Leather and Lace (Eddie Roundtree)

Tracks Of My Tears

"People say I'm the life of the party/ 'Cause I tell a joke or two/ /So take a good look at my face/ You know my smile looks out of place/ If you look closer it's easy to trace/ The tracks of my tears"

Layla Dunne: I can't say I was coping. I was just pushing everything down and covering it up. If I didn't, I wouldn't have gotten out of bed. But I was making music, and that was the closest I got to coping. I practically had an album written by the time I landed in London. I called up every friend and every favor I had in my pocket. Those years alone in L.A had given me the network and I had a plan. I wanted to put out the best album of the year, I wanted it to come out right when Aurora did and I wanted Eddie to hear my voice every time he turned on the damn radio. 

Interviewer: And did you? Put out an album and do all that?

Layla Dunne: Oh, I did better. I put out two.

Layla had been writing and recording night and day since she got to London. Teddy had called in a favor for her with EMI so she could record and put out the albums. She didn't want to hurt Daisy or The Six by competing with their album but she wanted to hurt Eddie. She knew how to put out and promote an album better than any of them. Between the famous friends she had been making since eighteen and being under Teddy's wing for years, Layla knew she could do this. And maybe doing it would fill the Baby and Eddie sized holes in her heart.

She kept herself distracted by working and partying, never doing so much of the latter that it hurt the former. She went to parties thrown by rockstars like she used to, making sure to make it into all the magazines. She spent a lot of time with the guys from Queen, who she had never fully lost touch with but hadn't seen since she left England the last time. Her rekindled friendship with Brian was the support she needed at this time. He was the only other person to know everything that happened besides herself, Eddie, and Camilla. The only people not in England who knew where she was without finding out from a magazine was Daisy, Teddy, Simone, and Graham. She had called all of them either before or after her flight, giving minimal details and relying on them to tell everyone else.

Her albums dropped the same week as Aurora, one day before it which was impressive considering she started two albums when they had one halfway done. She also called in a favor and got on the front page of Rolling Stone with an article about her new albums: Shipwreck and Dance As The Hive Collapses. 

Damien Daniels [Photographer]: I did the album covers for Layla's second and third album. An iconic album drop! Shipwreck was more of the heartbreak album, we did this photo of her on the beach, a wet look, like she'd just crawled out of the ocean. This really pretty white dress was clingy to her and we placed ship debris around her. We tried a bunch of different poses but ended with the one of her pushing herself up from the ground, really cool. It was a statement that she was coming back. And then there was Dance As The Hive Collapses which came from this poem she wrote that she put on the back of the album. We did this set up with really strategic light and shadow. She was dressed in black and gold, not tacky like a bee, since Hive was in the title, but really classic. She looked ethereal. The photo was simple, just her spinning, the dress flowing out around her and there were all these mirrors around so you could see her reflected from all these angles. Just two amazing albums! My favorite song? Probably the one she featured Brian May on, "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" from Shipwreck. 

Cameron Richards [Writer/Journalist]: I wrote a couple of articles on Layla at this time but I had meet her when she was, maybe nineteen. I was nobody back then, with a shitty bit journalist job in L.A. I met Layla at a show and we got to talking, anyway, she introduced me to David Bowie and I ended up doing my first big assignment on Bowie. I always remembered her for that, so when she called me up about rushing an article on her and her new albums I knew I would do it in a heartbeat. She wanted the article to make her seem glamours, talented, and to bring back that witch association that she started with. I think she said she wanted her name to be on everybody's lips. So, that's what we did. Off the two albums I really loved "Dream Girl Evil".