Carlos Santana interview

Carlos Santana and I are sitting on a couch and he’s telling me everything from why he feels younger today than he did when he performed at Woodstock forty years ago, to what the next chapter of his storied musical career might entail, to why he’s about to start playing a few dozen shows in Las Vegas each year. But in addition to being one of the most celebrated, popular and influential artists in the history of recorded music, he’s also likely the most famous person to release his own app for iPhone users.



So what led Carlos Santana to the iPhone, both as a user and as the namesake of an iPhone app? “I’m through with the smoke signals,” as he puts it. “I was the guy who went from the smoke signals and the mirrors, like the Apaches, straight into the iPhone, so I have no concept of computers. I was still with cassettes. And so it fascinates me just how much the human imagination has gone into making things accessible. I can put all my library of records and cassettes and CDs into my laptop and then into my iPhone. And I’m basically more than just curious now. I’m eager to ride that. It’s kind of like a highway, kind of like a freeway, and this stuff is like billboards. So I wanted to join it.”



The Santana iPhone app is a gateway into the world of Santana, with full-length music videos, a sampling of songs from over the decades, recent news and upcoming tour dates (the next version of the app, already in the App Store cue, will include web links for buying tickets), and even instructional videos from Carlos on how to play Oye Como Va and Black Magic Woman on guitar – along with a link to the “Architects of a New Dawn” website where Carlos isn’t afraid to express his current worldview. Nor was he afraid to do so during our interview.



“I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa. And with those songs from John Lennon or Bob Dylan, ‘Blowing in the Wind’ or ‘What a Wonderful World’ or ‘One Love’ or ‘Love Supreme’ I realized that it’s all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba. There’s a lot of walls still up. You know, the walls here in the United States between Fox Networks and just regular people who aspire to change the world without being cynical or arrogant. Because we do believe that peace is possible.



“So I utilize everything, whether it’s Maria Maria’s restaurants or shoes or music with Clive Davis, Yo Yo Ma, Justin Timberlake or Kirk Hammett from Metallica, we utilize everything that is available to us to give back, to invest. And what Arnold is not investing, or Barack Obama so far, which is invest in education for teachers in schools, bring the boys home, and legalize marijuana so you can make more money and pay more teachers a higher salary and erect more schools. I’m not afraid to create a website that is called ‘Architects of a New Dawn’ so we can ask ourselves how far have we come fighting like gorillas over a water hole and now fighting over oil, because clearly that’s what we’re there for, and going into a new dimension where we can actually, again, ask ourselves how far can we go instead of how far have we come?”

Santana’s live shows are legendary for their energy. So is there anything special Carlos has to do to get himself in the right mindset before he heads on on stage with his band each night? “All the musicians in my band, they’re leaders in their own right. They all play with John Scofield, Michael Stern, Pat Metheny, the best musicians in the world. Miles Davis, Prince, you know? Tower of Power. So I’m surrounded with le creme de le creme of musicians that can go anywhere we want to go, whether it’s jazz or reggae of African. The only thing we haven’t done so far is country & western and Riverdance music. But I think if we combine those two with some ska (laughs), it can be done.



Would he really go there? “Nothing is impossible at this point. The only thing that we need to do is first accept that the only reality is God’s love. Everything else is an illusion. And then you’ve got that energy that you can go on stage and do it. Like Elton John says, play Black Magic Woman, Maria Maria, Smooth and every song in the set like it’s the first and last time you’re ever gonna do it. It’s not wishful thinking. You can actually will yourself to do it because as you know, your body just follows your thoughts. If you think like a loser then you’re gonna be a loser, your body’s gonna get tired. If you think like a winner, everybody benefits. Your body will have, like, boundless energy because you’re inspired. You’re not depending on food. Kind of like when you fall in love, you know? When you’re in love man, you don’t need food, you don’t need a lot of things. You’re about this high off the ground, want to know what she smells like, what’s her favorite song, color, what she tastes like, all that kind of stuff. And so it’s important to stay in love with life and with the possibilities and opportunities.



Many fans have divided Carlos‘ music into two chapters, the first being the classics like Everybody’s Everything and Oye Como Va, the second being the genre-bending collaborations from Supernatural onward. So does Carlos foresee a third chapter in which his music takes on a whole other incarnation?



”Oh sure, you know? To combine Yo Yo Ma, Andrea Bocelli with African rhythms, some real far out Grateful Dead, Screaming Jay Hawkins for humor. You know, the main thing is we’re not afraid to try things. We’re not afraid to go hang out with Alice Coltrane when she was here, or Wayne Shorter or Herbie, we’re just not afraid because we’re bringing an element of openness and we want to complement, you know? So it’s not competition, it’s not comparing. And for me it’s just one breath, you know? It’s just that in that breath we’re able to cover from A to Z in music. It’s only eight notes. Actually seven, the eighth one is the first one again. Twelve if you count the ones in between. So I agree with John Coltrane: damn the rules, it’s the feeling that counts.”



This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, a event that saw a young Carlos Santana take the stage and launch his career. What does he think of his younger self now, looking back? “I feel like I’m younger now because I’m not with fear. I was with a lot of fear back then. There was a lot of fear and anger and distrust. But at the same time there was a lot of acceptance to go almost from junior high school to being on stage with Sly Stallone or Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Michael Bloomfield. It was quite a gift, man, to walk into this door that Bill Graham provided for us, and Clive Davis, and then again Clive Davis with Supernatural, and I look at them just like doors, just like this is another door here in Las Vegas. They’re doors of opportunities and possibilities, you know? I started playing the guitar in Tijuana and basically being a dishwasher in San Francisco, and I dreamed that I could hang out with Michael Bloomfield and Jerry Garcia, and I just kept going.”



This month Carlos announced that he’s taking up residency at The Joint at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas, a deal which will see him playing about thirty-six shows in town per year. How does he feel about spending so much time in Vegas, a town that appears to be a polar opposite from the San Francisco Bay Area he calls home?



”I’m having fun hanging around with me no matter where I am now. So it could be Las Vegas, a parking lot, I mean I’ve seen Bob Marley, he played in front of Tower Records in San Francisco, same thing with Traffic. So I said damn, you know, if they can play in the streets. Real musicians, it’s an illusion that Carnegie Hall or Madison Square Garden, to me it’s all one heart at this point. Coming into Las Vegas, which is a city that’s based basically on investing in illusion and luck, chance and fortune, we’re bringing another element, the element of God’s grace, which has nothing to do with luck, fortune or chance. It brings the guarantee and reassurance that God guarantees a happy outcome for everyone. That takes care of that. To the illusion, we bring a genuineness. Genuineness is knowing that we can play in South Africa, 2010 World Cup, center stage with all of the drummers from Africa, Brazil and Cuba, very few bands can do that. Very few bands can understand the language of those rhythms and take it to the next level without showing off or anything like that.



“It’s a language that if you speak it correctly then you touch all the families of the world. So no, I don’t look at Las Vegas like I used to, like it’s a duality or in opposition to who I am. No, not anymore. To me it’s an opportunity, possibility to be of service to more people who need financial assistance like students. There’s no greater satisfaction than being of service to humanity than by providing financial assistance to students who can go to the next step in their lives because they graduated with supremely high honors and grades from high school but they don’t have money to go to universities.”



Looking out into the audience, what’s more gratifying, seeing kids enjoying his music or seeing adults who’ve been fans all their lives? As it turns out, the answer is a little bit of both. ”They’re bringing their children,” he says of his older fans. “I’ve never seen so many kids. You know, I swear to you, children under twelve and they’re freaking out, they’re bugging out. We invite them on stage in the last half an hour and it’s an incredible blessing from God to be able to be sixty-one and become like what I wanted to be, like my dad and B.B. King.

interview by Bill Palmer