Crossroads Guitar Festival live!
Crossroads Guitar Festival
Toyota Park, Bridgeview
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Many thanks to Eric Clapton for bringing the cream of guitar superstardom to Toyota Park in Bridgeview on July 28th for his second Crossroads Guitar Festival. The 11-hour guitar marathon was held to benefit the Crossroads Center, Clapton’s drug and alcohol rehab facility in Antigua. With a stellar lineup of 20-plus guitar pickers, the Crossroads Guitar Festival was not your average fundraiser.
The dizzying display of fretwork from the likes of Clapton, Buddy Guy, Steve Winwood, Jeff Beck, Johnny Winter, Derek Trucks and wife Susan Tedeschi, John McLaughlin, Willie Nelson, Vince Gill, and others kept fans enthralled throughout the afternoon and late into the evening. Comedian and former Wilmette resident Bill Murray served as MC and delighted the crowd with his offbeat humor. (Between sets Murray, also enlisted to play guitar, appeared dressed as Clapton at the various stages of his career.) At the start of the show, with Clapton standing by his side, Murray played a really bad version of Van Morrison’s “Gloria,” saying it was “The one song I know on electric guitar.”
Festival highlights included Clapton performing with former Blind Faith bandmate Winwood and ex-Band member Robbie Robertson. A revitalized Winter, performing with the Derek Trucks Band, blazed through “Highway 61 Revisited.” Beck was a fan favorite who completed his 60-minute set with The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life.” Guy closed the festival, but I missed it so that I could check out the Blues stage at the Taste Of Lincoln Avenue (see my forthcoming “Sweet Home” review).
Surveying the sold-out scene at Toyota Park I couldn’t help but think back to Clapton’s musical mentor, Robert Johnson, the Mississippi Delta guitarist who wrote “Cross Roads Blues,” after which Clapton’s Crossroads Center is named. I wondered what he would think if he saw the industry that was spawned from his music and his myth.
— Beverly Zeldin-Palmer
Category: Live Reviews, Weekly
