Layla (MTV Unplugged) -- Eric Clapton

When this song came out, I had a friend who hated it. She said "it wasn't Layla, it was an enntirely different song." A lot of critics panned Clapton for the Unplugged album, and others damned it with faint praise. I have to disagree: Clapton nneeded Unplugged, and Layla, to fid his way into the early 1990s.

The MTV Unplugged version of Layla isn't the same song that came out of Derek and the Dominos, because Clapton's not the same man in 1992 that he was in 1970. In the original rock version, I can hear and feel the young man "knowing" that life will end without his impossible woman in his life, but that if she comes to him, life will be perfection. The older, wiser man of 1992 is more world-weary, wondering how in the heck he has managed to get himself in this bad situation, knowing that there probably isn't a happy ending to the story after all.

Clapton needed this album financially, artistically, and personally to get himself in a place to influence the 90s, and he leveraged it for all it was worth.

The remastered, deluxe version of Clapton's MTV Unplugged album on MP3