![]() When I got my hands on the album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, I looked at the label. The song was “Layla.” And “Time” had been appropriated as the soon-to-be-famous “piano coda” that gives Eric’s greatest song its bittersweet denouement. Collectively known as Derek and the Dominoes. Except that now it was an instrumental as played by Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman and. I cried, “That’s my music! That’s my music!” It was “Time,” the song Jim and I had written and played for Eric at Olympic. The veins must have been popping out on my neck. Suddenly, it dawned on me: the song on the radio was my song-except that I’d never recorded it. The photographer was telling me to pose this way and that, but all I could hear was that song. I was thinking, Wait, I think I’ve heard that before. I wasn’t paying much attention but suddenly noticed that the song that was playing sounded familiar. The photographer had turned on a radio while he worked. I was at A&M Records one afternoon in 1971 after I’d finished my first album, getting promotional photos taken. ![]() But our song, with Jim’s wistful melody and my sweet countermelody, would come to haunt me the rest of my life. Nothing came of it, and I largely forgot about it. Jim and I left a tape cassette of the demo with Eric, hoping of course that he might cover it. We played the song for Eric Clapton when we were in England touring with Delanie and Bonnie - I remember clearly sitting at the piano at Olympic Studios while Eric listened to me play it all the way through (so does Bobby Whitlock, Delaney’s and Bonnie’s ace piano player, who was on the session). ![]() Jim and I ended up calling it “Time (Don’t Let the World Get In Our Way)” and taped a demo. I wrote lyrics that reflected the melody’s sense of fatalism and hope (“my darling believe me, don’t ever leave me, we’ve got a million years to show them that our love is real.”). As we played with it, a second progression suddenly came to me, a countermelody in the key of G that “answered” and resolved the tension of Jim’s chords and built to a dramatic crescendo that bridged the song’s beginning and ending. ![]() I loved Jim’s progression, but at the moment that’s all it was - a stunning riff, not a song. It also seemed deeply familiar-like when you meet someone you’re immediately attracted to who seems at once both exotic and approachable. There was something haunting about it, especially when the bright major chords suddenly dipped to B-flat 7th for the refrain. The chords Jim played for me were in the key of C sharp and built to an eight-note refrain before the progression repeated. Most people know Jim as one of L.A.’s top session drummers in the early ‘70s - he played on everything from Glen Cambpell’s “Wichita Lineman” to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album - but he was also a capable pianist, and because he was exposed to so many styles of music, he had a well-developed sense of melody and structure. One afternoon in 1970, Jim Gordon came over to my house in Hollywood, sat down at the piano, and played for me a chord progression he’d just composed. Hollywood Vampires - Even Johnny Depp - Going on International Summer Tourīillboard is excited to premiere this exclusive excerpt of Delta Lady in which Coolidge (along with co-author and Billboard contributor Michael Walker) tells her side of the genesis of one of classic rock’s most powerful songs. Ed Sheeran Drops First Fan-Made Official Music Videos From 'Autumn Variations' ![]()
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