Eric Clapton, Crossroads
Eric ClaptonCROSSROADS.
Crossroads treats Eric Clapton's career as a long historical arc rather than a conventional hits package, stretching across four CDs and multiple bands, labels and musical phases.
Album artwork shown for commentary and historical reference. Cover image source: Cover Art Archive or the linked archival source.
SEVEN THINGS
WORTH KNOWING.
Recording stories, personnel, physical details and numbers worth keeping with the record.
Crossroads was released in 1988 as a four-CD box set.
The original set contains more than seventy tracks across its four discs.
The collection reaches back through the Yardbirds and John Mayall era before moving into Cream, Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominos and Clapton's solo work.
The title refers to the Robert Johnson blues standard that became closely associated with Clapton through Cream.
The box includes major recordings alongside less obvious archival material rather than limiting itself to hit singles.
The set arrived before large career-spanning CD boxes became routine in the reissue market.
Crossroads helped establish the model for using the compact-disc format to present a musician's catalog as a curated historical archive.
WHY THIS
ALBUM MATTERS.
Crossroads matters as much as a reissue concept as a Clapton compilation, showing how the extra running time of CDs could turn a retrospective into a deep chronological narrative.
THE
NUMBERS.
CDS
The original box contains four compact discs.
TRACKS
The set spans more than seventy selections.
RELEASE
Crossroads arrived early in the CD box-set era.
THE
PHYSICAL OBJECT.
The long-box presentation and multi-disc packaging make the collection feel like an archive rather than a single album, which is exactly the point of the project.
RESEARCH SOURCES
Facts are checked against artist archives, release databases, recording credits and established archival sources before publication.
KEEP
DIGGING.
More recording stories, strange credits, cover art, chart numbers and details hiding inside the records.