Music without emotion, passion or feelings is just clever noise. When you hit that, they all go, “Oh my God.” When you play music like that, it’s more than just clever notes. It all deals with “Oh my God.” The big G-spot, which is God. I’ll stop there because this should be PG. You discover the sensation of getting the first French kiss. When you put your fingers on that note, you get chills. But it’s your relationship with that sound. Lovers come and go, but your relationship with the guitar - any brand or anything - stays. Q There are many enduring relationships you have in “Carlos” but how would you characterize your relationship to the guitar?ĪP Photo/Tony GutierrezCarlos Santana, left, and Eric Clapton hug following a jam session at the Cotton Bowl in 2004.Ī My guitar is my best lover, ever. So why don’t why don’t I make them feel their totality, their absoluteness?” I’m making somebody feel like they’re from Kansas and they just put their toe in the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii for the first time. Maya Angelou said, “The only thing people are going to remember is how you make them feel.” And I was like, “Oh. When you say, “What time is it?” you just say, “It’s now.” And so that’s how I try to play my music: Outside of time and outside of gravity. If you and I get a chance to hitchhike a ride with Bezos or Elon Musk, and we take the space shuttle and go up there outside of the stratosphere and you look at the planet, there’s no flags up there. “One Love.” “All You Need is Love.” “What a Wonderful World.” I make it a point to listen to certain songs that are like the new anthems of no church, but the new anthems of a galactic cathedral that transcends corrupt corporations and governments. From Bob Marley to Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, Same Cooke, they all talk about the same thing. Q Was there a spiritual element to music for you early on?Ī Everybody in this world needs a heartfelt hug to be reassured that we’re not going to be doomed hitting a brick wall, that we will go to the wall and we will succeed at becoming architects creating heaven on Earth. Everything that I’ve done by grace, it gave me confidence that I can be on stage with Jerry Garcia or Michael Bloomfield or Peter Green, and later on Tito Puente and later on Miles Davis. When I came to the United States, I started winning a radio contest with a thousand bands. Q Still, you were just 19 when you first performed at the Fillmore West.Ī Since I was a child, I got a reputation in Tijuana for playing the violin and winning most of the radio contests. That’s what saved me from getting frustrated and going back to Tijuana. Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. Fortunately when I got here, the Rolling Stones were coming out and they were listening to the same things I was listening to. And then I got here and they were like, “Who?” I had to start all over again. I basically thought that everybody knew John Lee Hooker. They didn’t want you to get all clever or sophisticated. Because if they didn’t like you, they’d cut and shoot you. Down and dirty, murky, simple but deadly, I think they call it cut and shoot crowd. In Tijuana, the people that I hung up hung around with were playing John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed and Lightnin Hopkins. Q What was San Francisco like when you first arrived there in the ’60s?Ī It was a it was a shock coming from Tijuana. Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tribeca FestivalCarlos Santana and his wife, Cindy Blackman Santana, attend the “Carlos” premiere in New York City. “The Bay Area definitely attracts characters, you know?” says Santana. He’s been in San Francisco since his family (his father played the violin in a mariachi band) moved from Mexico in the 1960s. Santana, who launches the nationwide 1001 Rainbows Tour in Newark, New Jersey, on June 21, recently spoke by Zoom from his Bay Area home. The critic Robert Christgau once wrote: “He is less a man of style than of sound, a clear, loud, fluent sound that cleanses with the same motion no matter how often that motion is repeated.” The new documentary by Rudy Valdez, “Carlos,” which is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival and will be released this fall in theaters by Sony Pictures Classics, chronicles the meteoric rise of one of the most singular guitar players in rock history. He left the Woodstock audience dazed and stunned before the first Santana record came out. He’s been doing it since he stormed onto the San Francisco scene in the late ’60s. Santana, 75, can still whip a crowd into a frenzy like few others. That way the referee can’t steal the fight from me.” “I want to get in the middle of the ring and knock the sucker out. I don’t like to rope-a-dope,” Santana says. “Take no prisoners - peacefully,” Carlos Santana sometimes tells his bandmates before taking the stage.
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