clapton at the same time) to Olivia Trinidad Arias.

Along the way George had regained his touch and his sense of humour. This Song is a neat commentary on the plagiarism lawsuit for My Sweet Lord and even has sundry Pythons looning about. It's a fun song - the polar opposite of Extra Texture.

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By 1979 the circulation had well and truly returned. His cheeks were rosy again! Blow Away just exudes love and warmth. Love those acoustic guitars and George's slide is sublime. 

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Hidden gems: The B sides echo the transition from gloom to brightness that's seen on the A sides. Soft Hearted Hana has the same carefree sparkle as Blow Away. Nothing rare about any of them though - all are from the parent albums. BTW - George was clearly sending a message to the world about Olivia (whom he'd met in 1974 and married in '78) - Learning How To Love You appearing twice!

Ring out the false, ring in the true (George Harrison) # 133 - 137

George Harrison Dark Horse/ I Don't Care Anymore (Apple, NZP 3493, 1974)

George Harrison Dark Horse/ Hari's On Tour (Express) (EMI, A 10696, 1974)

George Harrison Ding Dong/ I Don't Care Anymore (Apple, NZP 3494, 1974) 

George Harrison Dark Horse/ You (Starline/ Capitol, 6245, 1974/1975)

George Harrison You/ World Of Stone (Apple, NZP 3520, 1975)

The second batch of Hari's singles sees us in the dark days of 1974/1975. The days of the Pattie Boyd/ Eric Clapton romantic triangle with George, the dark days of lives ruined by alcohol and cocaine,  the dark days of the disastrous 1974 tour (George, never the most willing tourist, quickly lost his voice and had to soldier on - I have bootlegs of the tour and, believe me, it was embarrassing for all concerned) and the dark days of Extra Texture - for me, George's worst record ever.

Here's a taster of that tour:




Of course these things are relative and George is a bleedin' former Beatle so even Extra Texture has one bright moment of sheer class - You. A superb song and a great single.

I have a soft spot for Dark Horse (song and album) and so I have no real problem with the singles listed above. Even good old Ding Dong is worthy! George is remarkably frank about the love triangle on the album (Bye Bye Love and others), which is against character for him. He doesn't generally subscribe to Lennon's confessional style of songwriting so this is quite refreshing. BTW Dark Horse (the album) has an awesome cover - just saying!

The slew of singles with roughly similar tracks can be explained by looking at the numbers of each single: they come from Australia, NZ and the USA - each country seems to have been a law unto themselves as we saw from my earlier trawl through the Beatle's singles (and we'll see again when we get to the other solo fabs).

Hidden gems: Slim pickings here. I'm a loss to explain the popularity of I Don't Care Anymore and the Starline single is a double A side Capitol reissue. That leaves Hari's On Tour (Express) - a pleasant instrumental throwaway (Express is a reference to Tom Scott's band L.A. Express who played on the Dark Horse album and '74 tour) and World Of Stone which is just depressing (from The ET album which I also find depressing - except for You).

Just about to lose my mind (Eric Clapton) #88-89

Eric Clapton (sic) Layla/ Layla Part 2 (Polydor 2058 263, 1972)

Eric Clapton Tulsa Time/ Cocaine (RSO POLY 81, 1980)

Everyone now knows the Layla soap opera story concerning Slowhand's obsession with Patti Boyd, Hari Georgeson's wife, but back in 1972 I had no access to hindsight so my reaction to Layla was purely on a musical level.

And back in 1972 the guitar riff was king! This is one of the best and most easily recognisable riffs in all of rockdom. Air guitar glory!

The NZ version of this single dispenses with the Derek and The Dominos thing, probably due to incompetence, and tells it like it is - Clappers back in form and control. Little did I know how wrong that impression was but I wouldn't have cared anyway back in the day. Pre social media, it was all about the music maan.

Tulsa Time is Clapton in laid back mode. Nuff said. I have no idea why I own this single.

Hidden gems: The Layla B side is the slow coda to the song and on its own without the rip snort bust of the first part it's pretty anaemic as a B side.

Cocaine is well known. It's a great loping song but I've always been disturbed by the lyric which seems to advocate for the drug. Unlike Jackson Browne's song about cocaine (now I'm losing touch with reality and I'm almost out of blow) there appears to be no irony in J J Cale's song. She don't lie? Really?? On its own it may have a case but repeated again and again throughout the song?
Nope.

If this is love you gotta give me more (The Beatles) #51 - 55 of 300ish

The Beatles 1 I Should Have Known Better 2 If I Fell/ 1 Tell Me Why 2 And I love Her  (Parlophone EPP 20  1964)

The Beatles 1 Yesterday 2 Act Naturally/ 1 You Like Me Too Much 2 It's Only Love (Parlophone MGEP 8948, 1965)

The Beatles 1 A Hard Day's Night 2 Things We Said Today/ 1 Matchbox 2 Slow Down   (Parlophone MGEP 6014, 1964)

The Beatles 1 Twist And Shout 2 A Taste Of Honey/ 1 Do You Want To Know A Secret 2 There's A Place   (Parlophone MGEP 8882, 1963)

The Beatles 1 All My Loving 2 Ask Me Why/ 1 Money 2 P.S. I Love You   (Parlophone GEPO 8891, 1963)

We now enter the murky world of the Extended Play (EP) single.

When I was first collecting, EP's were a godsend. They were way cheaper than an LP (Long Player) and they had FOUR songs on them. And they usually cherry picked the best bits. OMG - value for money (or was it the illusion of value for money?). An alien concept in 2013 fersure.

Only trouble for the collector is that every bleedin' country put out their own versions of EP's with a variety of play lists. Most of my EP's are either New Zealand or Australian versions.

Hidden gems: I love the bit in A Hard Day's Night when the boys are playing cards inside a kind of cage singing Lennon's I Should Have Known Better (great moment too when John cheats with something up his sleeve). The whole scene with the schoolgirls (including the divine Patti Boyd) trying to get to the Fabs works and it's not hard to get the cage metaphors at work here. It's clever, witty, and musically great in Beatles' early period fashion - with John on vocals and harmonica.

From the spiritual sky, such sweet memories have I

23 George Harrison, ‘Be Here Now’
The fabs’ solo years are problematic I know, but I am more familiar with them than I am the actual Beatle years. Throughout the seventies, when I was setting out on my record buying path, few years are as special as 1973. In that year all four fabs put out solo albums and Lennon’s comment was spot on – if you want a new Beatle album, just collect the best songs off the four solo albums and hey presto. The four albums in question were Ringo, Mind Games, Living In The Material World, and Red Rose Speedway. All great solo albums in their own write.

Here’s my selection for 1973’s 12 song single album by The Beatles called ‘Be Here Now’ (I thought about doing a double but that would have been stretching the quality control a tad too much):
Side 1
Mind Games – (John - vocals)
I’m The Greatest – (Ringo - vocals/drums; George – guitars; John – piano)
Little Lamb Dragonfly – (Paul - vocals)
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) – (George – vocals/guitars; Ringo - drums)
My Love – (Paul - vocals)
Be Here Now – (George – vocals/guitars; Ringo - drums)

Side 2
Big Barn Red – (Paul - vocals)
You Are Here – (John - vocals)
Photograph – (Ringo vocals/drums; George – guitars)
One More Kiss – (Paul - vocals)
Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long – (George – vocals/guitars; Ringo - drums)
Meat City – (John - vocals)

That’s a pretty damn good 1973, Beatles’ record. It’s got all four represented on merit. Ringo has a novelty song on side one, written by John – that’s appropriate, and a great Ringo song on side 2 (Photograph) written by George – also appropriate. It’s got a Paul rocker (Big Barn Red) and a John rocker (Meat City). It’s got cutsey Paul (One More Kiss) and romantic Paul (My Love). It has cosmic John (Mind Games) and romantic John (You Are Here). It has rocky George (Give Me Love), and it’s got a Long Long Long style Harrison ballad to close out side 1 that I adore. That song also lends itself to the album title as well – what, you thought Oasis had gone all Buddhist for their third album released in 1997? No such luck – they were merely quoting George, as they had done for Wonderwall.

Be Here Now (the George song) is an amazing piece of work and, for me, the standout track on this album, as Long Long Long was for The Beatles. Musically I find a lot similarities between the two – the same other-worldly space is there between the notes and the pace is similar.

The lyric to Be Here Now is very different though. This isn’t a direct love song to Patti (Long Long Long’s ‘I love you’ is pretty direct). Instead it’s a contemplation on life in general (‘Why try to live a life, that isn't real’), and George’s life in particular. He uses the song to give himself advice, ‘Be here now as it’s not what it was before’. This may be seen as an assessment of his love for Patti in a marriage that was falling apart. Next year’s Dark Horse album would address the failure in less oblique fashion.

It’s this kind of honesty that endears me to John Lennon and George Harrison. They certainly didn’t live blameless lives and did their share of stuffing up relationships. I mean if you were married to Patti Boyd would you fall out of love with her?

In her book ‘Wonderful Tonight’ she has some perceptive comments on George’s psyche, ‘I think owning that huge house and garden created confusion in him. It was a constant reminder of how rich and famous he was, and that gave him a sense of power, but in his heart knew was just a boy from Liverpool who was talented and had got lucky’.

Be Here Now is a musical artefact that provides further evidence. George wants to be alive in the moment; he exhorts himself in the lyric to ‘Remember. Now’. But in his heart he knows he’s trying to live a life that isn’t real. It’s interesting that he never got rid of the huge house and garden. Lennon’s plea to ‘imagine no possessions – I wonder if you can’ was something he also couldn’t actually do. They both lived their lives in the material world. George's album was called 'Living In The Material World'. It has songs about his trying to life a more spiritual life but it's on an album that exists in the material world of commerce. He, and John, made a lot of money from their albums and they are aware of this tension, confusion, and, I guess, guilt. In the end, it gave us some great songs.

It’s this searching and the honest examination that I love about them both. I’ll even buy Electronic Sound and Two Virgins for them!