(Credits: Far Out / Showtime Documentary Films)
Thu 1 January 2026 14:00, UK
It’s nearly impossible to imagine any other guitarist having the same run that Eric Clapton did in his prime.
He was already respected as one of the finest guitarists of his generation, and yet even when standing next to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, his track record for making one classic after another is almost unmatched by all of his peers. But that kind of magic can only come when surrounding yourself with the right people, and ‘Slowhand’ had more than a few famous friends to depend on.
Because if you look at the number of people that Clapton has collaborated with, it’s practically a laundry list of classic rock veterans. Not many could claim to turn in time with everyone from Roger Waters to Phil Collins to the goddamn Beatles on their resume, but by that point, Clapton was already a legend, ever since he found his way out of The Yardbirds. He was officially a free agent before the ‘Summer of Love’ started, but his stint with Cream was only the beginning of his reign.
He had already gone through an extensive blues sabbatical with John Mayall, and while he admitted to having trouble keeping up with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, he would have gladly stayed in the band had the bickering not become so toxic. He didn’t want to be the frontman by any stretch of the imagination, and no matter which band he decided to join, people were still going to consider him ‘God’ every single time he took a solo.
If there was one band that managed to fit exactly what he was looking for, it was Derek and the Dominos. Every single member of the band had the kind of experience that Clapton had always dreamt of, and while Layla made for some of the greatest guitar playing he ever laid down, there were more than a few hangups going on in the background that were becoming impossible to ignore.
Aside from the fact that the whole album was a love letter to George Harrison’s wife, Clapton and the rest of the band were already going through their own struggles. ‘Slowhand’ had already started flirting with hard drugs, and with the rest of the band members starting to get more toxic by the day, it was only a matter of time before that musical time bomb went off. And when Jim Gordon lit the match, Clapton knew that there was no way for the band to continue on.
Gordon had become a dear friend, but after one too many arguments, Clapton figured there was no way for them to keep the band going in its current state, saying, “One of the reasons we broke up was the rapport between me and Jim, which had always been so good, had broken down. And in the middle of a session when we were trying to do a second studio album, I said something about the rhythm being wrong for the song, and Jim said something like ‘Well the Dixie Flyers are in town. You can get their drummer.’”
After Gordon’s various struggles with mental illness, though, his eventual incarceration for slaying his mother was too much for Clapton to take. He could find it in his heart to leave all of Cream’s hangups in the past, but given how quickly Duane Allman left this planet and Gordon’s mental troubles, a lot of that era of his career is most likely going to have a lot more bad memories of what could have been.
Had they stuck it out, Derek and the Dominos could have been one of the greatest supergroups anyone had ever seen, but it’s all just wishful thinking. They had their fair share of demons to work through after they finished their time together, but it’s better to remember the music for what it is than to worry about the eventual fallout.
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