Aiding Sobriety, a Chord at a Time
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival will help a drug center in Antigua.
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: April 11, 2013
IT’S about 1,700 miles from Madison Square Garden to Willoughby Bay in Antigua, and it is hard to imagine two places more different than the grimy canyons of Midtown Manhattan and the pristine, windswept hills overlooking the Caribbean that are home to the Crossroads Center drug rehabilitation clinic.
But this weekend the two places will be linked by Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, which raises money for this small nonprofit treatment center, which he has built into a $20 million charity over the last 15 years, largely through selling his guitars and persuading friends to do benefit concerts.
Like the previous three Crossroads festivals, the two-day event at Madison Square Garden will be a celebration of blues and blues-rock guitar, anchored by Robert Cray and his band, Los Lobos and the Allman Brothers Band. The lineup includes about 30 musicians, most of them, like Mr. Clapton, masters of the electric blues: B. B. King, Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, Albert Lee and Jeff Beck. The gathering is daunting, even for veterans on the bill.
“It’s both gratifying and intimidating,” said Mr. Cray, who will play both Friday and Saturday nights. “Its fun to see all the different performers and pairings. There are just so many awesome musicians there.”
Also on the bill are fingerpickers like Taj Mahal, Earl Klugh and Keb’ Mo’; young blues-based performers like Jonny Lang and John Mayer; studio legends like Steve Cropper and Matt Murphy; and country artists like Vince Gill and Keith Urban. It’s a relatively backward-looking list, devoid of indie rockers like Jack White or female artists like Bonnie Raitt. Tickets are $75 to $500.
For Mr. Clapton, 68, the festival is the latest effort to finance what has become his main labor of love: a 36-bed rehabilitation center where about 15 percent of the beds go to poor people from Antigua and Barbuda. He owns two estates on the island, and he has credited its peaceful atmosphere with helping him beat his own alcoholism in the 1980s.
Mr. Clapton declined to be interviewed for this article, but in his 2007 autobiography he said he started building the clinic with his own money in the mid-1990s after learning that the island, where he had a home, had no treatment center for alcoholics or drug addicts, several of whom he had encountered at a local tavern. “There was absolutely no notion of what recovery was in the Caribbean,” he wrote. “Alcoholism was still regarded as immoral or sinful behavior there.” He added that he wanted “to pay back for all the good times and spiritual healing I’d got in Antigua.”
“In order to stay sober,” he said, “I had to help others get sober.”
Mr. Clapton’s fund-raising also supports two halfway houses for recovering addicts, one on Antigua for local residents, and a second in Delray Beach, Fla. The charities Mr. Clapton has set up in the United States and in Britain send about $1.5 million a year to provide subsidized treatment at the Crossroads Center, aiding about 50 people who cannot afford to pay the regular fees. A monthlong 12-step program costs $24,000, and a six-week stay is $31,000. Over the years, the secluded spot, modeled on the Betty Ford Center, has attracted celebrities seeking help with addictions as well.
Hans Smit, a jeweler and philanthropist in Antigua, said the center, a secluded group of buildings with two pools on a stretch of coastline, functions as a hybrid institution, providing the island of 80,000 people its only drug rehabilitation program while catering to more well-to-do clients from abroad.
“There is always space for Antiguans,” Mr. Smit said. “It does a fantastic job. It really does and because it is so quiet, it works very well for people from overseas who are well known in the public eye.”
Mr. Vaughan, the Texas blues guitarist, who has done all the Crossroads festivals, is one of the few people in the lineup who have visited the center. He said the patients come from all walks of life, from American mansions to Caribbean slums. “It’s a good place to get sober and to learn about your problems,” he said. “It’s very serious business.”
Others said they were participating because they had been through their own battles with drugs and alcohol, and many have seen bandmates and friends succumb to addiction. In an interview Gregg Allman said that he had been sober for nearly two decades after going through a 12-step program, and that he viewed the Crossroads concert as a way to help other alcoholics. “Everybody is so grateful to get away from that monster,” he said. “It’s been 19 years for me. I still have nightmares.”
Still others said they were motivated by personal loyalty to Mr. Clapton, who has helped them professionally. “I do it for Eric — he’s got such a big heart and he does so much for so many people,” Mr. Cray said. “We’ve been given the opportunity to be on the great stages with him in all these places. When he calls, we’ll help.”
Mr. Guy, 76, said he felt a debt to Mr. Clapton, and to the Rolling Stones, for popularizing the blues and players like himself. “They are the ones who exploded our music and let the world know who the great Muddy Waters was,” he said. “They did so much for us.”
Mr. Guy struck up a friendship with Mr. Clapton in the late 1960s shortly after the single “Strange Brew,” by Cream, the seminal band Mr. Clapton led at the time, was released. He told Mr. Clapton how much he liked the song. “He didn’t smile,” Mr. Guy recalled. “He said: ‘You should like it. Those are your licks.’ ”
Later, in the 1990s, Mr. Clapton was instrumental in securing Mr. Guy a record deal during a low point in his career by including him in a show at the Royal Albert Hall in London. When Mr. Clapton asked for help with the first Crossroads Guitar Festival, Mr. Guy canceled another gig to participate.
Kurt Rosenwinkel, 42, a jazz guitarist, met Mr. Clapton just a year ago at a Rosenwinkel performance at the Village Vanguard. Mr. Clapton later asked him to do the benefit. “He was an influence on everybody I was into as a young guy into rock — all that started with Cream,” Mr. Rosenwinkel said.
Mr. Clapton has proved to be adept at fund-raising for the center, which is across a bay from his 45-acre estate on Standfast Point. Three times he has auctioned off guitars and other memorabilia to raise millions of dollars, starting with the sale of more than 100 instruments in 1999.
This weekend’s event is the fifth such benefit concert Mr. Clapton has organized. He started in 1999 with “Eric Clapton and Friends” at Madison Square Garden. The first Crossroads Guitar Festival was held on two nights in Dallas in 2004, followed by one-day concerts in Chicago in 2007 and 2010. All were filmed, and royalties from the DVD sales have gone to the center.
These efforts have given the sister charities in the United States and Britain that support the center robust balance sheets. Between 1999 and 2010, the American charity, called the Crossroads at Antigua Foundation, took in about $19.5 million in revenues from ticket sales, investments, merchandise, royalties, charity auctions and contributions, according to tax filings. It sent about $5.2 million during that time to the center in Antigua. After expenses, it still had $8.3 million in assets in June 2011, including the Florida halfway house and $4.6 million in securities.
The British charity, the Crossroads Antigua Foundation, is similarly flush, showing about $9.5 million in assets on its June 2012 report to the British Charity Commission. The commission’s documents show that the British charity has taken in $4.2 million in revenues over the last five years and has sent about $2.4 million to Antigua to subsidize needy patients and operate a free halfway house for drug addicts there. Another $600,000 was spent to build a new detoxification facility.
Kim Martin, the Crossroads Center’s executive officer, said some of the money from the concerts paid for the island’s halfway house, counseling for the families of drug addicts and an antidrug program in schools. But the bulk goes for financial aid, not just for Antiguans, but for people of modest means from other countries.
“Our mission goes back to Mr. Clapton’s desire to provide affordable, accessible treatment to people of Antigua and the Caribbean, primarily, and then also internationally, so we are able to offer treatment at a sliding scale,” Ms. Martin said.
The Crossroads Guitar Festival runs Friday and Saturday at Madison Square Garden; crossroadsguitarfestival.com.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 12, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Aiding Sobriety, A Chord At a Time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/arts/music/aiding-sobriety-a-chord-at-a-time.h...
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