Eric Clapton And Guests - Crossroads Revisited album review

This 40-track set gives a flavour of the four Crossroads festivals so far - pluck pick, every trip

Eric Clapton And Guests Crossroads Revisited album cover

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Eric Clapton’s triannual Crossroads Festival in America – a fundraiser for his addiction centre in Antigua – doesn’t rate much attention over here. But for Stateside guitar fans, particularly those more concerned with pick-ups than posing, it’s a chance to binge on a smorgasbord of pleasant pluckers.

This 40-track set gives a flavour of the four festivals so far. Ol’ Slowhand shows up on 16 tracks. The half a dozen over-tried and over-trusted hits he plays with his own band are considerably less interesting than his cameo appearance with JJ Cale (fumbling the intro to After Midnight), trading licks with Carlos Santana or reviving Dear Mr Fantasy with Steve Winwood. He also joins some of the massed blues jams that are so crowded with the great and the good (and the now-departed) that it’s impossible to tell who’s playing what.

The gregarious Vince Gill and Albert Lee show how the festival jam should work, rounding up Sheryl Crow, Keb’ Mo’ and James Burton for Lay Down Sally and Keith Urban for Tumbling Dice. Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and a host of jam-banders pick up the baton with a soulful and (presumably) drug-free cover of Space Captain, which is more than can be said for Joe Cocker’s version on Mad Dogs & Englishmen.

The Many Faces Of Eric Clapton: ‘God’ speaks!

Buyer's Guide: Eric Clapton

Joe Bonamassa: I know where Eric Clapton’s Beano guitar is

Hugh Fielder

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 50 years. Actually 61 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.

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