Eric Clapton 2010 Clapton

Eric Clapton's Crossroads Festival, which features world-class guitar players from all over the globe and has been held every three years since 2004, works as a fundraiser for the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a treatment and educational center Clapton founded in 1998 to help people suffering from chemical dependency. The first three concerts were single-day outdoor events held in Dallas in 2004, and in Chicago in 2007 and 2010, with the fourth, the concert represented by this two-disc set, moving indoors to Madison Square Garden in New York and expanding to two nights in 2013…

Clapton is Eric Clapton’s first solo album in five years, but he hardly spent the back half of the 2000s in seclusion. After 2005’s Back Home, he went on a journey through the past, writing a 2007 autobiography – also titled Clapton, although that’s the only connection they shared – mending fences with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker for a brief Cream reunion, establishing a lasting connection with his old Blind Faith bandmate Steve Winwood, and recording a duet album with his ‘70s inspiration JJ Cale. This embrace of history isn’t directly heard on Clapton but it’s certainly felt, extending to how EC relies on old tunes – blues and country, but also pop and R&B – for the bulk of this 14-track album…….

By the time Eric Clapton launched his solo career with the release of his self-titled debut album in mid-1970, he was long established as one of the world's major rock stars due to his group affiliations the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, and Blind Faith which had demonstrated his claim to being the best rock guitarist of his generation. That it took Clapton so long to go out on his own, however, was evidence of a degree of reticence unusual for one of his stature.