Carlos Santana Interview

by Tom Watson.

Though we met for the first time last week, Carlos Santana and I go back to 1969 when, as the guitarist for a Midwest bar band, I was told we were adding a new song called "Evil Ways" to the set list. Here's the 45, go learn it.

Fair enough, that should be a 10-15 minute breeze since one of the benefits of being a bar band is that your audiences are very forgiving. But there are exceptions to that rule. From time-to-time a song comes along with guitar riffs that stick, that become so well ingrained that deviation is unacceptable.

"Evil Ways" had sticky riffs. So did the 1970/71 Santana hits "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye Como Va." All three became de rigueur for cover bands and sloppy reproduction from a bar-band guitarist raised eyebrows (or worse). When a hardcore bar crowd recognizes a mis-played riff, something's going on.

While it was obvious from the first time I heard that signature Santana touch, tone and phrasing that he was an excellent player, it wasn't until 1970 when I saw the movie Woodstock, and Santana's performance at the famous festival, that his playing raised the hair on the back of my neck. Santana didn't just crank out pretty riffs. He had a lot to say and the means to say it. In fact, it wouldn't be long before Santana's guitar started speaking in tongues.

Like cigarettes and scotch, jazz is an acquired taste. Santana drank from the genre early and deep. By 1973, he had entered what I call the Coltrane Period. If jazz is an acquired taste, the music of saxophonist John Coltrane often takes some acquiring even for jazz fans. In '73 Santana released the album Love Devotion Surrender with former Miles Davis (another strong influence on Santana) sideman, guitarist John McLaughlin (who in 1973 was the Mahavishnu John McLaughlin), an album that features Coltrane's "A Love Supreme". Later the same year, he again teamed up with McLaughlin for Welcome, which contains two more Coltrane tunes. In 1974, Santana took his Coltrane connection a step further, releasing Illuminations with jazz pianist Alice Coltrane, John Coltrane's wife (John Coltrane passed away in 1967).

I mention Santana's connection with jazz (and I only scratched the surface) because I have a feeling some who came to know Santana as the result of his 1999 smash hit album, Supernatural (or 2002's Shaman or the current All That I Am), may be unaware of the tremendous body of work he created in the 30 years between "Evil Ways" and "Smooth." When we listen to Santana the pop guitarist what we're hearing is the tip of an iceberg.

Coltrane remains a strong influence on Santana. He's been closing many (if not all) of his recent shows in Europe with a medley of "Evil Ways" and "A Love Supreme" and his guitar-oriented fans can look forward to hearing more of what lurks beneath the water when he releases his next album that Santana promises will have no vocals.

The interview below took place on June 1, 2006, in Lisbon, Portugal, a day before Santana's appearance at the Rock 'n' Rio festival, among Carlos Santana, my wife (representing Portugal's Jornal de Noticias newspaper for which she writes) and myself. While the interview may give you "something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue", unfortunately, what it won't give you is the warmth and generosity that emanates from the presence of Carlos Santana. This interview's the tip of another iceberg.

How’s the tour going?

Carlos Santana: Oh, thank God, better than ever. It’s very rewarding to say that it’s better than ever. After all these years it just keeps getting better. We see more people, especially young people and people our age and in between. And the sound is, thanks to Paul Reed Smith, flame-on every time.

I was going to ask you later about Paul Reed Smith and his guitars. How did you guys meet?

CS: Well, he believed that the guitar he made would be synonymous with my sound so in 70-something, ’78 or ’79, he came to a concert in Maryland and said, "I made this guitar and I want you to try it," so I did. And I looked in his eyes and I felt that he had tremendous eagerness to give birth to something that was very different from Fender or Gibson. I’m happy to say his dream became a reality.

What models are you using on this tour?

CS: You know, anything that’s Paul Reed [Smith] I can play, but I mainly use the Santana II model although I have been playing the singlecut Paul Reed Smith because it doesn't have the whammy bar so I can really beat it up and it stays in tune. And it also sounds, with your permission, it sounds more masculine than the other ones because being a singlecut there’s more wood and so the resonance sounds more like a tenor saxophone as opposed to a soprano.

This tour is to support "All That I Am". Where did the album title come from?

CS: There’s a song on the CD, "My Man" that Mary J Blige sings, and she says it in there, “all that I have and all that I am,” you know. That’s a good question for a lot of people. People need to know that you're more than Portuguese or Mexican or Hebrew or Palestinian. You are the whole sum. It’s important that they teach in schools, junior high school and grammar school, totality, absoluteness. A baby being born comes with everything.

That is part of your message?

CS: That’s part of my message. Embrace your absoluteness, your totality. If you can feel your heart you’ll be able to feel Apache...

...universal?

CS: Universal. It’s a multi-dimensional universe.

Many of your albums have a mystic or esoteric element. What is your message after all? What more do you want to teach people?

CS: Well, you know, I’m so happy that you asked straight-up what the message is, what the purpose is of what we do. I would like people to understand this saying, "May the heavens open up and the angels bless each and every one with the deep awareness of your own light." If you can do that, you will be a better person. You will transcend being Christian or being Muslim or being Hindu, because when you die, they’re not going to care about that stuff on the other side. They only care about how much light, joy and love you shared while you were on this planet.

So, "all that I am" means that I’m not afraid. I have the courage to say I transcended and graduated being American or Mexican or all that kind of stuff. I have no allegiance or alliance to any flag or country. That to me is like Starbucks or Pepsi-Cola. It’s just a business. It doesn’t mean anything to me. My only alliance is to the heart of humanity, like Desmond Tutu, like the Dhali Lama, like Nobel Peace Prize women. You know, there comes a point where all that dying means is I graduated from being the little Mexican or the little American, into the universal concept of I’m not a drop of water anymore, I am part of the ocean. And if you can claim that, with humility, then you’re able to create miracles.

So you believe in humankind. Are you an optimist?

CS: Absolutely. Like Mr. Desmond Tutu says, “Everyone and everything is a work in progress.” You know, if you don’t like the painting, don’t criticize it yet because it’s not done. It’s not finished.

Seems we have a way to go.

CS: That’s ok. Enjoy it, enjoy it. Maybe it needs more yellow or blue or red, green, whatever, but enjoy the painting because it’s not over yet.

Your fans should love your recent set lists – they showcase your music from the beginning to today – and Michael Shrieve has appeared in several of your shows. Is he going to perform tomorrow night?

CS: Yes. He plays "Black Magic Woman" with us.

You’ve known him for…

CS: …since ‘68/’69.

It’s amazing that you’re still close and work well together.

CS: Well, you know, out of the original band he and I were kindred spirits. He and I wanted the multi-dimensional thing more than the drugs and the women and all the other stuff that came in with being so young and so naïve. He and I used to lock ourselves in a room and go through Miles [Davis] and [John] Coltrane and whatever was available to us – soundtracks from Fellini movies or whatever. Michael and I were always exploring. How do we express that and make it into our own? So, that’s why after all these years we have a beautiful relationship, because we’re hungry for new colors, new expression, new feelings, constantly.

You’re coming from the same place.

CS: Yes, exactly.

Speaking of Coltrane, I saw that your final encore is a medley of "Evil Ways" and "A Love Supreme".

CS: Yes, and we dedicate "Evil Ways" to George Bush every night. “You’ve got to change your evil ways.” [Laughs]

Probably a lot of your younger fans aren’t familiar with Coltrane and "A Love Supreme". How are they reacting to it?

CS: They stay until the very, very end. To my incredible surprise, they don’t run to the parking lot when we get to the song. They stay and they’re dancing because we include elements of "Evil Ways" and the Doors’ "Light My Fire". The Doors were a very hypnotic band, one of my favorite bands, so with that we go into "A Love Supreme". It’s a perfect song to send them home with because "A Love Supreme", "One Love", "Imagine", all those songs come from the same place – a total reunification of spirits. It validates people’s existence.

It’s a good summary, too.

CS: Yes, exactly.

You’ve had a great affinity for John Coltrane. That's still true today?

CS: Oh yes. And I’m happy to say that I see more younger musicians, like Derek Trucks, who are into it. They’re realizing that that’s the ocean we need to dip ourselves in because there are certain people like John Coltrane and Arthur Ashe who were not hostile in their power of peace, who remind us of the saying, "When the power of love replaces the love for power." Mr. Desmond Tutu, Mr. Harry Belafonte, John Coltrane, Arthur Ashe, Bob Dylan, there are certain people who always impress when you’re in their presence because when they walk into a room they have a seriously powerful spirit.

In the last three of four years Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Mick Jagger, and Sir Elton John have been knighted. I’ve been knighted by Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter and by Bob Dylan. I don’t really care to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth, man. That don’t mean that much to me, with all due respect to her and those other fellows. [Laughs]

To me, to be knighted by Bob Dylan, Wayne Shorter and Miles Davis, that’s it for me, man.

The rock ‘n’ roll painter, Denny Dent, said, “What comes from the heart, lands on the heart.” Is that something Carlos Santana could have said?

CS: Absolutely. You know, only the heart understands the heart, man. The reason I mention all these people is they all had one thing in common. All of them were ferocious at rolling up their sleeves and elevating themselves and the consciousness of other people. It’s the only thing that I don’t see in America as much. I see people selling beer, selling trucks, selling religion on Sunday, but there’s no consciousness.

Consciousness is the people, men and women, who immediately go to where there’s an earthquake and, without recognition, they heal, feed, or bury. Or, very quietly, just their presence elevates others. It’s the most important thing that you can do on this planet, to elevate, transform and illumine your own consciousness. Everything else is really like show business and a waste of time, as far as I’m concerned because money, you can’t take it [with you], you know. You can’t take anything other than the satisfaction of knowing that you ignited another human being to the recognition of her own or his own light. Now that’s consciousness.

So that’s why we like Coltrane and Bob Marley so much.

You also have an affinity for John Coltrane, the man, and not just Coltrane’s approach to scales and chords.

CS: People need to understand there’s this incredible secret. We are more important than demons or angels. Demons only disobey. Angels only obey. We have free will. It takes an enormous amount of courage to request to God to come and be a human being on this planet. It ain’t easy being a human on this planet, whether you’re Michael Jackson or Donald Trump or a beggar in the streets, it’s the same. You still have to go through the same trials and tribulations, man. Look, Moses had to go for forty days and forty nights up in the mountains and get himself together, you know. That means it ain’t easy being human.

You have to, like a snake, shed skin. The skin is guilt, shame, judgment, condemnation, fear. That’s the skin. The new skin is beauty, elegance, excellence, grace, dignity. So you know, for me, it’s just not so complicated. I utilize the microphone, the pen, whatever I can, to invite people to recognize that there’s divinity and light in your DNA. Don’t sell yourself so short by saying, “Amazing grace, who’d save a wretch like me.” There ain’t nothing wretched about me or about you unless you perceive yourself to be a wretched person. Change your perception. Say, “God made me, so I must be good, I must have something." You know what I’m saying?

It’s all about perception. If you think you’re nothing, then that’s what you are. If you think you have access to command angels to give you opportunities and possibilities, then lo and behold, you will have that too. You are what you think. Be careful.

When you arrive home, do you put your guitars down?

CS: Yes, immediately.

How do you balance your family life with your musician life?

CS: I surrender immediately to my wife and my two daughters and to my son, my mom, and my four sisters.

You spend your birthday on tour?

CS: Sometimes. Sometimes I spend it at home. But I’ve been to all the graduations of my children, their birthdays, and whatever. Three weeks, three weeks at home. Four weeks, four weeks at home. Five weeks is the most I do and then five weeks at home. I start around April, I end around September or October or November.

This is what I do, this ain’t who I am. That’s who I am. And so, I’m not addicted to people clapping for me or people saying whatever they say about me. That doesn’t mean anything to me. I like to be butt-naked in the mirror and know that I can stand in my own light in front of God and not feel like I have to hide from myself or Him.

I’ve seen a lot of people go through it. Enough for me to understand that it’s all borrowed from God. My hair, whatever I’ve got left, my teeth, my thoughts, my sound, my son, my two daughters, my wife, any time God wants to take it, He can take it. It ain’t mine. The only thing that’s mine is my will.

Your will tells you that family is what's really important?

CS: My will tells me that family is the most sacred thing. I’ve been to Jerusalem, to the Holy Sepulcher, I’ve been to the Vatican, it’s about as sacred and holy as the back seat of a New York cab. The only thing that’s sacred is your relationship with your family. That’s where holy ground is.

So, you know, get yourself together, get your perceptions correct. When you go to Jerusalem, they try to sell you this funky, ugly water, this holy water. Come on, man. It’s no different than on Sunday mornings what they try to sell you, some kind of instantaneous salvation. There’s no such thing, man. The only way that you can have peace is knowing that you can be kind and gentle and understanding, daily, to yourself and to other people.

That’s why you help kids around the world? That’s why you have the Milagro Foundation?

CS: Yes, exactly.

To give?

CS: That’s why I have a relationship with Mr. Desmond Tutu or the Dhali Lama in the future, or Mr. Harry Belafonte.

So you don’t want to conquer paradise, you just want to help people while you are here, right?

CS: No, I want to transform this planet and get closer to, in 25 years, creating heaven on earth, free from flags, free from the corruption of politics and religion. It’s the biggest problem on this planet. It’s almost like we need to be invaded by somebody from another planet to come together. Why do we have to hit the wall to think with consciousness? We don’t. Just wake up to your own divinity. If Jesus was here he would say, “Man, I’m carrying a lot of people on my back. Why don’t you use your own legs?”

You, Kirk Hammett, and “Trinity”, how did that go?

CS: It was a joy. You know, he’s a very spiritual person when you really sit down and talk with him. He comes from Nam-myo-ho-ren-gek'kyo, which is like Buddhism. I saw the documentary on MTV [Some Kind of Monster] that he had about his band almost breaking up and his family and everything and I congratulated him. I sent flowers to the whole band because I identify with all of them. Whether it’s Robert Randolph or the Los Lonely Boys or Derek Trucks or Ben Harper or Metallica, we are all doing the same things for the same reasons. We’re utilizing music to penetrate the consciousness of the listener and more than entertain. They entertain in Hollywood. We don’t entertain, we try to uplift and maybe make a difference.

Did you and Hammett jam for awhile first or did you just get in the studio and have at it?

CS: Well, I’m really happy to tell you that they trust me. So, when I invite them to the studio we kind of know what color we’re going to paint the house. Of course, I send them CDs so when we go into the studio they know what they’re getting into but it’s like we know where the heart’s center is. We don’t need to jam so much. We just turn on the lights and make sure the sound is ok and we go for it. It’s not painting by numbers, you know? Basically, we close our eyes and we say, “This is your buffet, have fun eating. [And to another player] this is your buffet, have fun eating, and this is my buffet.”

In the studio, later on when they leave, I might just condense things, edit like a story. And since it’s my album, of course I’ll take a little longer solo. [Laughs] On their album they can take a longer solo. [Laughs] I mean, it’s just practical stuff. It’s like that. Whether it’s Stephen Stills or Jeff Beck, when it’s your own album everybody expects you’re going to take a little longer solo – this is your album, right? It’s not bad, just practical.

When you solo, how do you balance between what you’d like to play and what you think the listener wants to hear?

CS: Now that’s a very good question. If you play a 32-bar solo, the first 8-12 bars should be something that people can whistle. Like a theme: the cow…the cow went home…the cow went home because she wanted to get milked. That’s a theme. What you’d call lyrical. I’ve been accused of being a very melodic, lyrical person. That’s ok.

That’s a great accusation.

CS: [Laughing] I know, I’ll take it.

The rest of the bars you try to go where Coltrane went – you start speaking with melodies that have fire, like speaking in tongues, language that your mind may not understand as much but your heart will.

It’s like a deck of cards. You have different hands – this queen goes with this, that ace goes with that.

For me, music is a balance of feminine and masculine. Feminine is the melody, masculine is the rhythm. The bed don’t matter. Sooner or later they got to get in bed, do something natural and normal.

So, in my solos, I try to bring all of that in.

They're more feminine or more masculine?

CS: My sound is feminine. I’m surrounded with rhythm. Rhythm is like up and down and I’m left to right – lyrical and melody are left-to-right. If everybody’s going up and down it’s boring. Someone has to go left-to-right. Legato…long…visiting the note completely. Like a very thorough lover, you go left-to-right. So when you’re finished with that melody, women are like, “Ooohhh, thanks for visiting me.” [Laughs] That’s why they like Eric Clapton and call him Slowhand. Very few women like [imitates a flurry of notes], they go, “Ok, whatever. [Yawns] That guy’s great.” And they go to sleep.

You can do that at the very end but your solo has to charm, be a caress, a nice hug like a mother gives a baby after she gives him a bath or something. Babies after awhile, they just want a nice hug, you know? To me, it’s all part and parcel of the music. Out of all the arts music’s the most immediate to the heart. To make you…

...feel something.

CS: To make your hair stand up, and cry, and laugh, and to get spiritually horny, or whatever.

Spiritual orgasm you’ve called it.

CS: Yeah, exactly. All of that, you know?

At the 2000 Grammys you said, “To live is to dream.” What are your dreams of the future?

CS: My dream is to create something more important than the World Cup or the Super Bowl, which is to invite Nobel Peace Prize speakers, women and men, especially women who over the last five years have won the Peace Prize in Africa, the Middle East - they speak, we play. Kind of like a forum. Let’s say Mr. Desmond Tutu speaks, we play “Imagine” after he finishes. A woman speaks, we play “One Love” or “No Woman No Cry”.

I want to create something on TV that I don’t see right now. I don’t see consciousness. I see rapes, I see killing, I see cheating, I see trash, I see sensationalism, I see gossip, I see mentally retarded spiritual energy and I’d like to see something that’s a little more advanced, more worthy of who we really are. I’d like to see consciousness exchanged, beyond religion and politics, between women and men, and then we play “One Love”, “A Love Supreme”, or “Imagine” or “Blowing in the Wind”. There are enough songs that are the new hymns for tomorrow. I don’t like “Amazing Grace”. I like the melody, but I don’t like things that tell me that we’re all wretched and that we’re not worthy of God’s grace. That stuff is old. It doesn’t work anymore. Any time you think you’re a wretched person, you put yourself a serious distance between you and your creator. Any time you say, “I am made out of the same light,” your creator can work with you a lot faster, a lot more immediate, and a lot more productive and constructive.

So, you think you can deliver that kind of message with music that already exists, but with a new kind of performance?

CS: Both. I think that in the future I’d like to create a forum, hopefully with the help of like a Paul Allen or Mark Cuban, who owns the Mavericks. People who own high-definition TVs need to see beauty, elegance, excellence, grace, and dignity 24-hours-a-day. I’m tired of guilt, shame, judgment, condemnation and fear.

Probably we would all like to see beauty, but meanwhile, those bad things are what sell.

CS: I’ll give you an example. The Monkey Syndrome is called Monkey Syndrome because there was this little island in Japan where a lot of monkeys live and people go in canoes and throw potatoes at them, and carrots, because there’s nothing to eat there. The night before it had rained and the water had settled so it was clean. This monkey picked up a potato and he saw that it didn’t have any mud on it because it landed in the water. So, when he bit it, it tasted better. The next time they threw potatoes, he washed it himself. Once he washed it, then the whole island was washing the potato to eat it. It’s called the Monkey Syndrome.

Yes, everybody’s eating the potatoes with a whole lot of mud, and they’re making money with the mud. But, once you present something different, they’ll say, “Man, I can’t believe I used to eat cakes made out of mud when I can have real chocolate cake.”

Make it available to people and you will see that you can do something from your heart, make a difference in the world, and still be profitable, because I know what you’re saying, people are saying, “This bad stuff sells.”

Let me see if I understand you. For example, take kids at risk, kids in danger, what you are saying is that instead of going there and making an assignment showing them crying, try to make an assignment showing the human part of them because that can melt people’s hearts in the same way that showing bad images or violent images has a negative effect. Is that it?

CS: Yes. Where I would begin, if I had access to the money that Paul Allen has or that Mark Cuban has, I would get my own TV channel on satellite. The first thing I would show is a woman giving birth. That’s the first thing I would show morning, afternoon, and night, because we show everything except birth. We show death all the time. When you see the pain and the joy and the miracle of the baby, you begin to see how sacred life is.

Then, I would show the pristine resilience of mother nature in the spring. We are higher than mother nature, so if she can be resilient, so is your body. It’s all about identification and perception. You can show beauty, elegance, excellence, grace and dignity, in a way that when you’re looking at it you go, “Hey, honey, come and sit with me. Let’s have dinner, Look at this channel.” And the color is incredible, the subject is incredible, and you have The Beauty Hour. You just see beauty.

So, you don’t think media is helping a lot.

CS: No, no. Media is blind. How can the blind help the blind? For excellence, I would show Billy Jean King – an hour of Billie Jean King, an hour of Jessie Owens, an hour of Stefie Graf. People who have put excellence so high it’s going to take a long, long time for them to beat their own records. I think Stefie Graf has 22 Grand Slams. Most guys have eight. So, excellence exists. Excellence exists in Paul Reed Smith in the way he creates his guitars.

We are what we condition each other to be. Yes, I accept the fact that you say, “Right now this is what’s marketable.” Yeah, because you haven’t shown me anything better. But, if you show me the gravy that grandma makes on Thanksgiving, it tastes better than McDonald’s. So, it’s all about perception, really.

I’ve heard that your next CD will have no vocals.

CS: No vocals. It’s an instrumental album. It might be that the only guests will be Kirk Hammett and Robert Randolph because we did record a bunch of songs that didn’t go on the All That I Am CD.

It’s mainly a guitar album. I was going to call it Shapeshifter, but now I’m going to call it A Moment Called Eternity because I think the key for most people to be in grace is to go back to living in the moment. Most people live in the future or in the past. Very few people have the courage to live in the moment fully. So, I think that’s a good title, A Moment Called Eternity. Hopefully, people won’t steal it after they read this. [Laughs]

Last question. Emissaries for Peace – is the concert going to take place this year in Denver?

CS: No, we already did it in Japan. We played in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, where they dropped the bomb, with Mr. Wayne Shorter and Mr. Herbie Hancock. You know, I’d like to do that in the future also, but more than anything I’m going to take time off in the near future for my wife and myself and my children, just make a pit stop. I’ve been doing a lot of laps and I need to go in for a pit stop and replenish.

Related Links
Carlos Santana
John Coltrane
Miles Davis
PRS Guitars
Emissaries for Peace

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