Choosing which turn to take at the Crossroads

On June 26, famed guitarist Eric Clapton hosted the third Crossroads Guitar Festival at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Illinois. Joining him on the stage were an army of the best blues guitar players in the world—Albert Lee, BB King, Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, Jeff Beck, Jimmie Vaughan, John Mayer, Johnny Winter, Jonny Lang, Keb’ Mo’, Robert Cray, Susan Tedeschi, Steve Winwood, Vince Gill, and ZZ Top, to name a few.

Clapton hosts the Crossroads festival every three years to raise money for his Crossroads Centre, an international rehabilitation facility on the island of Antigua, dedicated to the treatment of drug and alcohol abuse.

No stranger to the ravages of substance abuse, Clapton credits his life to the recovery he gained in rehab, and he has dedicated his energies to helping others find the road to recovery at the Crossroads.

But why the fascination with the notion of a crossroads?

Obviously, it is an apt metaphor to refer to “reaching a crossroads in life” when it comes to leaving the path of abuse and turning the corner toward a healthier lifestyle. But Clapton’s familiarity with the term stretches far back to before the time of his substance abuse.

As a blues musician since the early 1960’s, Clapton was well aware of the image of the crossroads in blues music since the early 1900’s. According to legend, Robert Johnson, arguably the best blues musician of all time, learned his phenomenal talent with the guitar when he made a deal with the devil at a crossroads far out in the country.

After his young wife and baby died in childbirth in 1930 when she was only 16 and he was 19, Robert Johnson blamed God for his loss. He sought solace in the soulful Mississippi blues of Son House and Willie Brown, often spending the night sitting at their feet in some juke joint, longing to play the music that they played. When the two musicians would take a break, Robert would pick up one of their guitars and try to play it.

“And such a racket you never heard!” Son House recalled later. “It’d make the people mad, you know. They’d come out and say, ‘Why don’t y’all go in and get that guitar away from that boy! He’s running people crazy with it!’ I’d come back in, and I’d scold him about it: ‘Don’t do that Robert. You drive the people nuts. You can’t play nothing. Why don’t you play that harmonica for’em.’ But he didn’t want to blow that. Still, he didn’t care how I’d get after him about it. He’d do it anyway.”

Son House left town for a few months, and when he returned, he ran into Robert Johnson again, but something had changed in the young man.

Now Johnson could play the guitar better than any blues man alive.

Son House was amazed, and he said that there was no way for a man to learn to play that well so quickly—unless he had made a deal with the devil.

The legend grew.

Although Johnson was aware of the myth surrounding him, he did little to promote it—or to refute it. Indeed, he sang several songs hinting at the legend, including “Me and the Devil Blues,” “Hell Hound On My Trail,” and of course “Cross Road Blues.”

But there was another musician who was more closely associated with the crossroads legend than was Robert Johnson, and his name was Tommy Johnson (no relation).

Tommy Johnson admitted openly that he had made a bargain with the devil at the crossroads of Highway 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. As he explained, “If you want to learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where the road crosses that way, where a crossroads is. Get there, be sure to get there just a little ‘fore 12 that night so you know you’ll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself…A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar and he’ll tune it. And then he’ll play a piece and hand it back to you. That’s the way I learned to play anything I want.”

Because Tommy Johnson was 15 years older than Robert Johnson and had been playing blues for far longer, it is likely that he, and not Robert, was the true origin of the crossroads myth.

It was Tommy Johnson who was the source for the character of the same name in the film “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou.” In the film, he is picked up at the crossroads by the main characters, and he explains that he has traded his soul for the ability to play the guitar because he “wasn’t using” his soul anyway.

Whatever the truth behind the origin of the Crossroads myth, one thing is certain: both Tommy and Robert Johnson lived cursed lives.

Tommy became an alcoholic so desperate for drink that he often guzzled methanol alcohol from cans of the cooking fuel Sterno. He sang of it in his song “Canned Heat Blues” from which the 1960’s blues group Canned Heat took their name.

Robert died on August 16, 1938, when he was only 27 years old, the probable victim of drinking strychnine placed in his whiskey by a jealous husband.

Like Tommy Johnson, Eric Clapton also started down that road of substance abuse, not only with alcohol but with harder drugs as well.

And like Robert Johnson, Clapton’s life was also scarred with tragedy when Clapton’s four-year-old son fell to his death after tumbling from a 53rd floor Manhattan window in 1991. Clapton honored him in his heartbreaking song “Tears in Heaven.”

But unlike both Tommy and Robert Johnson, Clapton has turned the corner and now travels a different road.

By hosting the Crossroads Guitar Festival to raise money for addiction rehabilitation, he is helping others to turn their back on the devil that would drag them down to death and despair.

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