The Beat of My Own Drum (17 page)

We had such happy times together. Every moment with him was beautiful. We’d talk about music, love, and life. He taught me about vegetarianism, meditation, and the peace of mind that comes with appreciating nature.

The first time he took me to his house in Marin County I felt like a queen—I couldn’t believe how clean and white that house was. I’d never been inside such a beautiful mansion my whole life.
Having grown up sharing a bedroom with my brothers and living in cramped and noisy homes, I couldn’t get over how much space and silence he had at his disposal.

I fell for that handsome, loving man, and I fell hard. I’d never felt that way about anybody in my life. I thought music was going to be my only love. I didn’t think I had it in me to experience that intensity of emotion about a man, but Carlos opened my heart like a flower. Kind and sensitive, he showered me with affection and attention. Confident and wise, he seemed so much older to me than his twenty-eight years.

To complicate matters, my father and uncle worked for him, so he was effectively their boss. Once again, and for entirely different reasons, I was asked to keep yet another situation secret from my parents. I knew they’d disapprove of it because of the age difference and the fact that Pops worked for him. If it had been anyone else, I would probably have walked away, but I’d known Carlos for years and—I now realize—I’d always loved him from afar.

He was touring a lot at that time, too, and whenever he took off on the next leg he’d tell me to “be good,” which always shocked me. I was a one-man woman. If he thought I’d see anyone else while we were apart, then he didn’t know me at all.

Turns out it was
me
who didn’t know something.

I had no idea at first, but I was participating in an extramarital affair. It was a devastating shock to find out I was deeply in love with a married man. Even though I’d known him for so long, he never spoke of his wife to me, and no one else did, either. I don’t remember how I discovered the truth, but when I did, I immediately told him it was over. A part of me had already starting pulling back anyway. As much as I was in love with him, I was still so young. About a year into our relationship, he’d proposed marriage to me—the first time anyone had asked me—but the thought of settling down with him was scary. It was so unfamiliar to lose my
self in somebody, even somebody whose love of music was as all consuming as mine.

I wish my memories of this time were clearer. I don’t know why there are so many gaps, especially about something as significant as finding out I was the “other woman.” For whatever reason, while some images are as clear as yesterday, I seem to have blocked out a lot of the chronological details surrounding this time, maybe because it was too painful to acknowledge that I’d been the source of someone else’s pain. These are issues I’m still working through today.

What I do know is that Carlos told me he was in love with me and that he and his wife were essentially separated. I wanted to believe him. How was I able to be at his house so often and never see her, after all? It seemed to me like he was totally single. All those times he was taking me unusual places I thought he was sweeping me off my feet, not hiding me from public view.

Once I found out the truth, I didn’t know what to think. My world was shattered. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t sleep. I needed to leave him, but I also yearned for him to comfort me, to make my pain go away. It only made matters more difficult that Pops was in his band. Always intensely private about relationships, I hadn’t talked to my parents about our affair, and I certainly couldn’t once I knew there was even more to hide.

When Carlos told me his wife had left him, I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that he had a wife in the first place. I knew it was my fault—she left because of me. I’m not sure what transpired next. I can only imagine that my mind has tried to do me a favor by pushing away the bad stuff. This is one of those chunks of time that I’ve lost, as if I blacked out.

The next time I came to, he was picking me up at the house in his Jag to take me to the Day on the Green concert, where he’d be performing. The event was part of a series organized by Bill Gra
ham at the Oakland Coliseum and was a sell-out show featuring Carlos, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Peter Frampton, and the Outlaws.

I know from video footage of the concert as well as photographs from that day that I was wearing a white, tight Wild Cherry T-shirt and black pants tucked into maroon platform boots. As we wandered through the back entrance of the Coliseum, Carlos held my hand. He felt we had nothing to hide. We were a couple now.

He was still holding my hand when we entered the VIP area, and I looked to my left and spotted members of his family. My heart dropped. They stared at me with an intensity that I interpreted as pure hatred. They didn’t have to say a word; their eyes said it all. My stomach lurched. He held my hand tighter, sensing my discomfort and trying to reassure me, but the horrific reality had already crashed down upon me.

I had broken up a marriage.

I had destroyed a family.

I was “the mistress.”

It was all completely wrong. This was not the person I’d been raised to be.

Carlos seemed intent on proudly displaying our love for one another. When it was time for him to go on, he walked me to the side of the stage, sat me down on an Anvil guitar case, and gave me a kiss.

“I love you, Cho,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

He walked away.

There I was, sitting on a guitar case, suddenly on my own. My world collapsed in on itself, and as I looked within myself, the applause of forty thousand people seemed to fade, quieter and quieter with every step he took away from me. I was alone in a crowd of thousands. Silenced in a sea of cheers. In an atmosphere of open celebration, I was grieving.

It’s a different kind of hurt when you know you’ve done something to cause another’s pain, even if you hadn’t known what you were doing. Furthermore, I’d never caused that kind of pain before, the kind that has ripple effects.

Carlos eventually called me onstage to sit in. I got up reluctantly and walked slowly toward him. As he was waving me over I was drowning in ambivalence—relieved at the thought of being close to him again, but hesitant to emerge from my moment of self-reflection. I walked on timidly, my shoulders hunched in defeat. Carlos met me at the timbales, and we played together.

I always loved playing with him, but this time I gave minimally, just enough to get by. My heart was so heavy that it felt hard to breathe. I was trying to focus on the music, but the expressions on his relatives’ faces and the thoughts of his wife haunted me. It was like that moment at San Leandro High when I suddenly saw myself from another perspective. From every angle, I didn’t like what I was seeing.

I tried to enjoy the moment, sharing the stage with Carlos Santana at this legendary festival—the Bay Area’s equivalent to Woodstock. But I couldn’t let go of my guilt and shame. Even playing percussion, my reliable source of salvation, couldn’t provide me with what I needed. The song I sat in on that day said it all—“Soul Sacrifice.”

I went back on tour with George Duke during the middle of my inner turmoil and found some comfort in being away and losing myself in music again. It was 1977 and we traveled all over the US and to Europe, where I sat in with the Jackson 5 (renamed the Jacksons) in Germany. That was such a trip to hang out with those same kids my brothers and I had mimicked when we were younger. I told them what fans all my family had been: “We copied every move you guys made!”

They were sweet and humble, getting a kick out of my stories
about how their band had so influenced our family “performances” in our Oakland front room. But despite these wonderful moments, I couldn’t quite escape the heartache, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d have to walk away from Carlos for good.

He had given me a beautiful ring that had an iridescent turquoise stone and that I’d worn on my engagement finger as proudly as if it was a three-carat diamond. Even that seemed suddenly tainted, and I slipped it off one day and put it away.

Our breakup was difficult and drawn out. We’d been together, on and off, for two years. As I see it now, we were doomed from the beginning; our very foundation had a crack in it. As much as I wanted to be happy, I couldn’t release the darkness, the heavyhearted burden I’d felt on that stage.

I had to let my first true love go.

Once I finally made the break, Carlos asked Pops to leave the band, because it was too difficult to be around him. Pops had been soaring with one of the biggest groups in the world, and he was suddenly out of work.

He and Carlos didn’t speak to each other for more than twenty years after that.

Neither did Carlos and I.

As always with me, I threw myself into work to distract myself from my heartache. From that moment on, it was like Carlos had left the planet.

The Bay Area was a very small world of musicians, though, so at times I’d inevitably wind up in places where Carlos was. Whenever he and I crossed paths, we avoided eye contact and didn’t speak.

It wasn’t until twenty-two years later, at the first Latin Grammy ceremony in 2000, that we finally broke our silence. We’d both been invited to play in a tribute to Tito Puente, who had recently passed away. My “godfather” had died after a show in New York, at age seventy-six.

I was overwhelmed with emotion already. My beautiful Tito was making music in heaven. As I walked down the corridor to the stage for rehearsal, my heart started beating a little fast in anticipation of seeing Carlos again. I adjusted my timbales and was talking to the director when I saw—or first felt—him walk onstage. We gave each other a cordial hug and said hello. I pretended I wasn’t nervous.

The performance schedule shifted, so we ended up playing the tribute without Carlos. Right after the show, however, I saw him in the hallway.

“You look beautiful,” he told me, those big brown eyes staring at me again after so many years. “And you look happy.”

“I am.”

Several years later I caught his show at Madison Square Garden. His percussionist and musical director, Karl Perazzo (my “little brother,” whom I once stole from a rehearsal room so he could join my band in another), waved me over to join them onstage. I was nervous, and not just because I didn’t have my in-ear monitors. I hadn’t shared a stage with Carlos since that Day on the Green in 1977, but Perazzo kept waving me on.

“Mama, come on!” he yelled.

Carlos’s back was to me when I started playing congas. He immediately heard the extra rhythms and spun around to see who it was. He had the biggest smile on his face once he saw it was me. Then he announced me to the crowd and gave me a nod, that nonverbal blessing for me to take a solo. I played feverishly, overcome by a sense of relief.

“Sheila E!” he kept saying to the crowd.

I stayed for another song.

We were giddy backstage afterward and so excited to have played together after so many years. Our friendship has been strong ever since.

In 2009, Carlos presented me with an award for Women in Latin Rock, along with Wendy Haas (from Azteca), Linda Tillery (who sang with Uncle Coke), and Lydia Pense (from Cold Blood). Before giving me the award he acknowledged Pops for his contribution to Latin music and Moms for being the heart of our family. I was humbled both by the award and by having it presented to me by Carlos. That meant the world.

Ours was a life-altering love, and it taught me an invaluable lesson. I vowed to never again be involved with a married man or even a man whose relationship status was the least bit complicated. I carried regret and guilt for many years, wishing I could take back all the hurt I caused his family.

I am eternally sorry to them.

Years later and after Carlos divorced his wife, he proposed onstage to his drummer, Cindy Blackman. When we played together again the following year, I congratulated him on getting remarried. Laughing, he told me, “I couldn’t wait for you, Cho. I guess I got another drummer! I like drummers.”

I guess he does.

And with those few words, he finally released his butterfly—his little Cho Cho San—into the big blue yonder.

16
. Syncopation

The displacing of accents or beats in music

I had some problems and no one could seem to solve them

But you found the answer

You told me to take this chance and learn the ways of love,

My baby, and all that it has to offer

In time you will see that love won’t let you down

“ALL THIS LOVE”

PETE ESCOVEDO

I
n late 1977, I overheard Tom Coster—the keyboard player for Santana—excitedly telling Pops what had happened at the Record Plant in Sausalito that day. When the band took a break, they heard a ridiculous rhythm guitar part coming from the room next door.

“There’s this young kid,” Tom said, “and he’s playing all the instruments, he wrote all the music, and he’s producing the entire record.”

“Who are you talking about?” I asked.

“This kid!” said Tom. “He’s doing his first album for Warner Brothers.”

“All by himself?” asked Pops.

“Yes! I’ve never heard anything like it.”

“Wow,” I said. “I want to meet him. What’s his name?”

“Prince.”

I never did make it down to the studio to meet “the kid,” but a few months later, in April 1978, I was at Leopold’s record store in Berkeley browsing through records when I looked up to see a new poster. It featured a beautiful young man with brown skin, a perfect Afro, and stunning green eyes. The word
Prince
was written in bold letters at the top. That was the guy Tom was talking about!

I found his album
For You
in the rack and immediately looked at the credits: “
Produced, arranged, composed, and performed by Prince
.”