Photo Credit:
Writers: Eric Clapton and Marcy Levy
Producer: Glyn Johns
Recorded: May 1977 at Olympic Studios in London, England
Released: November 1977
Players: | Eric Clapton — vocals, guitar George Terry — guitar Dick Sims — keyboards Carl Radle — bass Jamie Oldaker — drums Marcy Levy — vocals Yvonne Elliman — vocals |
Album: | Slowhand (RSO, 1977) |
“Lay Down Sally” has a smooth, loping tempo influenced by J.J. Cale — whose songs “After Midnight” and “Cocaine” Eric Clapton also covered.
Along with being a pop hit, the song made an appearance on the country charts, which was a first for Clapton.
After some commercial disappointments, the Slowhand album was something of a comeback for Clapton. It reached Number Two on the album chart, but was kept out of the top spot by theSaturday Night Fever soundtrack. In the U.K., the album peaked at Number 23.
Despite the album's success, Clapton has gone on record as being unhappy with his vocal performance on the album. “Slowhand, to me, is a very nervous-sung album, especially after (1976's) No Reason To Cry. Maybe it was because of the lack of material we had when we went in to cut it, or the difference in surroundings.”
Clapton also didn't feel that much of the material on Slowhand had the emotional weight he wanted: “It was lightweight, really lightweight. And the reason for that, I think, is partly due to the fact that some of the stuff we wanted to put on the record I wrote, say, six months before. We were on the road and we wrote some songs and got to the studio — and we couldn't get the studio early enough or we wanted a couple of weeks off or something like that — and by the time we got in there, everyone knew the song so well, we were so sort of limp about it that it was lazy.”