Derek & the Dominos, "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?"

Today's Eric Clapton's birthday, so the occasional classic-rock radio station is playing even larger doses of him than usual. Personally, I find him to be a genius but a lazy one: he can do whatever he wants with his guitar, yet often just doesn't seem to want to do all that much beyond what is expected of him. Hence the tedium of his '90s adult-contemporary phase.

But Clapton's done some magnificent work too, my favorites mostly coming from the Derek & the Dominos album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. (Lame title, by the way: assorted seems extraneous or redundant.) "Layla," of course, was the monster hit, several minutes of vigorous, epic tragedy; but scaling nearly as high a height was "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad," a song just as desperate and miserable in its message and as fiery and ferocious in its dual-guitar-attack playing.

But to answer the ungrammatical question: love got to be so sad because we keep forgetting what it means to love. Love is sad when love is an aim to possess, because that kind of love can never grow, only shrink. It's worth reminding oneself of that, especially considering that it didn't exactly work out when Clapton actually won his Layla's heart.