[2][3][4] The song was further inspired by Clapton's secret love for Pattie Boyd, the wife of his friend and fellow musician George Harrison.

"Layla"[5] has, since its release, experienced great critical and popular acclaim, and is often hailed as being among the greatest rock songs of all time.

In 1966, Beatles guitarist George Harrison married Pattie Boyd, a model he met two years before during the filming of A Hard Day's Night.

Nizami's tale, about a moon princess who was married off by her father to a man she did not love, resulting in Majnun's madness, struck a deep chord with Clapton.

[9] Harrison was not bitter about the divorce and attended Clapton's wedding party with his former bandmates Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney.

[12] After the break-up of Cream, Clapton tried his hand with several groups, including Blind Faith and the husband-and-wife duo Delaney & Bonnie.

In the spring of 1970, he was told that some members of Delaney & Bonnie's back-up band, including bassist Carl Radle, drummer Jim Gordon and keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, were leaving the group.

[13] Naming themselves Derek and the Dominos, the band "made our bones", according to Clapton, while backing Harrison on his first post-Beatles solo album, All Things Must Pass.

[14] During the recording of the Layla album, Duane Allman joined Clapton's fledgling band as a guest.

For the making of his biographical film Tom Dowd & the Language of Music, he remixed the original master tapes of "Layla",[18] saying, "There are my principles, in one form or another.

[20][22] Shortly afterwards, Clapton returned to the studio, where he heard Jim Gordon playing a piano piece he had composed separately.

Her sister Priscilla wound up recording it with Booker T. Jones ... Jim took the melody from Rita's song and didn't give her credit for writing it.

"[27] Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs opened to lacklustre sales as the Derek and the Dominos album never actually reached the music charts in the United Kingdom, possibly in part because Clapton's name was found only on the back cover.

[5] As a result, a shortened version of the song, consisting of the first 2:43 of Part I, was released as a single in March 1971 by Atco Records in the United States.

When "Layla" was re-released on the 1972 compilations The History of Eric Clapton and Duane Allman's An Anthology and then released the full 7:10 version (including the "Piano Exit" that formed Part II) as a single, it charted at number seven in the United Kingdom and reached number 10 in the United States.

[30] On 20 September 1983, a benefit show called the ARMS Charity Concert for Multiple Sclerosis at the Royal Albert Hall in London featured a jam with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page performing "Layla".

When Unplugged sold out, Clapton gave Warner Bros. and Reprise Records the permission to delete the limited album production.

For the album, Clapton decided to record both new material like "Lonely Stranger" and old songs he grew up with such as "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" or enjoyed listening to or had written as an adult, like "San Francisco Bay Blues" and "Layla".

The auction house Christie's noted, "the guitar became one of the most enduring images of recent music history" being a part of the Unplugged album cover.

[64] Christie's expert for the musical department Kerry Keane called the instrument "in the hands of Eric Clapton singly responsible for the repolarization of playing acoustic guitar today".

[66] Rhythm acoustic guitar player Andy Fairweather Low was invited by Clapton to his flat in Chelsea, London, to work out the songs to be recorded for the Unplugged album in January 1992.

Clapton thought that the perfect arrangement for the rock anthem would be a shuffle because he always liked changing the tempo of a song and looking at something from a different angle.

Bob Dylan for instance changes everything everytime he plays it and I thought this was another great opportunity to just take it off on a different path, to put it to a shuffle and for a start, making it acoustic denied all the riffs, really.

"[67] The song was written in the key of D minor which Clapton recalled pushed him to the top of his singing range.

Because Clapton changed the arrangement so much, he decided to introduce this version to the unsuspecting live audience by stating: "See if you can spot this one.

"[68] AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine said that "Layla" seemed to be the Unplugged album's hit; he describes it as a "slow crawl through Derek & the Dominos' version, turning that anguished howl of pain into a cozy shuffle and the whole album proceeds at a similar amiable gait, taking its time and enjoying detours into old blues standards.

The critics especially liked Leavell's piano work on the song, saying that it "adds a smoky-jazz-joint torch-song ambience that's both expectation shattering and emotionally compelling to the tune".

[114] The Recording Industry Association of America ranked "Layla" at number 118 on their Songs of the Century on 7 March 2001.

[120] As of 2011, "Layla" had attained more than six million broadcasts on television and the radio or performances on other records and during live concerts.

Director Martin Scorsese planned out the sequence with the song specifically in mind, playing it on set to synchronise with the staging and camera movement.