Free Republic

As far as huge hits go, there’s none more colossal than ‘Layla’ by Derek and the Dominos. Perhaps more than any other song, it’s what cemented Eric Clapton well and truly as a guitar-playing god. But this isn’t entirely the full story. The truth would have it that ‘Layla’ wasn’t completely all of Clapton’s own conception, and there is actually a pretty audacious theft which marred the legacy of the song quite majorly for a select group of people. One of them was Rita Coolidge, who, despite her own blazing career as a pop music machine, knew where her credit...

Pattie Boyd has sold her private collection of artifacts, which included the original painting from the cover of 1970's Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, as well as various items from her marriages to George Harrison and Eric Clapton. The painting, titled La Jeune Fille au Bouquet and created by Emile Theeodore Frandsen in the mid '50s, was acquired by Clapton directly via the artist's son in 1970. Clapton later gifted it to Harrison in the late '70s, who in turn gifted to Boyd in the late '80s. Boyd has now sold the painting for $2.5 million. Boyd's collection, which...

The session drummer had been incarcerated since 1984 for murdering his motherSession drummer and Wrecking Crew member, Jim Gordon, who played for The Beach Boys, Derek and The Dominos, Steely Dan, John Lennon and many, many more, has died in a medical correctional facility, aged 77. Gordon’s death was confirmed by publicist, Bob Merlis, who states that he died of natural causes “after a long incarceration and lifelong battle with mental illness.” The troubled session ace’s already-impressive career was cut short in 1984, when he was sentenced to 16 years in prison for brutally murdering his mother in an...

Madison Square Garden concert in 1999. 150 million views to date.