Clapton To Hold Benefit For Rehab Center

(AP)  Eric Clapton is having a jam session with more than a dozen of his favorite guitar-playing pals, and everyone is invited.

Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival, scheduled July 28 in Chicago, will benefit Crossroads Centre, the drug-rehab facility he founded in Antigua a decade ago. Tickets go on sale Saturday.

Scheduled performers include B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Vince Gill, Sheryl Crow, Jeff Beck and John Mayer, among others — and Clapton is already excited about spontaneous collaborations.

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Photos: Eric Clapton

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"Some of it's mapped and some of it isn't," he said Wednesday by phone from Winnipeg, Canada, where he is on tour. "We have to leave a little bit of it to chance."

This will be the second concert Clapton has held to raise funds for the Caribbean rehab facility, which now includes a halfway house and a community-education program. The first concert was in Dallas in 2004.

Many performers plan to return — "A great testament to how much everybody loves Eric Clapton," said Gill, who played at the first Crossroads fest.

Establishing the rehab center fulfilled a personal dream, Clapton said.

"I haven't had a drink or drug for quite a long time, and it's changed my life completely. That's something I want to pass on and share with other people," he said.

Clapton said clinics such as Crossroads are "very necessary."

"I think it's suffered a little bit in some of the recent publicity with the celebrities who go there," he said. "It's a bit of a witch hunt going on in some of the news channels about rehabs in general. It's a little scary because ... the last thing we want is to lose any of the rehabs."

The 62-year-old guitarist is set to wrap up his world tour in April and "have a little break in England" with his family before the Crossroads concert.

"Then I'm going to disappear for a year or two," he said, "and have some fun."


By Sandy Cohen