Story Song Structure (5): Layla

Let's see, we've had bar songs, romance, down and out artists, and train songs. How 'bout a little old fashioned tragedy, as in Greek Tragedy straight out of our school books?

That's where Eric Clapton sets us up to go with Layla (link here) lyrically. (There are plenty of other versions, live or acoustic, but I think the original works best for what I'm describing here, and I know that Eric has said he almost hates his voice at that stage of his career, but again, for what I'm talking about...)

Like with Al Green, the lyric has its movement, dynamic story, a tragedy of the old style if we take it explicitly... ending in ambiguity, driving us to believe there's no hope for this, he's told us he's going insane...

But then.

Here's where music can save us, can resolve the ambiguity that the wailing guitars drive us to.

Because the piano outro moves from melancholy, the other side, the recovery...

to hope.

It even ends in birdsong.