The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (24 page)

My mom was right—our jams were long. There are some recordings of Santana at this time that came out on a CD in 1997—
Live at the Fillmore 1968
. The shortest track is almost six minutes, and the longest is more than half an hour! We really got into that music, and we didn’t want to be interrupted. We didn’t want to put it into sound bites, like the ones you’d hear on some TV interview. A sound bite is not memorable in the way we wanted to be.

These were not just jams: we played some jazz, including a Chico Hamilton tune, and Willie Bobo’s “Fried Neckbones”—we never recorded that one, but sometimes even today somebody will request it. We also played funky grooves: we were all listening to James Brown at that time—all the bands in San Francisco were. There was that mix of funk and Latin—what they called boogaloo. Our brand was a psychedelic boogaloo. We definitely had enough energy to get something across, even back then.

I like my guitar playing on these recordings because I hear myself really getting the guitar sound right. I had been teaching myself for a long time. The process felt like what the diamond cutters who work in that one little section of New York City do—they have a few apprentices learning how to cut the rock so it doesn’t break. Same thing with guitar—you have to learn how to bend the note—get what you need from it—but not to the point that it goes
twang, twang, twang
and loses its bite. A note has an aura, which comes from harmonics and overtones, and
that’s
where your guitar personality comes from. Every guitar player’s harmonics and overtones are different.

At the end of ’68, you could
hear
my personality. A few years later Miles would tell me that he liked the way our songs sounded live more than the way they sounded on our albums—he liked the way we stretched out and the way I took my time, playing the notes in slo-mo, “endearing and with clarity.” Those were his words.

One person who agreed with my parents about the length of our songs was Bill Graham. He could see we were ready for a step forward in our music and that record companies were getting interested. Bill knew they would need songs. At that time, Santana didn’t know songs—we only knew jams.

Bill called us into his office. He was direct, as he always was. “You need to stop messing around with these long-ass jams and other stuff. You need to put a song in there. I’m going to play this song…” He put on a Verve record—I remember the label as it spun around. “Listen to that: that’s an intro. And hear that? That’s a verse.”

Never mind that most of us knew all this. But the song Bill was playing for us? “Evil Ways”—written by Sonny Henry and played by Willie Bobo and his group. What a gift, right? Bill knew what he was doing. Later he told me, “I told Willie that you’re going to kick ass with his song.”

By thinking about our needing a song to get on the radio, Bill was preparing us for Clive Davis, who was the head of CBS—the record company we would sign with. How did Bill know? That was what he did—he knew things before they happened.

By the end of ’68, Santana’s name was at the top of the posters. Stan was doing business out of Bill’s office, booking us, and we were all making decisions together—what gigs to do and what to do with the money. We were a collective, and we were ready for a record deal. Stan and Bill had been going around with Elektra, Atlantic, Warner Bros., CBS, and all the other labels for a while. At one point that year, Bill told us, “I want you guys to audition.” We said, “What? We thought we were through with auditioning.”

“You’re not auditioning for me—this is for Atlantic Records.
They’re coming over in the afternoon. Just set up and play for them.”

I heard stories that Atlantic had not done right by some of the older R & B guys who used to be on the label. It was just a feeling, but I didn’t want to be with them. At the audition I played the worst I ever played on purpose, and the Atlantic dude just walked out. The guys in the band went, “Man, what are you doing?” I said, “Man, fuck them. I don’t want to be with Atlantic, man.” They were pissed.

It didn’t matter. We kept playing, opening for everybody: the Grateful Dead, the Youngbloods, Taj Mahal, and Ry Cooder. We kept hearing that the scouts were chasing us. One day, a guy with CBS came up to us after a show—real excited. He told us, “Man, the buzz about you guys is at a fever pitch.” I remember he said he saw us four times. Then he said, “Your set list doesn’t matter!” He meant it as a compliment, but we were like, “What?”

“Yeah—you could tear your set list apart, throw it on the floor, start with any song, and end with any song. I see what you guys do to the people. You take the crowd with you.”

I was already fixated on Columbia, which was part of CBS. I didn’t want to hear about Atlantic; I didn’t want to hear about Capitol. I wanted to be where Bob Dylan and Miles Davis were. That winter in a music store I saw a poster that CBS had made for the holidays—something about Christmas caroling. The poster had cartoon faces on it: Simon and Garfunkel, Dylan, and Miles. Johnny Cash; Blood, Sweat & Tears; Johnny Mathis; Barbra Streisand. That poster convinced me more than the guy who came backstage. I wanted Santana to be on that poster.

I heard about Clive Davis at Columbia back then—he had been one of the only big record company presidents to come out to San Francisco. He went to the Monterey Pop festival, heard Big Brother, signed them, and persuaded his superiors to invest in the San Francisco sound. He started signing a lot of bands after that, which I heard pissed off some other musicians who were with Columbia
because they thought these rock groups were hurting their brand. But that was not true for us. Clive Davis was unknown to me until Santana started having hits. That’s when I met him and saw what he could do.

My own connection with Columbia actually started before Santana did anything with the label. That September, Michael Bloomfield and Al Kooper were booked to record a live album at the Fillmore West. It was Bill who invited me to play—“Michael’s not in condition to play tonight. He’s been up all night. Can you do me a favor and substitute for him?” I was like, “Are you kidding? Sure.”

I think Michael was starting to show the inconsistencies that come from being a heroin user. I think he had trouble disciplining himself and keeping a schedule and getting enough sleep. That’s why he only plays on one half of
The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper
—and why I got to play on “Sonny Boy Williamson,” a song by Jack Bruce, the bass player from Cream. It was the first time my name was on an album—right on the back cover. That felt great, but it was strange because I didn’t get to play with Michael.

There’s a photo I like of Michael and me together, onstage at the Fillmore West in 1971—a rehearsal for the closing night. We’re both really into it, looking really good. Man, he looks strong. You know what I did that night,
again?
I said how sorry I was for challenging him that one time and being an asshole. He looked at me as if to tell me I’d better get over myself. “You need to stop apologizing for that. I love you and I told you,
it’s cool
.”

Michael never stopped being gracious to me. I tried to stay in touch in the years after Santana got really big, but I think he was into having his own space. He was living in San Francisco, and he died there in 1981. The last time I went to his house, I thought it was unkempt and kind of crazy—I left there feeling concerned and more than a little discouraged. Whatever arrangement he
made for himself was the wrong arrangement. They found him OD’d inside a car. That just tells you what kind of lifestyle he was leading—or not leading.

Michael was the first guitar player from my generation whom we all heard. Everybody else came after, including the gods, such as Clapton and Hendrix. And Michael wasn’t worried by the other guitar players who came along. He welcomed everybody, as he did with me. But as beautiful as he was I don’t think he had the inner strength to see his validity in that picture. I think he shunned the publicity and felt he had to pay his dues, even when he had done that already.

At the end of 1968 there were a lot of great electric guitar players in the room—a lot of chances to get discouraged and put your guitar down. But that kind of reaction is the ego talking. Whether your reaction is to stick out your chest or to run and hide—superiority or instant inferiority—either one is full of shit.

You’re supposed to be you. When I saw Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton play, they didn’t make me want to quit—they made me want to listen harder to something that they weren’t listening to. I had this idea that I had to see myself in the whole picture of the time, not just in comparison to one or two others. I knew a lot of us were listening to the same blues people. So I told myself, “Maybe Hendrix doesn’t know about Gábor Szabó or Bola Sete.” The competition wasn’t about how you played guitar, it was: “Yeah? Who you got in
your
record collection?”

I call them the Igniters: they’re the musicians who make you feel that if you spend more time in your own heart you’ll see that the same thing that was given to them was given to you—but you have to develop it for yourself. I’ll tell you something—if Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley were alive and they came to see my band on a good night, they’d be like, “Damn!”

Maybe some of this was me overcompensating and being a punk about it, but I thought that instead of trying to be as loud as this one or as fast as that one, I could beat him in another way, like
maybe go low when he goes high or go slow if he goes fast. By then, in 1968, people who heard me play realized that I was bringing something different, not just copying Buddy Guy and B. B. King.

Santana signed with Columbia in October of 1968, and our contract took effect in December. The first person we met was David Rubinson—at that time he was Columbia’s staff producer on the West Coast. He produced Mongo Santamaría and Moby Grape and Taj Mahal for CBS, so he had experience with congas. He later started two record labels with Bill Graham. He was going to be our producer, and the nearest CBS studios were in Los Angeles. That’s where we got ready to go to in February of 1969.

A few days before we left, Stan said he had to tell me something. Marcus was in jail—for murder. Just like that. He had been messing around with a Mexican lady who had split from her husband, but they hadn’t divorced yet. The man came home when Marcus was there, and they got into a fight. They said he ended up stabbing the Mexican guy, who later died. It might have been self-defense, but Marcus was in big trouble, and he wasn’t going anywhere except lockup. We were hurt and disappointed but not really surprised. There was a side of Marcus that was about being hard and street, so his pride could put him in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I don’t think Marcus’s being a street guy helped him any—he eventually wound up in San Quentin. Later, when he got out, I think he began working in clothing design somewhere in North Beach.

We had to think fast—Carabello had stopped playing with the band, but he was still hanging out with us. He knew all the songs and the parts, so the decision was easy. In early February we went down to LA and moved into a big house in Hollywood that the record company rented for us for a week and a half. It was only a few blocks from the studio. I remember we all thought it looked phony and plastic compared to San Francisco. The house felt like it was the record company’s, as did the studio—they just couldn’t get
a good sound on us. Some of the instruments sounded so thin and different from what we’d been used to. We couldn’t find the energy that was in all our shows. It didn’t feel like our music. Santana was different from the other groups CBS had going on—we were a street mutt. We needed a different kind of intention and independence.

A lot of it is how someone walks into a room. If a producer starts a session wearing his credentials and an attitude that the band is making an album for him, that’s not going to work. We just didn’t feel any authenticity with Rubinson that time. Santana recorded with him later, in ’76, when we did the
Festival
album, and that was much better—I think all of us knew a lot more by that time.

It wasn’t all Rubinson’s fault—I think we didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t have to apologize for what we didn’t know, and we let ourselves be led in the studio instead of taking the reins ourselves. We should have said, “No; we don’t want the guitar or the drums to sound like that.” Or, “That’s not the right tempo or the right groove.” I don’t think we knew what to do with ourselves until after we did that first session. The album was going to be called
Freeway Jam,
after the tune we used to end our shows with, but this was nothing we wanted to come out, and CBS felt the same way. Now it seems impossible, but somehow we persuaded the record company to let us go back into the studio and not impose a producer on us.

We finally agreed in 2004 to let that music be released for historical purposes. Also, by that time I don’t think we had any more reservations about it. But back then we thought it was like being a man from the jungle who sees himself in a mirror for the first time and just doesn’t like what he sees.

We went back to San Francisco—back to the house on Mullen Avenue. Gregg had his room, I had mine when I wasn’t at Linda’s, and Carabello had his loft in the attic, where the floor was basically plywood over two-by-fours, and he played his music
loud
. I used to hope that everyone on our street liked Jimi Hendrix, because you could hear the speakers moving air. At four in the morning.

That was one old house—one night we locked ourselves out, so Carabello climbed in through the attic. It was dark and he was running and he went right through the floor. Gregg and I got into the house anyway, heard the crash, and found him in this cloud of dust and plaster and everything. He was okay, but man, we couldn’t stop laughing.

Crazy things like that were always happening to Carabello. He was just that kind of guy—as I said, he was the goofball in the band, but he had a charisma that you could not resist. He kept the rest of us loose, especially during tense times. He would talk to anyone, and he knew
everybody
. He had his finger on the pulse. He used to hang with Sly, he was friends with Jimi, and he got to know Miles before I did. He even got tight with the women we called the Cosmic Ladies—Betty Mabry, Devon Wilson, and Colette Mimram, all the ladies who hung around Jimi and Miles. In the ’70s Carabello used to stay at Miles’s town house in New York City. It was easy for him to meet people and make friends and hold on to them for a long time—the two of us are friends to this day. Carabello is my oldest friend from all the Santana lineups, from back when we didn’t even have a name. I never will forget that he visited me and brought me all those things when I was stuck in the hospital with TB.