Originally started to raise money for Eric Clapton's drug clinic in the Caribbean, the "Crossroads Guitar Festival" is now considered an institution where the best guitarists on the planet get together. Now Clapton, who has just released the respectable old work "I Still Do", draws an impressive interim balance of "his" festival with the elaborate three-CD box set "Crossroads Revisited". The idea was born from an embarrassment: Eric Clapton, after all one of the wealthiest rock musicians of the scene, needed money. Not for himself personally, but for a project that was close to his heart. In 1998, the "Crossroads Centre" addiction clinic on the Caribbean island of Antigua, initiated by the once alcoholic and heroin-addicted guitarist, opened its doors after five years of planning, preparation and construction. However, the necessary funds were lacking to finance the ongoing operation of the clinic.
In 1999 the idea was born to generate an adequate financial injection with the help of a prominent music festival. In fact, the Crossroads Benefit Concert took place at Madison Square Garden, New York, June 30, 1999 The show, which featured Clapton and Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow and Mary J. Blige, among others, did not bring nearly as many dollars into the Crossroad box office as the auction at Christie's, where Clapton had auctioned off more than 100 of his legendary guitars plus various amplifiers a few days earlier: 4,452,000 US dollars. The sum was sufficient to provide the clinic with solid economic starting conditions.
The "Crossroads Guitar Festival", which Clapton has organized every three years since 2004, had little in common with the first benefit event. Because as the title of the second event already says, it was now about guitars and guitarists respectively. Clapton had always been one of those musicians who could sincerely appreciate the qualities of their colleagues. He was one of Jimi Hendrix's greatest admirers from an early age and recognized his talent without envy (when the American came to England in the fall of 1966, he frightened the local scene with his unique play - including Clapton, as he later admitted several times)...
