The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (44 page)

I remember riding with her once in a limousine, and she said, “Carlos, I have to tell you something, but please don’t laugh.”

“Okay, Turiya, I won’t.”

“I want to play you my favorite song now.” She was giggling like a little girl. She put on the track, and it was Ben E. King’s “Supernatural Thing.” I was like, “This is your number one right now? It’s cool—that’s a great tune.” It was great to see that part of her—enjoying music in a pure way, without needing it to be one style or another.

I love the string arrangements on
Illuminations
and what Turiya played on harp and organ, especially on “Angel of Sunlight,” which, like many of Turiya’s songs, opened with tabla and tamboura; two disciples of Sri Chinmoy played them. I played my solo, and the engineers got an amazing tone on my guitar that I think was partly because of the room but also because the Boogie amplifier I brought with me had a second volume knob, which let me play softly but still with a lot of intensity. There’s a joke that goes, “How do you get a guitar player to turn it down? Put a chart in front of him.” Well, in that session I was tiptoeing, walking on eggshells because of everyone there, so I wasn’t going to blast my guitar, but the Boogie helped me turn it down and still be loud in my own way.

My favorite moment on the whole album came right after I finished that solo. Suddenly Turiya blasted off like a spaceship, playing that Wurlitzer, bending the notes with her knees—she had some gizmo that stuck out of the side of the organ—and Jack and Dave and I all looked at each other like we were hanging on for dear life! It was one of the most intense things I ever heard her play.

It was my idea to get DeJohnette and Holland for the album; Turiya had wanted a young drummer in Los Angeles, Ndugu Chancler. She introduced me to him, and he told me he had played with Herbie, Eddie Harris, and many others. He had a sound that I immediately liked, very much like Tony Williams. In fact, Ndugu
had also played with Miles for a little bit. He didn’t play on
Illuminations,
but I got to hear him play, and I kept his name in my head because I definitely wanted to get together with him at some point. I still do that with musicians I hear and like. I’ll file the name away in my mental Rolodex, and sometimes it will be years later when I think about them and give them a call.

At the start of summer Shrieve and I started working on the sessions that became
Borboletta,
which I think of as the third part of a trilogy, along with
Caravanserai
and
Welcome
. I call them the sound tracks—those three albums were like a set. They all had the same loose, jazzy feel and spiritual mood. The sessions were in May and June, and TC became very important to us in the studio—he would get a production credit with me and Shrieve—and we kept some of the same band as we had on
Welcome,
with a few changes. Flora Purim and her husband, Airto Moreira, were very important to that album. Leon Patillo—who sang and played keyboards—joined the band, too, and brought a gospel kind of vibe, which was different from what Leon Thomas had brought. We asked Stanley Clarke, who played bass with Return to Forever, to help us out on some tracks, and he did. Dougie left to go work on other projects, such as playing with David Bowie. David Brown came back into the band and played on some of those tracks, too.

They were fun sessions—I was getting used to seeing new faces for each album, and I enjoyed seeing how we reacted when they played with someone new for the first time. There was always going to be someone who would be checking out the other guy, testing him. We were playing “Promise of a Fisherman” when I looked over at Armando and Airto, and they really seemed to be going at it musically, really pushing each other. Airto looked at me as if to say, “What’s with this guy?” Later he asked me, “Is he always that competitive? He has those congas, and all I had was a triangle, but still it felt like he wanted to kick my ass.” I got used to those kinds of surprises.

Another surprise? We were almost done with the new album and getting ready for our first tour in six months when Shrieve got very sick and had to go into the hospital with kidney stones. I called Ndugu—he played on one track for
Borboletta
because it looked like Shrieve needed more time to recover—and I asked him to come on the road with us.

I could tell immediately that Ndugu was the right choice—he was especially good with a funky backbeat and could still handle the jazzy numbers. A lot of drummers can only do one or the other, and their backbeat can get really stiff and stifling. Ndugu had no rigor mortis—he was open and not suffocating. He was also blessed with knowing how to tell which kind of groove was best and was able to bring the kind of feel that was coming from Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, which helped move Santana toward a ’70s kind of funk. Michael Shrieve was more meshed with Elvin Jones and Jack DeJohnette, and he had his own sense of funk, but it wasn’t as tied into the ’70s as Ndugu’s was. It was just two different ways of playing.

I wasn’t thinking of disengaging Michael Shrieve from the band when he got sick, but that was what happened. I knew we weren’t going to cancel the tour, and I was getting very curious to know how our sound could change and develop in a new direction. So there were those reasons for pushing ahead, and I know they didn’t all sit right with him. We never formally decided that he was going to leave the band, and we never made his departure official or public. When I think about it now, it wasn’t handled ideally or in as gentlemanly a way as it could have been, what with Michael being in the hospital. But the decision to go ahead with the tour was what made us realize that we needed to go our separate ways.

I cannot speak for Michael, but I think the separation gave him a kind of freedom to take time away from touring and explore some different music ideas, because that’s what he did. He’s a super-talented drummer who made music in other bands and for film—to this day he still contributes songs to Santana. He moved to New
York City and lived there in the ’70s and ’80s, and I visited him there almost every time I came through. He was always gracious and welcoming—I think we had been through too many of the same things together in music and on our spiritual paths for the sediment of anger and resentment to muddy the water between us.

Shrieve leaving Santana was the band’s final step in its evolution from being a collective to being a group with two leaders to finally being a group in which I alone was in charge. Shrieve was the last connection to the old band, the last person whom I would confer with and sometimes defer to. Chepito was still in Santana, but he still had his own agenda; he was more like a hired sideman in the band, and I think that touring so much in ’73 had kind of distanced him from me and strained the relationship between us, the way it strained us all.

If you want the date that I took on the full-on duties of leading Santana and it really became my band, it would be sometime in late June of ’74. Since then I’ve tried to do my best to be true to the original spirit of the band and to the music. And since then it’s been a blessing and a duty. There has been freedom from having to be responsible to another person, but at the same time there is the everyday responsibility of making decisions and plans, and I am still trying my best to navigate Santana with honesty to a place where it’s all milk and honey.

I was almost twenty-eight then, and when I look back I don’t remember it being difficult—switching to that role of being the leader. I didn’t feel too young or too naive or lacking in experience. We’d already been through the big move that put me and Michael at the helm. I’d say it felt natural: the way I looked at it was that Santana was really me even before there was a Santana band. What was difficult was resisting other people’s interpretations of what they thought Santana was or what it should be, both from outside and within the band. The people closest to me who encouraged me to be myself and to trust myself were Bill Graham, Deborah, and especially Armando. He was the only one inside Santana who was
always in my corner with a supreme confidence that was contagious. He’d say, “There’s only one Santana in this band—that’s you, Carlo. You tell them this is your shick now.”

In the middle of the 1970s it felt great to be young and leading one of the most important rock bands on the road. The music and the hits from our first three albums and the Woodstock movie were like a wave of energy that did not stop carrying us through those years. The blessing was that we could be as busy as we wanted to be, even without any new radio hits—though we did have a few more hits in us that would come later in the ’70s.

The other blessing was that we had an inner balance and focus that, for much of the time, kept most of us away from the temptations and excesses of the era. We were starting to have a language with which to deal with the spiritual world and the so-called realities around us. There was a bridge between the seen and unseen realms that was important if we wanted to keep going with our music and stay relevant and connect with the past and continue into the future.

When I think of those years in the ’70s, I think of the many musicians and legends I was able to meet because of where Santana was in the music world. Some were heroes, some were friends, and some were not—and there was always something to learn from all of them.

I remember feeling uncomfortable that Muddy Waters was opening for us. We should have been opening for him, always. His blues music was so important to so many people, and he was the one blues legend I was too intimidated to introduce myself to, even in 1974 and ’75. I loved seeing how he put together his shows—who played first; who came on next. For example, I was wondering why Muddy needed three guitar players in his band. But then in the middle of the show he’d point to one of them, who’d play a solo in B. B. King style. Then Muddy would point to the next guy, who would play a solo in Freddie King style. Finally the last guy, who sounded a little like Albert King, would play. Then Muddy would
step up with his slide guitar and just kill it—show everyone who was in charge—and bring the house down.

By the end of the show the audience had their mouths open, wondering how it was possible that this older guy had so much energy and soul. Then Muddy would show them one more time in the encore. He’d say, “Thank you so much. It’s so wonderful to play for y’all. Right now I want to introduce you to a very special person—please give my granddaughter a nice hand!” He would bring out a lady who was in her twenties. Big applause. “Okay, now I want you to give a hand to my daughter.” Of course, everyone was expecting a woman in her fifties, but out came this little six-year-old girl. Everybody would suddenly get it, and with perfect timing Muddy would go, “Now you see I
still
got my mojo working… one, two, three, hit it!” And he’d go into his last number.

You can’t make this stuff up. I have so much love for the mentality and spirit of that dude.

Here’s another special moment from ’75: the same day I got to meet Bob Dylan for the first time, I got to jam with the Rolling Stones! I was staying at the Plaza Hotel, across from Central Park, and so was Bob. I knew his music from the ’60s, of course, but in the years since then I had really begun to treasure his genius. I remember once sitting down with “Desolation Row,” listening to the words and breaking it down for myself: “Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood / With his memories in a trunk / Passed this way an hour ago / With his friend, a jealous monk.” I mean, this guy is like Charlie Parker or John Coltrane the way his imagination flows—absolutely astonishing.

We were introduced, and we were hanging out in a suite, just getting to know each other, when I got a call that the people from CBS Japan were there. I remembered that I had a meeting with them. They were there to show me the
Lotus
album, and I asked Bob if he wanted to see it. So the record people came up and started to take the album apart, spreading the artwork out on the floor, unfolding the pages in the book, and it was just an incredible package. I saw Bob’s eyes getting big.

The phone rang again, and this time it was the Rolling Stones’ people—the band was in town playing Madison Square Garden. Did I want to come and jam with them? “Well, I’m here with Bob Dylan.”

“Well, please bring him, too!”

So a little while later we got into a taxi—Bob, my Mesa/Boogie amp with the snakeskin cover, and I. Nobody sent a limo or anything, which was no problem until we arrived at the Garden, told backstage security who we were, and it was obvious they didn’t believe us. I guess they were probably thinking, “Bob Dylan and Carlos Santana together? Showing up in a taxi? Nah.” We called the Rolling Stones’ people, and they came down to get us.

The concert was incredible—I think it was the last night of the band’s run there, and the place was electric. There was an opening act with steel drums, and Billy Preston was hanging out and playing with the Stones, so I got to meet him. They did their show, and near the encore they came up to me and asked me to come on and play on “Sympathy for the Devil.” Mick sang his part, then turned to me, and I put my finger on the string and…
wham!

Suddenly I noticed heads turning and eyes looking at me. I don’t know if the band had miked my amp too hot or something, but somehow I don’t think they were ready for the sound of that Boogie amp—the drive and the intensity. I was thinking, “Yeah,
that’s
how it’s supposed to sound.”

I’m not taking any credit for what happened after that night, but I will say that if anyone remembers the Stones’ next tour, in ’77, it was all Mesa/Boogie amps onstage. And the year after that Dylan played Japan, and they made a nice-looking double album from the concert.

That same summer I finally got to jam with Eric Clapton. When we play together I don’t hear Eric Clapton or Santana. With Eric, it’s a conversation about whom we love most. “Oh, you got some Otis Rush? How about some Muddy Waters?” When we play it isn’t about crossing swords and dueling, which is how some people think of jamming. It isn’t Fernando Lamas versus Errol Flynn. It’s “You got Robert Johnson, and I got Bola Sete.”