The Santana Story: Angels and Demons

BLUES GUITAR MUSIC

THIS PROGRAMME CONTAINS VERY STRONG LANGUAGE

When I first met Carlos, he was a skinny kid from Mexico.

He was wild and he was raw.

When he left home, there were a lot of times when we would not know where he was.

And, um, mostly, we would hear rumours.

# You got to change your evil ways

# Baby... #

Santana as a group was no hippy love thing. This was like a street gang.

But the weapon was music.

BLUES ROCK MUSIC

Our music was like an elephant on a trek.

It was animalistic and sexual.

# Don't turn your back on me, baby

# Don't turn your back on me, baby... #

We wanted to be the biggest internationally known band and that ended up happening.

# Don't turn your back on me, baby

# You just might pick up my magic sticks... #

I always say they went to cocaine heaven. They were just a little too high.

And everybody was coming off of non-existent walls.

# Oye, como va... #

Carlos developed as a guitarist, as a musician, as a star...

But as a human being, he's gone through an enormous change.

So I was living a life of like... "I need something different."

I was really at war with myself because I wasn't ready

to do the inner work,

to be liberated

from my own demons.

It takes time to go from charcoal to a diamond.

# You are the love

# Of my life

# And the breath

# In my prayers

# Take my hand

# Lead me there

# What I need is you near... #

A lot of guys play a lot of notes, but they don't know how to carry a melody.

I'm always interested in how can you carry a melody.

Learn to feel your heart. Feel it, feel it.

And then learn to carry a melody.

# With you alone

# I am free-ee-ee-ee...

# Every day

# Every night... #

Love Of My Life was part of the Supernatural album that revived Santana's career in 1999.

The song was in praise of his late father.

I was totally with my father, Jose Santana,

because when he passed, for two weeks I made it a point not to play any music.

In the car or in my head, nothing.

I just wanted to digest that my father left.

I heard a voice, "OK, it's been two weeks. Turn on the radio."

"I never turn on the radio." "Turn on the radio." I was on the way to pick up my son from school.

-I turned the radio on.

-HUMS MELODY

Which is an incredible theme. I go to Tower Records. "Hey, man, what is the name of this song?"

-HUMS TUNE

-The guy goes, "Oh, I say, let me concur with my colleague."

"OK, concur with your colleague." "Would you sing it to him?"

HUMS TUNE

"Oh, that's definitely Brahms, right?"

So I keep playing this song in my head and I already had lyrics.

And I get together with Dave Matthews. "Dave, I have this song.

"I hear it kind of with your voice, but the melody goes like this."

GENTLE MELODY

Carlos Santana was born in July 1947

to a family of musicians in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

My mother Josefina was born in Autlan, Jalisco.

My father was born in El Grullo.

We, the children, were born in Autlan, Jalisco.

So my father infected me with the virus of music,

especially because I saw his eyes when I was five years old very clearly

and I saw how the people were looking at him.

Right there and then I knew that all I ever wanted to do and be

is be adored the way people adored my father in this little town.

When he was only eight years old, the Santana family followed their father

to the Mexican border town of Tijuana.

That's when everything just changed in my life.

Hearing the sound of electric guitars in the park,

bouncing against trees and cars and the church and the sky,

for me, it was like watching a flying saucer for the first time.

BLUES MUSIC

It woke me up to a whole other arena of being jolted.

In those days, they used to have people walk around the streets

with those iron things that you touch and they put electricity,

for ten cents, they give you a jolt.

Aiee!

That's what I felt the first time I heard the electric guitar sound in the park.

Fortunately for me, it was Javier Batiz who was already into three things -

BB King, Little Richard and Ray Charles.

That was his thing. Only.

The way to go... PLAYS GENTLE BLUES

Like that. You go...

PLAYS HIGHER CHORDS

Carlos came with his mother here to my house.

And his mama asked me, "Can you teach my little boy to play the guitar like you?"

Because they have seen me in the park where I was playing.

And Carlos really loved the way I played. The guitar sounded strange.

I said, "Carlos, do you play another instrument?" He said, "I play the violin."

He got his violin and he went... HUMS LIVELY TUNE

It was so cute.

He was a little kid, 11 years old probably. And I was 14.

I had enough knowledge about music because of the violin

and teaching me Czardas de Monti and Minuet In G.

My father basically taught me on the violin European music.

HUMS TUNE

Fascination.

CONTINUES HUMMING TUNE

And if you can hold that note going back and forward with the bow

-and make it sound like... instead of going...

-SINGS SHORT NOTES

-..go...

-SINGS LONG NOTE

..you're pretty mean.

You know what I mean? That's feedback.

It's like plugging in and making the speakers and the whole thing sustain.

So I already knew how to sustain.

His mama brought him over the next day.

She said, "Javier, Carlos didn't sleep last night. He said he was studying."

And what I had taught Carlos...

He brought about...

I taught him one movement and the day after that, he brought about ten movements, different movements.

And I went, "Wow!"

He was so hungry of learning how to play the guitar like a blues guitar.

MARIACHI MUSIC

Despite being wedded to the blues, Carlos had to continue playing in his father's mariachi band

to help feed the family.

And I was playing right next to him.

And we were playing in the worst parts of Tijuana.

Everything kind of smelt like Bourbon Street.

It smelt like piss and puke.

Being a kid, I wanted to go play hide-and-seek or do something that kids do.

But instead, I was in this place. There's no floor. It's just dirt.

The tables are covered with blackness because they don't have ashtrays. I'm playing this music

that to me, to this day, I don't really relate to it.

I don't like any music, any kind of music

that deals with lyrics about being drunk and being betrayed.

In other words, I don't like music that validates feeling sorry for yourself, crying in your beer.

I like the blues, but I don't like the victim hymns.

I like victory hymns. So I told my father, "I don't want to be here and play this kind of music."

He said, "You want to play that pachuco rock'n'roll crap music?"

I said, "How can that music be worse than where I am?"

It was the first time I stood up to my dad.

He said, "OK, pack up your violin. Like your mother, you have to have the last word. Get out of here."

MUSIC: "Green Onions" - Booker T & The MGs

Carlos abandoned the mariachi bars for the brighter lights of Tijuana's Revolution Street.

I enjoyed the Revolution Street

because then I was hearing Georgia On My Mind,

Green Onions.

I was hearing all kinds of variety of African-American music.

My balance was to play,

from eight o'clock to six o'clock in the morning at these strip joints, for an hour,

then for an hour, the ladies strip and they do what they do.

And then on Sunday morning, I'd go to church and play Ave Maria on the violin.

So I got my education really, really quick about spiritual and sensual being as one.

But Santana was still only 13 years old.

He was vulnerable to the predatory dangers of Tijuana's night life.

I was molested when I was a child by this person

who seduced a child by giving him cowboy boots and guns and a bunch of toys

when I was living in the ghetto in Tijuana.

And my mom couldn't figure it out.

And it lasted maybe a year and a half.

I was angry at my parents for not protecting me, even though they did their best.

Why did I have to be introduced to anything in that form?

You need to go to the mirror,

if you've been molested or raped, women or men or a child,

and say to yourself in the mirror, "I am not what happened to me.

"I am still pristine with purity and innocence and I forgive the man."

"Instead of carrying him with me for the rest of my life like a cadaver

"and stinking up the place and being angry and unforgiving, I'm going to forgive him."

But Carlos would carry that anger for many years

before he would fully come to terms with his loss of innocence.

Carlos's mother was determined to improve her children's life.

In 1962, the Santana family were on the move again,

this time following their father across the border to San Francisco.

My mother wanted a better life for all of us.

She thought she could best do that by bringing us to the United States.

She was old school in her upbringing -

discipline, education and work.

And so her plan must have been to get us to San Francisco.

# They call it stormy Monday... #

As a Mexican immigrant, 15-year-old Carlos had to adjust

to a new language in a new environment

and to the emotional turmoil of adolescence.

He took the advice of his old teacher to change his sound.

When I came specifically to this house of music where Javier used to tell me about...

They sell guitars in there.

So I'm watching these guitars - Epiphones, Gibsons and Fenders...

To me, that was like what kids do with Playboy magazine.

I was like, "I wonder what she smells like? I wonder what she feels like?

"I wonder what she sounds like?"

I was watching these guitars when I heard these sailors scream at me,

"Hey, you fucking Pancho Villa, chilli-beany motherfucker!"

I turned around and I'm like, "I'm just a kid, I'm sure they're not talking to me."

I turned around and they were screaming at me.

And that's why I was angry because I started feeling the sting of racism,

the sting of ignorance directed straight at me.

So there was a variety of things that were making me feel really, really angry...

..with life and with people.

And it was all directed at not being able to...fix it.

PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC

By the mid-'60s, Santana's adopted home town had become the focus of an alternative culture

with a psychedelic sound to match.

I came to San Francisco. An explosion was about to happen, a consciousness revolution,

so even West Side Story looked like a square.

You hear blues, you hear Wes Montgomery, you hear Bola Sete.

Everywhere you went in San Francisco, it was an education in music.

And I wanted it all.

We went to Aquatic Park and they had nothing but conga players.

Everybody's screaming "jingo".

You know, "jingo"? What the hell is "jingo"? That's really infectious.

I used to go to picnics and there'd be like three bands.

There'd be like Latin and there'd be mariachi music.

And there'd be like a blues band.

I'm getting out of the car and hearing all of it at the same time.

I say, "That sounds kind of good," all of it together at the same time.

It didn't sound like conflict or weird.

And I said, "That's the sound that I want to get."

Carlos was piecing together a new identity, both musical and personal.

It was now time to leave the largely Mexican Mission District.

But reinventing himself required some tough decisions.

A quantum leap is to leave my mom and dad

and go out in the street and just tough it out on the streets

and let go of the security blanket

and the safety net of having someone washing your clothes and feeding you.

I was not at home to hear all of the disagreements between him and Mom

about him having his own way,

the disappointments, the worry, the crying,

the fact that all of us were always curious about where he may be.

So there's a lot of things that I have to weigh - to abandon Mom and Dad... So I'm in a daze.

I'm doing what I need to do, but I'm in a daze.

He would not achieve his goals under the same roof with Mom.

And so yes, he was a difficult one.

There's a photograph where he was on the floor

and he was digging into that guitar, not plugged in.

Just the electric guitar. He was just digging into it.

I understood what will he was going to

to get what he wanted.

It doesn't feel so bad, you know, living in the streets with a hat

and playing for spaghetti or a salad.

# If you don't love me, little angel

# Please tell me the reason why... #

Whenever possible, 19-year-old Carlos would visit the Fillmore Concert Hall

where, unlike most of America, emerging rock bands were playing alongside black blues artists.

So when I see BB King walk up on stage, people are giving him a standing ovation.

BB King just backed away from the microphone.

He grabbed his guitar and he couldn't believe he was getting a standing ovation.

All I could see was his tears coming out

and the diamonds that he had on his finger.

And that pushed me into like, "This is who I want to be,

"this is what I want to do and nothing else.

"I want to be like my father and like BB King because my father, like BB King, was adored by people."

RHYTHMIC DRUMBEAT

Carlos was by now mixing with young musicians he had met in the parks and clubs.

He was forming the nucleus of a band.

To support himself, he got a job at a diner called Tic-Tocs.

It would lead to a decisive encounter.

Around the same time that I was working at Tic-Tocs,

bleaching floors, peeling potatoes, washing dishes,

here comes The Grateful Dead.

They stop right where I work to get hamburgers

and French fries and milk shakes.

I just heard this voice that said, "It's time for you to do something else,

"become a full-time musician no matter what."

So BB King and The Grateful Dead, consciously and unconsciously, they pushed me over the edge.

It's like an eagle that needs to be pushed out of the nest. Bam!

BLUES ROCK GUITAR MUSIC

Carlos had joined up with a group of maverick musicians, each with a distinct musical style.

They were known first as the Santana Blues Band and then Santana.

Right from the get-go when I first met Carlos and we played

and, of course, a lot of weed being smoked and a lot of noise,

and somebody out there on the farmland called the cops on us.

And I'm going, "We'd better get out of here."

I turned around and Carlos was already about 20 yards down...

You know, street kid, San Francisco. Hey, better than that, Mexico!

He was out of there and I ran after him.

We hid in a tomato patch until the cops left,

then I said, "OK, let's go get your stuff." That's how I met him.

Carlos and Gregg said, "We're thinking about getting a drummer in the group. Would you be interested?"

We played for hours and at the end of that period, they pulled me in a room and asked me to join the band.

They followed me home to my parents' house. I woke up my parents.

I said, "See you later."

I packed a few things, got in the car with them, drove up to the city to Bernal Heights

and took my place on the couch. That's how I got in the band.

NEW SPEAKER:

It was a bunch of young guys, but it wasn't a real hippy thing so much.

And one thing I learned pretty quickly about being in Santana was this was no hippy love thing.

This was like a street gang, but the weapon was music.

It was not, I think, like the other hippy bands.

If you messed up, they were all over you. It wasn't one of those like...

"That's cool, man, I'm sure you did the best you could" sort of vibe. It was pretty serious.

When you hear Santana,

it's a tsunami of colours.

All it is is just finding a way to balance the blues

with African rhythms. That's really what it is.

# Jingo... #

We would rehearse every day and after rehearsals,

we'd go over to the Fillmore and check out whatever's going on.

# There's laughing in her eyes, dancing in her feet

# She's a neon light diamond, she can live on the street... #

The Fillmore was like our first palace. It looked so large.

Actually, it's very small.

If you went outside, people were just hanging out of the windows.

The building had a life all of its own, imbued with our spirits.

The audience was pretty exotic and erotic as well.

It was not uncommon to see two people in a deep embrace or making love right on the sides of the stage.

There was a lot of people in feathers.

They were trying to express themselves, whether it was dressing up or taking their clothes off.

Santana started there. They started on an audition night.

And they were immediately very electric and very exciting,

but they built their audience that way.

So the atmosphere really was the band... The bands, the musicians,

the people, the crowds were all one.

It was one community of people sharing the music and sharing the celebration and the experience.

This was the first time you mixed Latin music with rock'n'roll.

It was a real ear-opener for everyone.

It was very powerful because you had these trance rhythms,

marrying the other backbeat rhythm.

It was a wonderful way of... It was kind of a musical trade wind that had met.

Everybody played to each other. We played like a jazz band.

You know... We're a blues band where you play off of each other and that was the experience.

It was one big rhythm machine.

And it connected with the people and we were intense.

Carlos was still a little bit shy too.

He used to really hide. He wasn't out in front.

And so we never really thought about showmanship.

Santana as a group looked different than other groups.

You have an African-American, you have a Mexican, you have a Puerto Rican, you have a Nicaraguan,

then you have two white boys from the suburbs. We looked cool, you know?

And so yes, we were really the American band, you know,

I think, as opposed to Grand Funk Railroad or something like that.

Meanwhile, San Francisco, like all America, was in ferment.

But the onset of the Vietnam War and civil rights protests hardly impacted the Santana band at all.

For now, they were living snugly in their own Latin rock bubble.

We played for the Peace and Freedom Party on top of a bus that went all through LA.

And...

And it was about... It was about playing for me.

I didn't care about the political affiliation. As a matter of fact, I never thought about it much.

It was about the music. It wasn't about politics.

CHANTING: Protest! Protest!

They did some benefits and they did some concerts for various political groups,

but that was basically, I think, because Bill Graham booked them.

Graham was the impresario of the Fillmore Concert Hall, spiritual home of Santana.

He would play a pivotal role in the band's development.

-Nothing but the best.

-This man is responsible for my being crippled for life.

-Show him your shoulder.

'Bill was a very hard man.

'He was a refugee from Poland.

'Very harsh upbringing.

'And he lived by his wits and he lived on the streets.'

And in my view, a typical refugee mentality.

He only believed that he had what he could carry.

If he couldn't carry it in a sack on his back or in his pockets, it didn't exist.

Carlos and Bill shared that refugee...immigrant mentality.

Carlos had come from nothing

and to a strange country

in much the same way that Bill did.

And they basically had to make their own way.

Of course, Carlos was not running from the Nazis, but from something else.

And I think they really could share that immigrant mentality

and what it meant to build your own life on your own.

The only group all week long

that I've had any trouble with is Santana.

The Grateful Dead called, said, "Bill, we're playing. What time? We'll see you at eight o'clock."

He said we were different than The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver, all of these bands,

because when we played, people would stop talking.

"Hey, man, what's happening?" "Yeah, man, cool, baby..." "Oh, hey!"

Then they started like dancing in a different way, especially the ladies.

What made Bill's eyes light up was that the audience went nuts

and that they and Carlos were the same.

Carlos was the audience. They were Carlos. It was a fantastic symbiosis.

Yeah, so, Wednesday...

Yeah, this Sunday, I keep thinking about that...

Graham loved Santana's Latin rhythms, but he realised he'd have to raise the band's profile

and focus their ambition.

He encouraged them to add radio-friendly tunes to their jam sessions.

So he invited us to his office and said, "I want to play you this song

"because I noticed that you guys don't play any songs.

"You just play along as jams."

I go, "What's wrong with that?" "You need to learn songs." "What do you mean?"

"An intro, a chorus,

"a verse, a chorus, verse, bridge and an outro."

And we're like, "What?"

And he was right. We didn't know songs from anything, man. We were just jamming.

So he plays Evil Ways.

# You got to change your evil ways

# Baby... #

So we learned Evil Ways.

And the next thing I know, it was one of the first Santana to hit the radio.

# When I come home

# Baby

# My house is dark and my thoughts are cold

# You hang around

# Baby

# With Jean and Joan and who knows who

# I'm getting tired of waiting and fooling around

# I'll find somebody who won't make me feel like a clown

# This can't go on... #

Adding a few such catchy melodies to its driving Latin percussion

was enough to persuade Graham he had a hot property on his hands.

He called some record label bosses from the east coast to come sign up the band.

We're not playing for you...

Two people came -

Ahmet Ertegun from Atlantic

and Clive Davis from Columbia.

When Ahmet heard the band,

he said, "Can't play, will never sell," and walked out.

Which we reminded him of mercilessly for years.

Clive was like Bill.

What he was interested in was the relationship between the band and the audience.

You didn't need to be a rocket scientist

to know that Carlos was a virtuoso guitarist,

charismatic, they were feisty, they were real, they looked good.

You were dealing with the real deal, with real musicians,

so that no-one was trying to shape, polish, smooth or clean up roughness.

So I operate from the gut and I said yes right on the spot.

The band were invited to make their first studio recording for Columbia Records,

but they wanted to choose their own producer their own way.

We picked up a hippy guy somewhere in the streets... "You'll do. Get over here, man."

It wasn't that we were prima donnas,

but we wanted a lot more freedom than to be controlled

and, you know, to...

You know, we didn't want to be controlled.

Carlos would come up with many melodies that would just never cross my mind

and I could maybe just try and arrange it more.

We just kind of played off of each other.

JAZZ-BLUES PIANO MUSIC

The jazz-blues improvisation of Treat signposted the musical route Santana would later travel.

SOOTHING JAZZ-BLUES CONTINUES

I remember at the end of that album we made, the poor girl Gretchen from our office,

we played it back for her, "How do you like this...?" She was crying. I was going...

"Is it that bad?" "No," she goes, "this is unbelievable."

But before the Santana album could even be released,

Carlos found himself helicoptered into the biggest rock concert of all time.

It was August 1969 and the band's appearance at Woodstock had been negotiated by their biggest fan.

Without Bill Graham, Carlos Santana and the band would never have appeared at Woodstock.

The people who organised Woodstock were demonstrably incompetent.

They had no idea what they were doing. They called Bill in the middle of the night, "Please, help."

Bill said, "OK, I'm going to come out and save your ass. But you've got to put my band on."

Tell me it's not real.

Bill Graham was very instrumental in opening this humongous door for Santana.

He's the one that said, "I'm warning you. This stuff is going to fuck your head all up."

I go, "What are you talking about?"

"People are going to recognise you everywhere you go and your head's going to get really big.

"You're going to start acting like Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone and Jim Morrison.

"You're going to need a shoehorn just to get into a room because your head is so big.

"You're going to start thinking you're God."

I said, "We don't want to hear that crap. We're just street guys."

The Santana band found themselves hanging around backstage.

They took some LSD, thinking they had plenty of time to come down.

But they were in for an unwelcome shock.

They threw us on at a time when we didn't expect to be going on. We had to sort of get our bearings.

We were supposed to go on hours later. They said, "If you don't get on now, you won't play."

I remember that I was under the influence of LSD.

You know, and then it all came back to me, like...

"Damn! Why did I take LSD before I went on?"

I wanted to find something like a drunk,

find a telephone pole that I can hang on to because the whole city is going like this.

And so my telephone pole was saying, "God, please help me.

"Help me to stay in time and in tune.

"That's all I ask. I'll never do this again. I promise I'll never touch the stuff again."

The guitar neck is going like this. Literally, like an electric snake.

And I'm making faces just to try to keep it from, you know, slithering so much.

And trying to find pretty notes.

And telling myself, "Slow down. Don't play so fast. Slow down."

Cos the band's going...

You find melodies like this, you know.

Even back then,

I'm able to hear that voice that says, "Do contrast."

If everybody goes like this, you go like that. You know?

When they got on the stage, it was their moment.

Michael Shrieve was playing like a god and the percussion section was snapping.

Carlos was...

He was driven.

I could see what he was doing to the crowd.

They just had this incredible energy that was golden.

It was all like one...machine. It was like a heavenly clockwork.

And you could feel

that this group...

and the rhythm was really communicating with the tribal energy of the audience,

even though they were completely unfamiliar with any of the music

and we were the only group that didn't have a record out.

As the legend of Woodstock grew,

it certainly helped propel Santana

as an up-and-coming rock artist that would be reckoned with.

And Clive saw three hundred thousand people going CRAZY

and he saw what Santana could do live.

It rocked his world and he realised what he had on his hands.

He turned the marketing and promotion forces of Columbia Records full on.

Following the triumph of Woodstock, Santana became a household name across the world.

The band toured the States, Africa and Europe, indulging in the first fruits of a rock'n'roll lifestyle.

Ah, Carlitos? Carlitos Santana?

There was a different balance to the band now with new members arriving.

But Carlos had taken on board from mentors Bill Graham and Clive Davis

the need for a more audience-friendly repertoire to open new doors for the band.

-#

-Oye como va

-#

-Mi ritmo

-#

-Bueno pa' gozar

-#

-Mulata

-#

-Oye como va Mi ritmo

-#

-Bueno pa' gozar...

-#

Oye Como Va, this song to me is just as important

as anything that Gregg's writing or anybody's writing.

So the band go, "That's not rock'n'roll, man."

And so I said, "I don't care. These songs are going on the record.

"And if you don't want it, get another guitar player."

Well, we disagreed a lot!

It was... I mean, we did.

But it was because it was passionate. We really meant it. I don't mean like that's a bad thing.

He really believed it, I really believed it. And as Shrieve says, "It's always these two guys!"

And it was.

So the inter-personal relationships were very electric, very intense.

And sometimes incendiary.

I'll tell you one thing that really showed me

where Carlos was that really took me by surprise.

We were done rehearsing. We'd work hard, we'd never go to the movies or anything like that.

So I said, "Hey, you wanna go to the movies?" And he stops and looks at me.

"Man, why would I want to go to the movies? I wanna BE the movie."

And I couldn't believe it. I said, "Whoa, man. I just asked if you want to go to the movies."

Like, "You wanna go to dinner?" But he was serious.

He was serious and he must have been 21 years old.

By pushing the boundaries of his music and relationships,

Carlos was able to take some giant steps beyond the first Santana album.

You have a lifetime to prepare to make that first record, then you get caught up in touring

and getting that second record to live up to the first is a near impossibility. Few have done it.

Santana really did with Abraxas. They took a leap.

It was all about heart and soul and how does it feel? Not whether it's correct, just how does it feel?

Cos to me music is imagery. I don't know notes.

If you want me to read, I'll read to appease you, but I'd rather just close my eyes and look at it.

The greatest tool he has is that he doesn't think about it.

It comes straight through from the inspiration to the expression.

When Carlos would say, "It has to be more purple..."

He would say, "The drums...

"They sound like the wind and I want them to sound like the sea."

Samba Pa Ti was another track Carlos insisted the band include on Abraxas.

If you can carry a melody, really carry a melody,

and make it believable to anyone, where women stop and say, "Honey, this song speaks to me.

"I'll talk to you later." They go, "Ahh," you know?

That means you can carry a melody.

That's what Samba Pa Ti is. It's something of my own.

Of course, that was his first venture into really writing a classic melody

and making it an instrumental piece of music.

Yeah, Abraxas. It is still one of my favourite albums that I've ever been on.

Just the whole thing came together.

Black Magic Woman/The Gypsy Queen to Oye Como Va.

I mean, it's standard stuff now. It's classic.

# Don't turn your back on me, baby

# Don't turn your back on me, babe

# Yes, don't turn your back on me, babe

# Stop messin' 'round with your tricks

# Don't turn your back on me, baby

# You just might pick up my magic sticks... #

GUITAR SOLO

Abraxas became an anthem for the hippy generation.

But it was recorded at the end of a decade that juxtaposed flower power with social unrest

and political violence.

It was really a horrible, horrible time to be an American

when you had people going off to a senseless war,

your government was killing innocent people.

It was in turmoil.

Because of what was happening in the '60s with Black Panthers, Vietnam, Martin Luther King

and Malcolm X and the Kennedys,

that's the beginning of becoming a warrior against Vietnam,

riding with the peace and freedom movement.

The '60s had also been a turbulent period in Santana's personal life

as he moved through a painful adolescence to the pinnacle of rock superstardom.

I was fighting me. When you fight yourself, you start blaming that wall and this lamp

and this amplifier.

You know, the world is what it is. I was really at war with myself.

I wasn't ready to forgive the person who molested me.

I wasn't ready to...

do the inner work

to be liberated from my own...demons, if you will.

So I was at war with me.

You know, I want to be kind, yet I'm really brutal.

Or I'm really inconsistent or I'm this or that.

Basically, I aspired to be a good person,

but, you know, I can become really, really short-tempered

and quick to anger, so I was at war. I basically was at war.

Not with the radio or anything. I was at war with myself.

As always, Carlos's music spoke for him.

This was the first time the social and political discord around them

appeared to spill over into the Santana band's repertoire.

The name Incident At Neshabur alludes to a massacre of innocents.

This was Santana's most ambitious work yet, inspired by new directions in jazz.

Well, listening to Miles,

and Miles would go... # Do do do do do do #

Just running the scale, but it wouldn't sound like that.

It sounded like a snake sidewinding up a sand dune.

The second part - de de da...

That's all...

This realm of songs like This Boy's In Love With You,

Fool On The Hill... There's a gazillion songs just on those two chords alone.

# Dee dee de doo doo... # All of that.

Just in those two chords.

Those two songs, in one, even though it's instrumental, it really tells a story.

And so Incident at Neshabur, which is one of my very favourite recordings he ever made,

was a tremendous departure

and to people like us it would take courage.

"Oh, my goodness. What'll happen? Maybe I'll turn my fans off." I don't think Carlos ever thought that way.

He was thinking, "I've got to do this music, this is burning inside me and I'm going to get it out."

Abraxas felt, really, like a unit.

In-between Abraxas and Santana III,

we had tremendous success.

We were travelling the world, we were having number one records. Big records in a lot of countries.

There was money, there was drugs.

We had... management that was inexperienced,

we were...we were getting lost.

I always say they went to cocaine heaven.

They were just a little too high, coming off non-existent walls.

It's almost like too much too soon.

That's the best way I could say it.

We just... You had the world at your feet, you could do anything you want.

And during those days you really could do anything you want!

Several band members became addicted to the high life.

For others, the music took a back seat on the rollercoaster ride to rock celebrity.

Carlos could see the band was in danger of imploding.

He... He kind of made an ultimatum to the band and that was never done. The band was a band.

And that was kind of...

when he began to take it over.

Everybody was feeling a tremendous sense of sadness because...

..it's like when you... you had too much sugar

and then you crash.

You know,

here I'm hearing our records on the radio,

number one for weeks and weeks.

I got my mom the house that I promised her and the dishwasher and dryer.

I'm fulfilling all my promises,

yet I feel emptier than I ever felt before. "What the hell is wrong with me?"

All of a sudden, you know, I wanted, like, a real hug

that I haven't gotten from my mom in a long time. I wanted a real...relationship.

You know, instead of like a revolving door of people who smell funny and they talk too much.

But there was no time for reflection. Santana's first two records had gone platinum

and Columbia called the band back to record their third album.

Well, we show up at CBS Studios

and I'm all set up there with the gear and the band and they show up in their fancy cars and motorcycles

and they just terrorise that place.

The first night they cut three pretty significant basic tracks for that third album.

The next morning I go in the studio and the studio manager is there and he's completely livid.

The place is all terrorised, Chepito has stolen the light bulbs, toilet paper, soap, everything,

they rode their motorcycles, Harleys, through the building.

They sat in this brand-new studio with their feet up on the walls

and all this craziness and the studio manager wants to kill me. "There he is! Go get him!"

It's more like going to the studio to pull out wisdom teeth.

It's a lot more difficult to get people in the studio first of all,

and when they do, they have an attitude. We had. I was there, too.

'Or you show up late

'or you are too over the top with drugs to play.'

But, nevertheless,

I think that when we did...

put our...egos and illusions aside,

there's incredible beauty between Gregg Rolle and myself.

The band was built with passion and it fell apart with passion. It was just that kind of thing.

If it hadn't been there,

if that kind of animal attack on music hadn't been there,

it would have never happened.

Carlos's musical experience was expanding very, very wide very quickly.

He was interested in all kinds of new music.

Some of the people in the band weren't. A couple of people couldn't play it.

And so there was a natural schism between, let's say, the new direction and the old Santana band.

You know, I'm not a jazz player.

And I was like a fish out of water.

I didn't have much input to it. I'd try to sit in with this stuff,

but it was... it was beyond my realm.

And it made me realise already at that time that it was going like that, you know.

Some people in the band wanted to go the Journey way

and I wanted to go this other way with Carlos Jobim and Miles and Weather Report.

CARLOS PLAYS SOLO

It's kind of like we knew that that was it.

And...

It was the end of a love affair, you know.

To the confusion of some fans, Carlos delved deeper into jazz rock with his next album Caravanserai.

Caravanserai signifies coming out of the cage.

It was like literally listening to Sketches of Spain and a lot of Coltrane,

but without drugs.

There's music for Friday and Saturday night, to party, and music to just replenish,

music to just recollect yourself and reinvent yourself.

Well, you know, we felt like,

"This is so cool, this music we're making," and everybody hated it!

I thought gravity was a myth and that record sucked to stay on Earth.

Clive Davis came into the studio and heard it and he said, "You're committing career suicide!

"This will just be terrible."

I have heard "career suicide" about seven times in my life

and I went right for it. "This would be career suicide."

I'm like, "Mm, sounds interesting. I'll try it!" You know?

At the same time as choosing a new musical path, Carlos was seeking

a way out of his old loyalties and temptations.

There's self-deception and there's self-discovery. I'm into self-discovery, man.

With everything else that went with it - expensive cars and ladies all over the place and cocaine,

you know, all the trappings - it's the same thing.

You need discipline, you know, to withstand the onslaught of illusion.

It was 1972 and gurus were very much in fashion.

So Carlos and I went guru shopping together. We'd done our reading up

on how to look for a guru.

All of a sudden everything changes. Haircut, all the white clothing...

..and he starts meditating and the candles in his guitar case.

And he's sitting listening to John McLaughlin, the Mahavishnu, and getting all caught up in that.

I remember saying, "Man..." He said, "Herbie, listen to the chops this guy has."

And I'm, "Carlos, chops belong in a butcher shop."

Carlos became a disciple of my guru, Sri Chinmoy.

And I had this spiritual name, Mahavishnu,

which is where the band name came from. So he was well aware

that I was myself directly involved with addressing the fundamental questions of existence.

And I think this was one of the things that drew us together.

We became a lot more consistent with meditating at a certain time.

Truly West Point military, like a marine.

The diet was intense, the meditation was intense,

the hours were intense.

I think by the time we recorded he had become a disciple,

which is why we're both on the cover wearing white

and this was the guru's wish, you know, wear white.

So whatever the guru wants, you do it. Simple as that.

# The law divine is love divine

# The law divine is love divine... #

Supported by these new relationships, Carlos could again reinvent himself,

this time with a complete reversal of lifestyle.

With the guru's permission, he even settled down to marriage.

The reason Deborah and I became attracted to one another

was that we both wanted to get away from cocaine or heroin

or anything that had to do with self-deception

and self-destruction.

In order to change who you are,

Sri Chinmoy would give you a spiritual name.

And Carlos changed his name to Devadip

because that was the new name that Sri Chinmoy had given him.

So he was now Devadip Carlos Santana.

There was no real conflict

between the personas of Devadip and Carlos.

They were two aspects of who he was.

So we could make an album of Carlos Santana

and then we could make an album of Devadip. The guitar sound was identical.

Carlos's playing was very similar, but the spiritual content was very different.

Santana believed he had at last found the right balance of spiritual and sensual.

When they played live, Devadip and Santana were happening onstage together.

GENTLE GUITAR SOLO

I think the whole experience with Sri Chinmoy gave him a lot of confidence.

He felt, you know, like he had a path to be on.

At this point, I mean that in a positive way,

but we had some falling out on the road and things like that.

Whereas before we were always close and now it seemed like he was changing

in a way that seemed to be a public persona and then a private persona that was different from that.

Within a few years,

Carlos would replace not just his band, but his guru, too.

Sri Chinmoy wanted all the attention, you know.

And we fell for it for as long as we fell for it.

When it was time to leave, it was time to leave. Honey became vinegar.

To me, it was time to leave when I started hearing him say that if you leave him

you drown in the sea of darkness. Uh-oh. Back to the pimps again.

There was always another mountain to climb, always the need to travel a new road,

just like his father, the itinerant mariachi.

Only Carlos's journey was a global one.

Still driven, still searching for the adoration that had greeted his early albums,

Carlos travelled restlessly through the '80s.

He just was relentless in his ideas for what he wanted to do for the next project.

He was like a little child with a new toy, but his toys were all musical ideas

and musical...concepts, you know.

Santana involved himself in many adventurous collaborations in the next decade,

but musical fashions had changed and for many fans these were his wilderness years.

# Blues a healer

# All over the world

# Blues a healer

# All over the world... #

To me, music, if that's not marinated with the blues

it's like cereal without any milk or pancakes without any syrup.

The blues gives it... a certain validity

to passion and emotions.

Emotion and rhythm, you know.

I think it's been remarkable to watch the change, the development,

the growth of Carlos as a musician,

but even more poignantly as a human being over the last forty years.

Forty years.

He's expanded his horizons

and he's gone through a period of really intense self-inquiry.

He's developed as a guitarist, as a musician, as a star,

but as a human being he's gone through an enormous change.

And very, very few of us can face that kind of transformation.

There's a deeper purpose than selling records.

To me it is all about utilising music

to ignite people and assault the senses.

To give people a remembrance

that all of us are angels who didn't necessarily trade in our wings for feet.

Is it possible to actually be genuine and true and honest and fresh?

Is it possible to access purity and innocence

and in that... that brilliance of inspiration that transcends fear

and you putting yourself down or other people. With every record, there's critics,

like, wanting to tear you apart, you know.

But eventually Santana made a spectacular comeback with an ambitious new album, Supernatural,

in 1999.

# Man, it's a hot one Like seven inches from the midday sun

# Well, I hear you whisper and the words melt everyone

# But you stay so cold So cold... #

Santana was still hungry, still ambitious for the radio plays to take him to a mainstream audience.

# You're my reason for reason

# You're the step in my groove, yeah... #

He'd contacted his old mentor Clive Davis, who put him together

with many of the biggest young hit makers on American radio.

'We really had not been in touch

'for maybe a good 20 to 25 years.'

It's such a business of "What have you done lately?" and when you sign someone that has not had a hit,

that has not been platinum or gold in recent years and you say, "I'm going to revive their career,"

I know in certain quarters it got back to me

this is "Davis's folly", you know.

I didn't know Supernatural would turn the music world on its ear.

I didn't know we would end up selling 28 million copies,

nor did I know that it would break the all-time record for the number of Grammy Awards.

It was exciting.

Supernatural was a second coming for Santana,

helping to lay to rest the struggle between angels and demons that had defined much of his career.

# Cos there's a monster living under my bed

# Whisperin' in my ear

# There's an angel

# With a hand on my head

# She say I've got nothing to fear

-# There's a darkness... #

-Supernatural paved the way for Carlos Santana's continuing journey.

# Still got a purpose to serve... #

My guitar's my umbilical cord.

My guitar is my voice. It's the things that I process,

the things that are immediately, supremely important to me.

And what's important to me is to honour the musicians that I learnt,

honour the teachers that I had,

honour my family

and honour the listener by reminding the listener.

When you take a solo, you are required to know where you're going

and what are you trying to say. And then get the hell out of there, give it to the next guy.

So what is required for you to understand is where you're going when you take a solo.

You're going straight to people's hearts. What are you trying to say?

You say to them, "You matter, you're significant and meaningful and you can make a difference."

Now that's a solo.

# While my guitar gently weeps

# Still my guitar gently weeps... #

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