“All that was left was a pile of burning guitars,” said Robbie Robertson at the end of the 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago. The eleven-hour event was jam-packed with fiery performances onstage, but a mellow vibe prevailed both in the crowd and behind the scenes. The day was warm and overcast, and Toyota Park was filled to the last row with shirtless onlookers and guitar fanatics, all sharing a common sense of being in the presence of greatness.

The scene backstage resembled a big family reunion as host Eric Clapton and John Mayer made themselves at home, both equipped with cameras. The Fender tent was the prime behind-the-scenes hangout, with its guitar-lined walls, velvet couches and of course, air conditioning. But most of the event’s guitar heroes could be found clustered together at the side of the stage intently watching their own guitar heroes. Early in the day Clapton, dressed in a BBQ-ready outfit of plaid Bermuda shorts and a golf beret, watched Robert Cray, Hubert Sumlin and Jimmie Vaughan alongside B.B. King, reminiscing with the blues legend about old recording sessions. A slightly star-struck Derek Trucks chatted up King while Sheryl Crow sat in the sound booth gazing at Mayer’s set. “I could feel the audience dragging in the beginning, but I knew how the movie ends,” Mayer said, referring to his blaring guitar solo on set closer “Gravity” and his version of the Ray Charles hit “I Don’t Need No Doctor.” (more…)

“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.) (more…)

Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival is powering into the southern suburbs of Chicago this Saturday, and the lineup is earthshaking: Clapton, Jeff Beck, Doyle Bramhall II, Robert Cray, Sheryl Crow, Vince Gill, Buddy Guy, BB King, Alison Krauss, Sonny Landreth, Albert Lee, Los Lobos, John Mayer, John McLaughlin, Willie Nelson, Robert Randolph & The Family Band, Robbie Robertson, Hubert Sumlin, The Derek Trucks Band, Jimmie Vaughan, Johnny Winter, and (take a breath) Steve Winwood.
Check back with us later this weekend for a complete photo gallery, backstage reports and, on Monday, a full review. In the meantime, here’s what you need to know about the festival: (more…)

Check back in this space on Monday for complete RollingStone.com coverage of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival this weekend at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Illinois. Clapton, Buddy Guy, Sheryl Crow, Robbie Robertson and John Mayer are playing, and we’ll have a full photo gallery, backstage reports and the full story from David Fricke.

Photo: Kramer/Getty

• Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Festival, set to take place next weekend in Chicago, already boasts a lineup that features acts ranging from B.B. King to John Mayer. Now the show — which will benefit Clapton’s rehab facility in Antigua — has added Robbie Robertson, formerly of The Band, along with Johnny Winter and emcee Bill Murray to the list of performers. Festival organizers will also release extra tickets to the previously sold-out event today via the venue’s box office and Ticketmaster.

• Iggy Pop apologized for using a racist term during an interview at Glastonbury and lashed out at the two Stooges biopics in the works, even though he already approved of Elijah Wood’s casting.

• Cheap Trick and special guests will play Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at the Hollywood Bowl on August 10 and 11 to celebrate the album’s 40th anniversary.

• Only about half of fans who scored free tickets to this year’s Ozzfest have showed up to the tour’s California dates.

• After some release-date shuffling, Kanye West and 50 Cent will go head to head on September 11 with new albums.

Photo: Kane/Getty

He reunited with his Cream compatriots in 2005 and has been mining Derek and the Dominoes catalog on his current tour. Now Eric Clapton is getting ready to reopen yet another chapter of his classic-rock past — Blind Faith. During his second Crossroads Guitar Festival, July 28 at Toyota Park in Chicago, Clapton plans to reconnect with Steve Winwood for a mini-reunion of the famously short-lived band that put out one album and toured in 1969. “We’ve got unfinished business,” Clapton tells ROLLING STONE. (more…)