Layla...

My favorite “Desert Island Classic” … just the ticket for this kick-back, take me back, afternoon. I embrace and identify with this music as much as any, much more than most.

When they drop me on that island, challenged to survive on my own from that point forward, I’ll need a few things: A solar turntable, speakers that I can move around, and an original vinyl copy of the Derek and the Dominoes “Layla” album, oh, and maybe a nice grape Nehi.

Al Wheeler, my roommate who was never my roommate, turned me on to that album in 1970. Everyone had to pay for a room on campus to reimburse the college for the new dorms they built, but Al rented a place in town too. So I had a private room.

“Layla” played in rotation at my place, for months. Occasionally some of us would go over to Al’s for more of the same. He lived on the second floor of a huge old Victorian with several cavernous rooms defined by 12 foot ceilings that showcased peeling plaster. Each chip, like half peaches, revealed color from an earlier time like sky-blue billiard balls on an upside down pool table. His small kitchen was more than enough for him and the toilet worked.

That Layla album played 24-7 over there too. We crushed up some Mescaline, shaking it violently into large bottles of cheap wine, a necessary staple that fueled epic paint parties. Chromesthesia, sound becoming color, was responsible for turning that music into memories that became core imprints. My faded T-Shirt shapeshifts into an amazing technicolor dream coat, a time machine and painter’s smock, with the first seven notes of Clapton’s opening riff.