Although Clapton used a Fender guitar on the title track of this album in the now legendary session with Duane Allman, he would have used this guitar on some of the other tracks of this double-album which is now regarded as ...a Clapton masterpiece and has been designated a seventies classic..

The main source of lyrical inspiration for the album welled up from Eric's heartache at the time, from being rejected by Pattie Boyd, George Harrison's wife. Eric identified with the protagonist of Ganjavi Nizami's poem 'Story of Layla and Majnun'. In this romantic tale, Qays, a young man, falls helplessly in love with a moon princess, Layla. Sadly she is married off to another man by her father. Qay's love for her becomes so obsessive that he is deemed insane, and is forbidden from every seeing his beloved Layla again. The story ends with Qays roaming the streets known until his last breath as 'Majnun', which translated from the Persian, means 'madness'.