Derek & the Dominos - Fillmore East, New York City, 10-23-1970, Early Show

I'm going to start posting more live Derek and the Dominos, the short-lived band that, in my opinion, was the pinnacle of Eric Clapton's long career. When it comes to live music by this group, there are two concerts that tower above all others, due to sound quality: back to back nights at the Fillmore East in New York City, on October 23rd and 24th, 1970. The band only toured for a few months in the latter half of 1970, and these two concerts appear to be the only concerts by them that were professionally recorded as soundboards.

The band played two shows per evening, with each show lasting nearly two hours. Unfortunately, a only few songs from the early show on October 23rd recorded at soundboard quality are known to exist, and a few more songs from it were recorded as an audience bootleg. Even more frustratingly, no recordings of the early show on October 24th are known to exist whatsoever.

This, I'm making three albums out of the Fillmore performances: the October 23rd early show, the October 23rd late show, and the October 24th late show. The two late shows are the crown jewels of all Derek and the Dominos live recordings, with two hours each of the band playing at the highest sound quality.

The October 23rd early show is the runt of the litter by comparison. At slightly less than an hour long, it's only half of the early set, and about half of that is a mere audience recording. But it's also, by far, the least known of the Fillmore recordings, so I'm pleased to make these more available. And even though half of it comes from an audience bootleg, that portion still sounds at least as good as any other live recording of the band from any other concert except for the two Fillmore late shows.

All the officially released live Derek and the Dominos recordings come from those two late shows. I'll go into that in more detail in a subsequent post. But suffice to say here that nothing from the October 23rd early show has been officially released. In fact, nearly all bootlegs of the two Fillmore shows don't include any songs from the early show either.

Three songs here (the first two and the last one) are recorded in soundboard quality. Three more - "Blues Power," "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," and "Tell the Truth" are recorded in audience quality. I've heard that all of "Blues Power" and the first half of "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" do exist in soundboard quality, but I haven't been able to find a recording of that. If you know of one, please let me know.

All the songs through "Tell the Truth" appear in the order they were played in concert that night. But then even the audience recording comes to an end, after part of the song "Presence of the Lord." I haven't included that, since it's only the first couple minutes of the song. Then, somehow, the soundboard recording reemerged with all of "Little Wing," the last song of the early show.

By the way, what bootlegs exist of the early show usually claim to include a soundboard of "Presence of the Lord." However, the recording of that on those bootlegs are exactly the same as the recording of that song from the late show, only played at a slightly slower speed. So I haven't included that either. By the way, no one can remember what songs were played after "Presence of the Lord" and "Little Wing," though apparently it is known there were three of them.

All of the songs played in this early show were played at both of the late shows. But each performance of each song contained unique soloing, and could be very different from other performances. For instance, the version of "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad" from this early show is seven and a half minutes long, but the version of that song from the late show is 14 and a half minutes long. Given the lack of well recorded live music from this band, this early show has been unjustly forgotten.

By the way, the first track consists of an announcer introducing the band. I found both audience and soundboard recordings of this. But the audience version sounded much better (no doubt since the announcer's microphone wasn't connected to the soundboard), so I've used that.

I noticed the audience-sourced songs were at a slightly different pitch than the soundboard-sourced ones, so I changed the pitch on them to hopefully fix that.

Also, there was a sound problem with "Have You Ever Loved a Woman." The recording of the first verse (about two minutes into the song) was very messed up. There were some glitches there, but the main problem was the volume was so low that it was nearly inaudible. I tried increasing the volume to match the rest, but it sounded so hissy that it was really bad. So instead, I copied and pasted in the first verse from the October 24th late show version of the song. Then I matched the pitch and tempo, and patched that in. It's noticeable that the sound quality suddenly gets better for a little while, but I think that's much preferred to the sound getting horrible for a while. It only affects about thirty seconds of the song.

01 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Tell the Truth (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Little Wing (Derek & the Dominos)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15288296/DereknDom_1970c_FillmreEastNewYrkC__10-23-1970__Early_Show_atse.zip.html

Photos of Eric Clapton with a beard and wearing a horizontally striped shirt are closely associated with the two Fillmore nights. For instance, the official live album "Live at the Fillmore" uses one such photo for the album cover. But, in fact, it turns out those photos were taken at a concert in Port Chester, New York, over a month later. At the time of the Fillmore shows, Clapton hadn't even grown his beard.

That said, I'm using one of the beard-and-striped-shirt photos for the cover anyway. In part that's because I can't find any good photos that actually come from the Fillmore. But also, I'm posting three albums from the Fillmore shows, and I've found three really nice photos (that actually come from Port Chester), allowing me to have a unified look for all three albums.