Well, I just have a different opinion about the what makes up the 20 most heartbreaking songs of all time. First of all, you can hardly do better than Derek & the Dominoes playing with Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins (that’s the second song in a two-song sequence below), but the first song is heart-wrenching:
Then there is The River by the Boss:
If you can top that you’ve been yanked around worse than I have.
gets my vote for the best line the Boss ever wrote.
Also from Bruce:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPobte6iqSU
I’m drivin’ in a stolen car, down Eldridge Avenue.
Each night I wait to get caught,
but I never do.
On the other hand, Kitty’s Back in Town!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE_KzrrMoto&feature=related
featuring an organ solo by the late, great Danny Federici.
That whole Derek and the Dominoes album is gut wrenching. Bell Bottom Blues is just as gut wrenching as Layla.
response was delayed while I put “Layla Sessions” on the cd player.
“Do you want to see me crawl across the floor to you?”
some of the best music ever. EVER!
I have a live Derek&Dominoes recording that is among the shows that I can listen to over and over and over again. “Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad” is an exhibition of great music, and all those guys could fucking play.
From Derek and the Dominoes, plays regularly in Fort Lauderdale with Jimmy Cavallo. Why aren’t both of them in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Don’t take my seat!
I can outdo you in a second.
Lots of songs about heartbreak, I’ve written a few about my own heartbreak which, of course, register personally even if few other people heard them.
But one of the saddest songs ever has to be Sufjan Stevens’ “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”. Can’t say I’m a big fan of Stevens, but that song is so powerful and creepy it troubles me and saddens me every time I hear it. You come away from it wondering what sliver of humanity in you separates you from being a monster like Gacy, whose father drank and whose mother worried about him?
No one will believe this, but it’s true . . . .
I was a student in Nashville in 1970, and word got out that Derek and The Dominoes were taping with the Johnny Cash show at the Grand Ole Opry (the old Ryman Auditorium downtown–the original Opry house).
So . . . . . I got to see the taping–Cash, Perkins, and Eric Clapton playing Blue Suede Shoes together. It should also be mentioned that the great folkie–Ramblin’ Jack Elliott–also was there and played with them.
At the end of the taping. The Dominoes played a set just for the audience.