Eric Clapton Featured in New VH1 and MTV Music Special

Eric Clapton will celebrate the arrival of his upcoming album with a music special called I Still Do: An Intimate Discussion About Rock, the Blues and Shepherd's Pie. The program is scheduled to air on May 20 at 8PM on VH1 Classic and at 9PM on MTV Live. The networks will also feature the exclusive premiere of "Spiral" – a new song that Clapton told Classic Rock is "about my compulsion to play and my love for music" – at 9PM on May 13.

The special's humorous title fits in with Clapton's general attitude about the blues. "Even now, I don’t link pain and suffering with blues music," he said. "I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, it’s depressing’ or ‘Doesn’t it get you down?’ I find it enlightening. I get the opposite effect from it.”

I Still Do, which will be released on May 20, finds Clapton reuniting with producer Glyn Johns for the first time since the '70s, when they worked together on the three-times platinum 1977 smash Slowhand.

They recently reconnected, Clapton said, when Johns "got in touch with me, to read his autobiography and make a comment on it which would be for use with promotion. ... I gave him a call, and said, ‘Let’s go out for a bite to eat just to prove that we are still mates.’ And during that dinner I said we should do something, just to celebrate the coming up of our 40th anniversary. So we booked some time and went in the studio."

This new project, which includes 12 original and cover songs, follows Clapton's 2014 tribute LP The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale.

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