Bobby Whitlock picks up past here in Music City
By Peter Cooper
This year, former Derek & The Dominos keyboard man, singer and songwriter Bobby Whitlock collaborated with former bandmate Eric Clapton for the first time in decades.
And the man who brought about the reunion? That'd be television's Dr. Phil.
"That day, my wife and I watched a program about Dr. Phil," said Whitlock, who moved to Nashville last June with CoCo Carmel. The pair married on Dec. 24. "Phil said we should all take a day where we don't expect anything of ourselves. I told (wife and musical collaborator) CoCo, 'I'm going to have myself a Dr. Phil day.' I sat down at the piano, and this song poured out like water pouring off of a rock."
The song was Dear Veronica, one that Whitlock and Clapton had worked on in May 1971, when the band broke up while recording what would have been a follow-up to the now-legendary Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album. At the time, Clapton wanted to write a song about Hollywood actress Veronica Lake. Clapton's heroin addiction and inter-band squabbling ended the Dominos' story before the song was completed.
"We toppled like dominos," Whitlock said. "But I have carried the seed of that song around all these years. When I sat down at the piano, the complete song came out. I sent it to Eric to get his approval, and he said, 'I'd forgotten about that song. Congratulations.' So I started out the year with a brand new Bobby Whitlock/Eric Clapton song."
Whitlock plans to sing that one tomorrow night at the Bluebird Cafe, when he and Carmel will perform Derek and the Dominos classics and newer compositions with a group of Nashville co-conspirators including Steve Allen, Roger Cook, Gary Nicholson and Chuck Jones.
Though best-known as a Domino, Whitlock's essential contributions to 20th- century popular music are not limited to his work on the Layla album. He also played on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass album and (in an uncredited but historically documented role) on the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street. He was a member of Delaney & Bonnie's band and he played on major albums by Stephen Stills & Manassas, Buddy Guy and John Prine. Whitlock's songs have been recorded by Prine, Sheryl Crow, Michael Nesmith and two rarely connected Joneses: George and Tom.
Though he spent a few years in Nashville in the early 1980s, Whitlock's move back to town wasn't brought on by fond memories of the past here.
"The climate here in the early 1980s was like the Oak Ridge Boys, Crystal Gayle and people like that, and people didn't want to know about Bobby Whitlock and rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues. But right now, Nashville is like Los Angeles was in the 1970s. This town is all about music, period."
Carmel is a multi-instrumentalist, a producer and an engineer, and she and Whitlock have been working on a new album at home in what Whitlock calls "the smallest house in Belle Meade."
"My wife and I were brought together by nothing less than divine intervention," Whitlock said. "We've both been through a lot, and we've been writing and recording songs that are about our lives, both our prior lives and our current life together. It's the stuff of books and movies and great blues songs."
With that, Whitlock began singing, his dusty, soulful voice instantly recalling those wondrous albums by Derek and the Dominos and George Harrison.
"I never thought much about the role I played in the Dominos and on All Things Must Pass until one day I pulled all those records out, put them on and just let them play," he said, once the singing was done. "There's a thread of continuity that runs through all of that."
Whitlock's hands and voice are that thread, and it winds from Clapton to the Stones to Dr. Phil to Bluebird Cafe.
