Crossroads Guitar Festival: Clapton, B.B. King, Jeff Beck Tear Through Six-String Salutes to Friends and Idols

“I do this for fun,” Eric Clapton confessed in an interview the day before he hosted and headlined the second Crossroads Guitar Festival, an eleven-hour marathon of solos and joy, on July 28th for 28,000 people at Toyota Park in Chicago. The sold-out event was held to benefit the Crossroads Centre, the drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility Clapton founded on the Caribbean island of Antigua in 1997. (Sales of the two-DVD set filmed at the inaugural Crossroads, a three-day affair in Dallas in 2004, have raised about seven million dollars for the Centre.) But the true theme of the day was Friends and Idols. The heart of Clapton’s hour-and-a-half set was a dynamic reunion with singer-organist-guitarist Steve Winwood. Together, they revived three songs from their 1969 album as Blind Faith. Clapton also paid tribute to a lifelong friend who couldn’t be there, George Harrison, with an electrifying version of “Isn’t It a Pity” from Harrison’s 1970 masterpiece All Things Must Pass. Clapton generously stacked the bill with players who have been his deep influences, close companions and frequent collaborators — many of them all at the same time, such as B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck and Robbie Robertson. Doyle Bramhall II, who has played with Clapton on records and the road for several years, and Derek Trucks, who has been a sensational addition on slide guitar to Clapton’s latest touring band, both got their own afternoon sets, as did more recent Clapton friends and favorites John Mayer and sacred-steel fireball Robert Randolph. (Read on for a full report and David Fricke’s six Crossroads highlights featuring Jeff Beck, Jimmie Vaughan with Robert Cray, Johnny Winter with the Derek Trucks Band and more.) Clapton made sure he did not miss any of the fun. He was there at noon, joining the show’s host Bill Murray for a brief, comic duet on Van Morrison’s “Gloria” and personally introducting
	Published: 2007-07-31 Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Rock News, Live Shows, Festivals