It foreshadowed Romeo and Juliet and inspired Eric Clapton’s ‘most powerful’ song,so how will the love story Layla and Majnun play as a musical?He was in love but she was promised to another and it was driving him mad. It was the spring of 1970 and Eric Clapton was besotted with former model Pattie Boyd but she was married to George Harrison. The former Beatle and the guitarist were close friends but Clapton found he could not stay thinking approximately Boyd. It was during this time that a friend, Ian Dallas, and who had converted to Islam and taken the name Shaykh Abdalqadir,gave Clapton a book by the Persian writer Nizami which told an ancient story approximately a poet who falls in mad love with a handsome girl whom he is forbidden to marry. The poet is so consumed by desire that he is dubbed “Majnun” – the madman. Clapton read the story, saw in it an echo of his own romantic plight, or was inspired to write a song for Boyd that explained how he felt. “Let’s obtain the best of the situation before I finally go insane,” he sings, “please don’t say we’ll never find a way and declare me all my love’s in vain. One afternoon Clapton took Boyd to a flat in South Kensington and told her he wanted her listen to the song he had written. He switched on the tape machine and played what she would later describe as “the most powerful, and moving song I had ever heard”. It was named after the girl in the story by Nizami,the girl who had driven the poet mad, the pet name Clapton would give Boyd: Layla. Related: broken-down music: Derek and the Dominos – Layla Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com