Derek and The Dominos was a very short-lived band that only released one studio album in its entire career span, which only lasted just over a year (1970-1971). That album, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs," is still heralded as one of the great moments in Eric Clapton's career and classic rock history. The band broke up during the recording sessions that was supposed to become their second album.
The band had an immense amount of talent and inspired decades of bands that would come after them, including Elton John, who wrote about the band in his autobiography, "They were phenomenal. From the side of the stage, I took mental notes of their performance. It was their keyboard player Bobby Whitlock that I watched like a hawk. You watched and you learned from people that had more experience than you." The album even featured lead and slide guitar work from Duane Allman, who passed away shortly after, in 1971.
In a 2017 interview I did with Bobby Whitlock, who co-wrote "Bell Bottom Blues" with Clapton, I asked about the day the Dominos broke up, to which he replied, "Well, Jim [Gordon] and Eric [Clapton] were having kind of a war and we were all doing too much alcohol and drugs. Jim had got a new kit of drums – it had two kick drums, it had like twelve drums in this thing and cymbals all over. We're in a big room at Olympic – the same room I was in when I did the piano part on 'Exile [on Main Street].' Jim had put these drums together and was banging on them for four or five hours. We were all sitting around, waiting on him to get his brand-new drums all tuned up right and everything like that. We're waiting patiently and drinking and smoking and waiting and waiting and waiting… I can still see Eric sitting there on his amp with his leg crossed and his guitar on his lap. So finally, Jim got his drums tuned up the way he wanted them – there were a dozen drums in this thing and each drum he would have tuned to a piano key so I was sitting there playing one note on the piano. Jim is a really musical drummer. But it was getting so monotonous."
"Finally, he got it exactly right and Eric went to tune up his guitar – we didn't have guitar tuners in those days like we have now. He got like two strings tuned up and Jim says, 'Hey man, you want me to tune that thing for you?' I went 'Oh shit'. Me and Carl looked at each other and knew that was the wrong thing to say. Eric got up and slammed his guitar up against the wall and went out the door he said, 'I'll never play with you ever again.' That was it. And he never did play with him again except on my solo record, but Eric had his back to him, and Jim was in the drum booth and never came out. Eric had his back to the drum room the entire time. That was the end of it."
Some songs from the sessions for the second album have been released, some haven't. But the band seemed to be on a trajectory for success in spite of a lukewarm initial critical reception of the album and rampant drug abuse. In 1983, Jim Gordon, who had undiagnosed schizophrenia at the time, killed his mother with a hammer during a psychotic episode. He was confined to a mental institution in 1984, until his death in 2023. Still, the band's "Layla" album remains a classic, and perhaps the band stands as a cautionary tale about the things that can get in the way of functional band dynamics. From: https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/articles/features/the_day_dominos_fell_the_story_of_how_derek_and_the_dominos_broke_up-158431
