1971 Heartbreaking Rock Ballad About Forbidden Love Became a Timeless Anthem
The love triangle of George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd just might be the most famous in all of rock and roll history...not least because it resulted in some of the biggest hits of all time.
By now, pretty much everybody knows the story: Clapton fell in love with Boyd when she was still married to his good friend, Harrison. Eventually, Boyd split with Harrison and married Clapton (the couple would later divorce, too), but before all that happened, Clapton channeled his feelings into the only album he would ever make with Derek & the Dominos: Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970).
"We were a make-believe band," Clapton later said in an interview with music journalist Anthony DeCurtis.
"We were all hiding inside it," Clapton continued. "Derek and the Dominos - the whole thing. So it couldn't last. I had to come out and admit that I was being me. I mean, being Derek was a cover for the fact that I was trying to steal someone else's wife. That was one of the reasons for doing it, so that I could write the song, and even use another name for Pattie. So Derek and Layla - it wasn't real at all."
"Layla" wasn't the only Derek and the Dominos song to be directly inspired by Boyd. As Clapton explained in his autobiography, he wrote "Bell Bottom Blues" for his pal's then-spouse after she asked him to bring back some bell bottom jeans for her from the U.S. (which he did).
The lyrics aren't about jeans, but they are about having the blues:
"I don't want to fade away
Give me one more day, please
I don't want to fade away
In your heart, I want to stay
It's all wrong, but it's alright
The way that you treat me, baby, ooh
Once I was strong, but I lost the fight
You won't find a better loser"
All these years later after it was released as a single in January of 1971, the song is still considered to be one of Clapton's best of all time.
"Rarely has Clapton reached the heights on his recordings that he hit with his guitar playing, songwriting, and most impressively, his heart-wrenching vocal performance on the song," wrote Bill Janovitz of All Music.
George Harrison 'didn't have any problem' with Pattie Boyd and Eric Clapton's relationship
As Harrison explained in a 1977 interview with Crawdaddy Magazine, he gave Clapton and Boyd his blessing.
"The thing is, with Eric over the years, and you know we [Harrison and Boyd] both loved Eric. Still do," the former Beatle explained.
:And there were a few funny things," Harrison continued. "I pulled his chick once. That's happened, and now you'd think he was trying to get his own back on me. But much later, when all that thing was going on, when I split from Patti, you know...Patti and he got together after we'd really split. And actually we'd been splitting up for years. That was the funny thing, you know. I thought that was the best thing to do, for us to split, and we should've just done it much sooner. But I didn't have any problem about it - Eric had the problem. Every time I'd go and see him, and stuff, he'd be really hung up about it, and I was saying, 'F-k it, man. Don't be apologizing,' and he didn't believe me. I was saying, 'I don't care.'"
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This story was originally published May 6, 2026 at 8:44 PM.