“Warner Brothers wanted another Layla. I thought, 'well, if you sit down and write a song in a formatted way, it's not so hard’”: The Grammy-winning hit that Eric Clapton wrote to order, with a little help from Foreigner’s Mick Jones

Eric Clapton.

Having a hit record is great, but such huge success can also come with a certain amount of baggage. You’ll be obliged to play it at every gig you do for the rest of your life - or risk a significant section of your fanbase going home disappointed - and your record company will always be ‘encouraging’ you to try and repeat the trick with a similar song.

Now, you might assume that an artist as big as Eric Clapton would be above taking requests from his paymasters, but it turns out that one of his most memorable songs of the ‘80s was indeed written after his label asked if he could recreate a career-defining moment from the ‘70s.