EVEN MEN BLEED [BITCHBACK]

When Eric Clapton first sang about “Layla”, we thought it was one of the seminal moments in Rock.

Little did we know that he was singing about unrequited love- his secret love for his best friend’s wife.

The best friend was George Harrison and the wife was Patti Boyd Harrison.

As Clapton was to say later- and after he married Patti Boyd Harrison- “It was tough when George was writing all these great love songs for her and I was playing on the recordings.”

It was so tough to handle that Clapton lost himself in a haze of heroin to dull the pain.

He was “getting down on his knees”, he was there “when your old man had let you down”, but “Layla” wasn’t listening.

Not yet, anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzkhOmKVW08

Of course, both Clapton and Harrison have written some great love songs- “Wonderful Tonight,” “Something,” Here Comes The Sun” and others which escape my mind.

Love songs- they’ve been around forever.

And they surface just as often as when one falls in love.

Sometimes, once is enough.

Depends.

Or when one falls out of love and then has your memory jolted into the present and what once was or could have been.

It’s like a weird combination of drowning in one’s tears and that old t-shirt that said, “If Life Is A Bowl Of Cherries, What Am I Doing In The Pits?”

Love: You can’t live with it and, sometimes, you can’t live without it.

The very notion of thinking one is “in love” keeps the eternal romantic in many of us going.

It’s like being the tortured artist.

But with both ears intact.

However, the older one gets, there comes the “wisdom”- or stupidity- of falling in love with the “right person”- no matter how wrong this might be.

This could be an ex, or this could be someone who, like Layla, one cannot ever “reach” and be with as she’s married.

And that old Stephen Stills song about, If You Can’t Be With The One You Love, Then Love The One You’re With no longer makes sense.

Or satisfies you.

“Love the one you’re with” and when you’re done and dusted, then what?

Hell, time would be better spent watching an old episode of Seinfeld.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5IVuN1N6-Y

So what are some of the greatest love songs?

That’s just personal isn’t it?

And to do with age and life’s paths one has taken.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cUaO1P2mfo

To some it could be Wooly Bully by Sam The Sham and the Pharaohs.

To others it could be a Justin Bieber or Katy Perry track.

For me, these say it all- complicated, simple, and confusing, like love itself.

Yes, even men bleed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPQdZwRI4GU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz8zAijpmwM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwa-kXmSb30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctJNxJk-sEs