Eric Clapton to Perform at Daughter's School

LONDON (Reuters) - Guitar legend Eric Clapton (news) will swap his usual major venue gigs for a performance in a school sports hall on Tuesday evening.

Clapton, 57, whose daughter Ruth is a sixth-former at Sheffield's Birkdale school, agreed to appear to help raise money for music and computer equipment.

Some of the proceeds will also go to a drug rehabilitation center in Antigua, which former addict Clapton has supported for several years.

For their $35 entrance fee, the audience will hear an hour and a half of music and be able to take part in a question and answer session with Clapton.

The 790 tickets sold out almost as soon as they went on sale and were allocated on a first-come-first served basis to pupils' parents, said a spokeswoman for the school.

"The school is very pleased that he has agreed to do this -- it is a brilliant thing for it," she said.

Ruth is Clapton's daughter from an affair with Yvonne Kelly.

Clapton's son Conor died at the age of four in 1991 after falling from the window of a 53rd-floor Manhattan flat.

Clapton has been playing since the 1960s when he wasn't long out of school himself. The sports hall looks set to rock to some of his greatest classics including "Layla" and "Tears in Heaven" -- a song inspired by his son's death.