By Paul Freeman [1998 Interview]

Long before world music was defined as a genre, Carlos Santana was melding Latin and African influences with blues and rock. The multi-Grammy winner exploded onto the scene in the late 60s, creating a buzz at San Francisco venues like The Fillmore. The Santana band then wowed a massive audience at the Woodstock festival. Carlos Santana quickly established himself as one of the most exciting and inventive guitarists of his generation.

The Santana band enjoyed huge hits, including “Evil Ways,” “Oye Como Va” and “Black Magic Woman.” By the mid-70s, Santana had moved in a jazz fusion direction, still exploring Afro-Cuban influences. In the 90s, Santana enjoyed a commercial resurgence. Numerous superstars joined Carlos Santana on his 1999 smash album “Supernatural,” which received rave reviews and numerous awards.

In 2016, the early 70s Santana lineup reunited for “Santana IV.” It soared up the charts. Then Carlos Santana and his second wife, Cindy Blackman Santana, joined The Isley Brothers for 2017’s “Power of Peace” album.

Santana is also known for his social activism and humanitarian efforts. In 1998, he and his family founded The Milagro Foundation, which supports underserved children and youth in the areas of arts, education and health.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
I understand you’re working on a new album.

CARLOS SANTANA:
Yes, we’re putting material together. We’re working on songs on the road. I think we’re going to call it “Mambo Jambo.” It’s pretty much a concept that I feel like, the thing that I learned from John Coltrane and Bob Marley and Marvin Gaye about combining… I call them like “a kiss.” You know like singles? I call them like those little chocolate kisses, because John Coltrane, till the day he left, he played “My Favorite Things” and songs like that, standards. Miles Davis played “Human Nature” and “Time After Time.” And there’s a reason for it.

So we feel like quality and quantity can go together. The tricky part is just being patient, because there’s a lot of people who are coming to the table who want to offer their services. And it’s up to my heart, I guess, to make sure that nobody gets shortchanged, but at the same time, we don’t put too much energy into something that we don’t collectively feel is something completely joyful. In other words, it takes patience to work on the right melodies, the right songs and the right lyrics. Especially because, what we want to do is make an important album, in the sense that quality and quantity can go together. You know?

It’s been done before. But it needs to be done again. And you just get credit for trying. That doesn’t mean you have to succeed on every song. But I think most of the songs need to have that frequency and energy that makes people aroused — spiritually, sexually, that you can cry and laugh, you can make love to, you can raise your kids with. A lot of that has to do with rhythms… and melodies and the lyrics.

And so being with Clive Davis, it’s a real challenge, a good challenge, because he doesn’t have 300 artists. He only has 20… or 27. You know what I mean? So it’s an opportunity to be with passion, like Bill Graham — people who have passion. It’s important for me to be in a surrounding like that. And you too! Because when you’re surrounded with passionate people, then you have a collaboration for your goals and your dreams and your aspirations. Otherwise you’re stuck, because we all make it together. It’s a collective consciousness effort, whether it’s Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder or Michael Jackson, it’s always a collective effort with all kinds of people. Not even da Vinci does it alone. It took Mona Lisa to pose.

PCC:
So will this be a collection of originals and classic material then?

SANTANA:
Yes. Creative balance. The songs come from where they come from — other people or your own heart or the air — or both. But I think the main thing is that we want the music to complement life. I think if you have respect and reverence for life, people on the planet, you already have a ticket for your dreams and aspirations… if you’re only thinking about yourself, then you don’t have a ticket, but you have a gun and you’re going to hold up somebody with it. Do you know what I mean? When you have a ticket, you don’t need to be violent, because the door is open to you and for you. The door’s been opening now for me for a long time, through Bill Graham and Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker — anybody who has met me, Buddy Guy, they always share with me and teach some of the precious experiences in their lives.

PCC:
So you’re conscious of doing that yourself, passing along what you’ve learned?

SANTANA:
Yeah, it’s important to touch, man, to embrace. I talked to this lady two days ago, she was doing a special for Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the same day, I’m hanging around with Selena’s father and the family. So I understand the perimeters of not being here, but being here. You know what I mean? I mean, Ritchie Valens, Jimi Hendrix, they’re here in frequency. Every time you play their music, they’re still here. But they’re not here to take it further. And that’s where I am. There’s a lot of information that is being passed on to me, for me to pass it on to whoever wants to listen.

PCC:
Are you even more conscious of quality, because you’re so aware that the music can live much longer than you will?

SANTANA:
Yeah, I think so. In the beginning, we weren’t really conscious. We were just playing. We just did it. But now I have children and I know that it’s important not to lose them, because they have their own set of grooves and beats and things that they like. My daughter Angelica has turned me on to Dave Matthews. I said, “What’s that?” She said, “Dave Matthews.” And I said, “I’m trying to figure out the music,” because it was new to me. And then she goes, “Well, listen to the lyrics” [laughs]. I said, “Okay.” So it’s wonderful that you can share the music with your whole family.

The original band, people would teach me Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone and Mongo Santamaria and Miles Davis and Coltrane. And now my family, my young family — I have a 15-year-old son, a 14-year-old daughter, eight-year-old daughter — and they teach me what’s happening today.

PCC:
What do you want to impart to your kids, in exchange for that knowledge ?

SANTANA:
The feeling. As long as it’s sincere and it has passion, which is feeling, you can sing ”Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and it’s cool. But first you have to have a sincere feeling. You have to teach children. For example, people who are traders, who trade things back and forth by nature, teach children the value of something, the value of currency. Whereas musicians teach their children the value of honesty, because if you’re not honest, you don’t have a good sound. You can have the best guitar and the best amplifier in the world, but if you don’t have the right intentions, your sound is going to suck. You know? Because if you ain’t got it, that’s what’s going to come out of your mouth. You can’t escape it.

So if you have good thoughts and good intentions, then you get a big, ol’ rich tone. And people are saying, “What kind of strings are those? What kind of cord is that? What kind of amplifier?” It ain’t the cord or the strings, man. It’s you. It’s coming out of your hands. So that’s what I teach my children — you’ve got to be accountable for what’s in your heart. Learn to tell the truth and learn to be of service and to complement life, no matter whether you’re washing dishes or you’re a musician. Complement life. Because music is all, again, about frequency and vibration, which is tone.

PCC:
When you’re recording, do you find it easy to know when a performance is right? Do you have difficulty leaving it alone, not trying to be too much of a perfectionist?

SANTANA:
No, no. We know when it’s there completely, because everybody starts crying, hugging each other. It’s like your wife has just delivered the baby that you wanted — it’s a boy. Or okay, you had a boy, now you want a girl — hey, here’s a girl. And look at her eyes, man. She’s beautiful. She’s pure. Man, everybody can tell. The whole thing is being patient and gracious and grateful. That is the whole thing about creating an album — being patient.

PCC:
And what about the live experience? Has your perspective on performing changed much over the years?

SANTANA:
Well, I understand that it needs to be balanced, in terms of the exploring and the searching and also the song. If you just explore the whole concert, after a while, people start yawning, they say, “Well, that guy’s great [yawning sound]. When is he going to get to the point?” It’s like too much dribbling. And you never pass the ball and you don’t slam dunk. I mean, everybody waits for the slam dunk. And the slam dunk is the song. “I Feel Good” — James Brown. Sting — “Every Breath You Take.” You know what I mean?

I understand those perimeters. But you should open up before the new slam dunk. That’s all you can do is just do your best to balance all this energy so that when people hear it, you open people’s hearts. And whether they’re wearing Metallica — or younger than Metallica — T-shirts, it’s the same thing there for the 67-year-olds and for the kids. You need a song and a rhythm… and a melody. It’s no different than Quincy Jones or Snoop Dogg. You still need a song and some lyrics and a melody.

PCC:
But even after so many performances, your concerts still seem to be events. Is that because your music continues to be adventurous?

SANTANA:
Well, it’s interesting you say that, because this band is very different than most bands. We’ve just been all over Europe and people respond to it like it’s the center of their family. And I’m very grateful about that. It’s an event in the sense that a voice has a universality. It is multi-dimensional, interdenominational. It has uniqueness, individuality, but at the same time, it has a universal passion. For example, when you see the Olympics, they play the last game and all the flags start marching together and dancing and crying.

And it’s like a river of emotions. Everybody’s crying and laughing together. That kind of stuff — that’s what I’m trying to do with the songs, a tone that all hearts can rejoice and say, “Thank you, God, for the opportunity to be on this planet.” Whether I have zeros to put on my check or I don’t have nothin’, it’s a joy to be on this planet, just because you can touch your nose with either hand, because of balance and coordination. There’s a lot of things we have to be grateful for, man. If you’re not grateful, you’re not going to be happy. It doesn’t matter who you are — Michael Jackson or Donald Trump. If you’re not grateful first, just for the opportunity to be on this planet, regardless of what position you’re playing…

You know, I get a lot of joy, when I’m in the position to let you know and maybe you can write it down and people can say, “Well, Carlos said that the world is round so that everybody can have centerstage.” That’s how I feel. I don’t have to take the solo of the night… or the longest solo. But as long as I give you three notes that connect you, so when you go home, you’re inspired and motivated and passionate and horny and all of those things, aroused, then it’s up to you what you want to do with your energy. But at least I got it up.

PCC:
As far as developing a unique sound and coming to this philosophical place, how important has the Bay Area been, just being a nurturing environment?

SANTANA:
The Bay Area, to me, is really important, because there’s no coincidence that the people who live in the Bay Area are so creative and so different in thought process than New York or Los Angeles. The low points of the Bay Area are the newspapers and the TV stations, because they don’t really shift the energy to all the people. They hog the attention to only certain people. And they do a disservice to everybody else, because they’re not really fair. And they’re not fair in how they show the world. So to me, living in the Bay Area is a challenge, because the things that I learned from the 60s were unilateral, multidimensional. But the Bay Area information media is still with the agenda of the past of like treating black people and Mexican people like we’re from another planet and we’re incidental.

It’s very discouraging. They create a vibration, like in Jerusalem, between the Palestinians and the Hebrews. And they create a vibration with Latins and blacks. And it’s really a disservice, because we all really need each other, man. The day the Latin people or the Mexican people or anybody who speaks Spanish doesn’t do the hotels or cook or do the gardening or babysit or pick the fruit, the economy goes down in one day.

So being in the Bay Area, to me, is a challenge. Spiritually, it’s great, because I am surrounded by a lot of people who love what I love — Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, the Grateful Dead, like that. Those are my friends. But people outside the circle, as far as like the media, like I said, they’re not going forward. The Bay Area has a very progressive energy. And what holds us back is our newspaper and our TV information. It’s very disservicing.

PCC:
But the Bay Area media, do you think it’s worse than elsewhere? Or is it just that you have higher expectations, because of the spirit of the area?

SANTANA:
No, it’s because they’re not keeping up with the passion and the need of the people. The writers that they have and the critics that they have, they’re not even complementary to being negative. It’s just f—ked up. I can’t understand when somebody here doesn’t like something that is valid. You hear people say, “Well, I don’t think that critic even went to the concert, because there were 50,000 people there going nuts! Who did they go to see?” If you’re going to chop a tree, at least say something good about something in life. You know? That’s all that I’m talking about. If you’re going to use so much money for commercials, for radio and TV, Jesus, at least find some spark of divinity in the Bay Area in somebody. Don’t just say we’re all crap and we’re all going to hell. I mean, what’s that all about?

And if I raise my voice right now to you, it’s because I feel that collectively, we can go forward and push forward beyond the people that have the same fears and the same negative agenda. To me, negative and positive is just energy. But there needs to be balance. Your car has to be balanced for you to step on the accelerator and the gasoline and the water and the oil — it needs to be balanced, so you can go fast. If it’s not balanced, it smokes or it stops. So what I’m saying is that, in the Bay Area, what we’re dealing with, it’s like our freeways — they’re packed. And nobody’s thinking ahead to get rid of the gridlock in information and in traveling.

And I’m motivated to say, “Hey, why don’t we start thinking ahead and why don’t you hire other people in high schools and junior high schools and colleges for writing?” For example, you have scouts for baseball and basketball and football. Why don’t you have scouts about critics. Teach the skill, man. Teach the skill of communicating, not polluting. We’ve got enough of that. You know, true communication is complementing. That’s true communication. Pollution is just whining. I’m not whining right now. I’m just giving you the information about how I feel, that you and I can make a drop of difference and start people saying, “Let’s clean up the Bay Area. It’s a pigsty.” The Bay Area is dirtier than New York has been in some time. When you go from Kennedy to Manhattan, it’s clean. When you go around the Bay Area, it’s a pigsty. Doesn’t that hurt you? It hurts me. That’s what I’m talking about, beyond the music.

PCC:
As far as the problem with media, do you think it’s partly because cynicism is often viewed as being cool these days?

SANTANA:
They’re not even cool, man. I think they’re being selfish, egotistical and fearful — fearful of what people like me have to say, because I’m not the only one. We feel that we pay enough taxes in the Bay Area for gasoline, taxes beyond Beverly Hills. Why is it so dirty? Why can’t the government clean it up at night? And I mean at night, not during the day, because it’s already packed, the freeway.

PCC:
Where are you based?

SANTANA:
I’m based in San Rafael. And it’s dirty there, too. I mean, we pay a lot of taxes, man. So I feel that, with the music and the information, we can move forward, man. I’m passionate, because I go to Japan and I go to Europe. And it’s clean over there, man. It’s clean! People take pride in their garden. People take pride in their freeways.

And I’m passionate about healing this planet, life and the people. That’s important to me, man. I don’t get up in the morning to bust anybody’s balls [laughs] or to get a new platinum album. It’s never been important to me, that. What’s important to me is to utilize the music of communication to get information to people, so we don’t have excuses for living in the same quagmire. We can move forward, man, in the next millennium, with more of healthy thought and a concept of service.

Maybe in reading about this, people will get motivated to clean up their own block. That’s what it’s about, man — it’s about creating a chain reaction. We are in a position to cause and effect. Together we’re in a position to cause and effect in mass quantities. So I thank you for the opportunity. I’m not doing this to sell more tickets or anything like that. If people want to come, they’ll come. In spending this time and energy with you, I would like to inform the people that there’s other ways to co-exist in the Bay Area with a better consciousness.

PCC:
But you could live anywhere in the world, yet choose to stay in the Bay Area — what keeps you here? Is it the people?

SANTANA:
Yes, it’s the people who hold me here, because my wife, my children and all my family live here. If I didn’t have children and I wasn’t married, I would live in Paris. I would have no problem with that. Because in Paris, I feel, is the music of tomorrow, coming in through Africa, through all the African musicians. And I only have devotion for the music. But at the same time, I get to have my cake and eat it, too, because I get to go to Paris and hang out with all those people, socialize, so many great musical artists there, but at the same time, I get to have my family and live in the most beautiful place in the world. It’s just that it’s too dirty.

PCC:
When you receive honors like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, is that important to you? Or is it the less tangible type of things that you find most rewarding?

SANTANA:
It’s rewarding, because it gives me an opportunity to voice my opinion, like right now, as far as like inviting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to induct more Latin, Spanish-speaking people in there — Ritchie Valens, Jose Feliciano, etcetera, etcetera.

PCC:
Ritchie Valens isn’t in there? [After years of being bypassed, Valens was finally inducted in 2001.]

SANTANA:
No. Buddy Holly is, though. Believe me, I don’t have an agenda, trying to get a piece of meat or anything like that. I only want equality and justice. And the same thing that is in the Constitution. Treat everybody the same. And so that, it’s important to me, because I get to like invite the powers that be, at the Grammys or at the Hall of Fame, which is Rolling Stone and people like that, to not be like the media of disservice. The only magazine in the United States that serves all the people is Guitar Player Magazine.

PCC:
Because it’s more about the music than the image.

SANTANA:
Right! There you go. On the other hand, I’m grateful, because also a lot of people identify with me. Like Selena, Ritchie Valens, I do represent a lot of aspirations and dreams of a lot of poor and Spanish people. If I can do it, they can do it, they feel. And I invite them to do so. There’s not that many bands like Santana or Los Lobos or my brother’s band [Jorge Santana], who embraces music from Africa, mixing Cuban or Puerto Rican or Brazilian with the blues and presenting it in such a way that people say, “Hey, I love this music. It reminds me of my family.” “Oh, really? You’re Greek!” “It doesn’t matter. It reminds me of my family.” So, to me, it’s a great opportunity to serve. That’s really what turns me on at this point — to be of service to people and to complement as much as possible. Even though I sound like a ranting and raving lunatic [laughs].

PCC:
You seem to draw a very diverse crowd. Is that part of the big reward — bringing people together from all backgrounds, all walks of life?

SANTANA:
Yeah. The last concert we did for Bill Graham was at the Greek Theatre in ’91. And you know, Bill Graham would always take notes. And he’d tell you what songs sucked or what was really great or what went too long or what’s too short. Or one song should have been earlier in the set. He always had comments. For Sting or Barbra Streisand or Dylan — he had comments for everybody [laughs].

And this particular day, he didn’t have any comments for me like that. I said, “Where’s the notes?” He goes, “Man, you guys played the perfect concert.” He says, “I looked out in the audience and there’s Asians, American Indians, blacks, Mexicans, whites, Grateful Dead people, straights, cholos, businessmen.” He said, “It’s unbelievable — the cross-section of people, Hebrews and… “ I said, “I’m just really grateful that we get a chance to present our music and they like it.” But that to me was like a clue, because he left right after that. I miss him, obviously, terribly. That’s the last time that I saw Bill Graham. My heart hurts.

For the latest on this artist, visit www.santana.com