At the Crossroads Guitar Festival - My Weekend With Guitar Legends

But first, we're gonna start off with a little history about Crossroads song because it goes back 90 years ago.

Unbelievable.

Robert Johnson, I would call him kind of the grandfather of the blues, recorded Crossroads Blues on November 27th, 1936.

Yep, 90, almost 90 years ago.

He probably had no idea that this song was gonna make him famous long [laughs] after he was gone.

So let's talk about the history of that song.

So he wrote this song.

Robert Johnson was a blues guy back in the '30s.

The story goes that he disappeared.

He'd been playing around juke joints and places like that in the South.

Wasn't that great.

And then he was gone for a long, extended period of time.

He came back, and everybody says, "Wow, where did you learn how to play guitar like that?" Well, the story and the rumor, of course, went that he wrote this song called Crossroads, that he went down, if you listen to the lyrics to the song, the crossroads in the road, two famous roads that came together, and apparently, he met the Devil, as the rumor goes.

And the Devil said, "I'm gonna let you play guitar if you come along with me when you pass away." And the story, of course, continues, the fact that he sold his soul to the Devil, and the song became famous, not while he was alive, but years later.

Of course, that's all speculation.

Nobody was there when Robert Johnson showed up at the crossroads, which I don't think there ever was.

But he wrote this song, and it had legs of its own, but it wasn't until years later that Eric Clapton recorded it with Cream live at the Albert Hall.

This was back in the '60s.

I remember when it came out.

I just sat there and listened to it over and over again, listened to Clapton's lead break, and I went, "My goodness, who is this guy, and why is he so freaking good?" So let's think about crossroads and all our crossroads that we have to face in our life.

Tell my friend Pollyствоne.

So 28, 29 years ago, Eric Clapton decided because his addiction problems, that he was going to help people by founding the Crossroads Center in Antigua, which is for rehab for people with addiction problems.

That's where it got the name Crossroads Center in Antigua.

And once again, it's a metaphor for people going down to Antigua to figure out, "Hey, do I need to get over my addiction problems?" So that's where that came from.

So you might say, "Okay, I get it." And then it's called Crossroads Guitar Festival because the money raised at the festival goes to help support financially the Crossroads Center in Antigua.