The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (15 page)

I remember during that first year in San Francisco I heard about a show in San Jose that featured B. B. King, Bobby Bland,
and
Ray Charles—my friends and I were like, “Oh,
shit!
” I never scrubbed plates and pots and pans as fast as I did that night. As soon as I got off work, we took off from the Tic Tock at full speed and got to the venue just in time to hear the last note and the applause that followed. “Oh…
shit
.”

The blues was still my thing—make no mistake. That apartment on Juri Street was where I hid in that little storage room in the dark, just my guitar and I, trying to figure out how B. B. got that tone or Otis hit that note. I was still doing that kind of thing in our new place. Jorge still tells me that he remembers I was always digging, digging, digging—working on my sound.

I also soon learned about the guitar stores around the city—seeing all the new guitars and equipment was essential to me. And of course I was still playing and hanging out with Danny and Gus. We had our little band that had no name. We had our little gigs, playing parties and dances. Listening to the new songs that were coming out and deciding which ones we liked and which ones we wanted to learn. Before I went back to Tijuana in ’62, I had avoided showing them anything. I didn’t want to be a teacher. But when I went back, I knew that if I wanted to play I had to swallow my pride and teach them repertoire. The good thing about it was that I could choose the songs, so I turned them away from surfer music and the Beatles. We learned James Brown and Etta James tunes together, and I taught them songs I knew from El Convoy, including “You Can Make It If You Try.”

It was all fun—this was when I really began to be a teenager
and do teenager things. I remember Danny had a green Corvette. We’d drive down the peninsula to one of the A&Ws along the coast, get a root beer float and some hamburgers, listen to the greatest music on the car stereo, then go home and play in his basement. I also remember that his father didn’t like me for the longest time. He looked at me as if I were a bad influence on his son. I don’t think I was.

I started to notice the difference between what we were listening to and playing and what most other bands were listening to and playing. We did one gig at the Stonestown YMCA on the same bill as a group of white dudes who were playing strictly Beach Boys tunes. We came in there with Bo Diddley and Freddie King tunes, and no one knew anything about that. On the way over there I remember a song came on the radio—it was the first time I heard Stevie Wonder: “Fingertips, Part 1” and “Fingertips, Part 2.” Damn.

In 1963 and into ’64, I was getting to know everything going on in San Francisco—I was going up and down the streets, looking at the buildings and the bridge and that beautiful bay. At home I remember Jorge was just starting to mess around on guitar, and my sisters were still putting on their records, dancing to Motown and Latin tunes that were popular then—Celia Cruz, some guy named Tito Puente. For me, San Francisco was this amazing vortex of newness.

If it sounds like I’m avoiding talking about school, that’s because I was doing just that—avoiding it. It was tough because I had to switch back to English again, and when I didn’t understand every third or fourth word it was very frustrating. I was not the best student and didn’t like most of my courses, except for one English class in which there was a very beautiful teacher who would wear a short skirt and cross her legs. Suddenly I was more interested in her than I had been in any of the dancers in Tijuana. I’d be daydreaming, and my young body would be reacting as it’s supposed to, nature doing its thing, and one time she caught me.

“Carlos, I want you to come to the board and write this down.” I
was like, “Um, no.” She insisted, and the whole class was watching. So I got up, trying to subtly shift things around. But it wasn’t working, and everybody was cracking up. What can I say? It was junior high.

My English was getting better all the time on its own. Everywhere I went—to school, the Tic Tock, band rehearsals, my friends’ houses—I always spoke English. When I was talking to Linda and Yvonne, they had no problem correcting me. We’d talk all the time on the phone, and we got closer and closer. I could talk to them about anything—school, music, girls. They’d tell me about their boyfriends. They’d call me up—“Hey, Santana, how you doing?” After a while, I even opened up to them about getting molested—outside of my family, they were the only people who knew about that for many years.

I would say it took me almost three years from the time I came back from Tijuana to really get my English together and to stop thinking in Spanish. To have the right words and pronunciation. To say “Jell-O” instead of “yellow.” The accent? Well, that got better over time, but it’s still there, part of my identity, just like a guitar sound. It’ll never go away completely.

You can see that fitting in was tough. In those first few years in San Francisco, I didn’t quite know whom I was supposed to hang out with. I didn’t fit with Mexicans or white people, and very early on I found out that when I was with black friends and would ask about B. B. or Freddie King, they were listening to something else—some newer style of dance music, not the blues. I learned to get rid of the notion I had when I came to America: that all black people knew each other.

Once the blues did work in my favor. I was on a city bus late one night, and though we had moved to the Mission District I still had to take a route through the rough part of town to get to the place where we rehearsed. I was carrying my black Melody Maker with me in a bag. It never had a case—I used to take it with me everywhere before Lalo sat on it. I got on the bus, and the driver looked at me and at the guitar. “Can you play that thing?”

“Yeah, I can play it,” I told him. I wasn’t being cocky or anything.

“What kind of music?”

“Jimmy Reed, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, John Lee Hooker.” We’re talking, and the bus isn’t moving.

“John Lee Hooker, huh? Well, you’re going to have to sit near me so I can watch you. I don’t want anyone messing with you.”

It was the first time someone had done something like that simply because I was a musician and because of the music I made. Without even hearing me play. That driver was one of the angels who stepped in at the right place and time—not just to watch over me but also to let me know I was on the right path. I still feel a lot of confidence when I remember that one little bus ride.

I was a musician, and that’s how I identified myself—not Mexican or American. I still do. That’s why I hung out mostly with musicians.

At James Lick, as at any school, there was pressure to belong to a group. They had two—the Shoes, who wore tight white pants or corduroys. They were the surfers. And there were the Barts, who were like the pachucos; they were mostly Mexican, with some blacks mixed in. People wanted to know which group I would choose—they expected me to be a Bart. I thought they both looked silly. One Latino guy said, “You don’t dress like us,” like I was a sellout or something. “You know why I don’t dress like you? I have a job. I make my own money and buy my own clothes. I don’t let my mama or any gang dress me up.” At that point I was working on my own style anyway, wearing the shiny black shoes and those tight, shiny trousers the Motown guys wore—the Levi’s would come later.

It was like the Jets and Sharks—whites and Latinos—in
West Side Story
. Tony took me to see the movie around a year after it came out, but never mind the gangs. Man, that was our story—about wanting to come to America and make it here. They were singing about washing machines, as I had promised my mom back in Mexico. I couldn’t believe it. That’s how I first came to know about Leonard Bernstein. That movie was nothing without the
music. I don’t know if Mr. Bernstein knew just how many people he touched with that one film. It encapsulated the whole United States at the time—and for many years thereafter.

In 1999, when I was auditioning the songs for the album that became
Supernatural,
I first heard the words to Wyclef Jean’s song “Maria Maria”—“She reminds me of a
West Side Story
/ growing up in Spanish Harlem / She’s livin’ her life just like a movie star.” I had asked for a song about healing and hope, but the stuff about
West Side Story
—that was all Wyclef. And Rob Thomas on his own came up with the line “my Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa” in the song “Smooth”—and I was thinking, “We’re definitely all on the same page here, brothers.” Who doesn’t know that movie?

After the difficulty I felt leaving Tijuana, what really kept me interested in San Francisco and not wanting to go back was my relationship with girls and music. When some of the girls at James Lick told me I reminded them of George Chakiris, who played Bernardo in
West Side Story,
I was like, “Really?” That was a handsome dude. Hmm. Okay, I was hooked.

Still, it was never a physical thing between me and Linda or Yvonne—we went to parties, and I’d watch them dance to “Harlem Shuffle,” or we’d go to drive-in movies. I was more comfortable with girls than I was with guys, but I was still really shy. I had no confidence when I got to be alone with a girl because I’ve never been a bullshitter or a hunter. One thing I know I didn’t get from my dad is the ability to hunt and charm women. That “Hey, baby” stuff was never my thing. To me, it just sounds corny, like picking up a guitar that’s out of tune. That’s just not my personality, even when I was with my first wife, Deborah, or Cindy or any of the other ladies. Some women I’ve loved may not want to own it, but they did the chasing.

I prefer to have a real conversation—that’s just me.

Before junior high was over I did muster up enough confidence to get together with this one girl—Dorian was her name. She lived alone with her mom, who worked during the day. That first part of ’64 I was always at her house.

I want to say that the sex was all a beautiful thing, but my memories of that time are mixed up with a gym teacher who had a crush on Dorian, and he knew I was getting with her. Every time I was in his class, he’d jump on me. “Santana, I know where you’re coming from. You need to run around the school block three times and then give me fifty push-ups.” It was weird—how did he know?

I think about those first times of intensity and ecstasy, and most of it happened while I was sneaking around and making sure I didn’t get caught. I know some people think that can make it more exciting—like all those soul songs that say it’s sweeter if you’re stealing it. But I think too much of sex is wrapped up in guilt and shame. It seems to me that it should always be celebrated as a healthy thing, talked about, and studied in school—especially in junior high, when people have the most questions.

Sex should be taught as creative and spiritual expression. The whole planet is about expression—a variety of expression. We need to know about this and make our own choices. Remember Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the surgeon general who got fired for coming out in favor of masturbation as a way of preventing AIDS—how could that be anything but healthy and positive? Unfortunately we’re not evolved enough yet to teach that point of view in schools. So much in this world would be better if we were taught that it’s important to find a partner with whom you can talk about sex and that this needs to be an important part of your life. Instead we’re left to figure these things out for ourselves—and hope we get it right.

Dorian was my girlfriend for a while—we used to go to dances together, but she’d get pissed because as soon as we got there, I’d let go of her hand and stand right in front of the band, checking out the guitarist and the rest of the guys. She would be asking me to dance, trying to get my attention, and I’d say, “No—it’s okay. Go ahead and dance with your friends. I’ve got to see what’s happening.” I was at rehearsals a lot, too. She got frustrated with me. She started to feel that I was only with her for my convenience and that I only wanted to be with her when her mom wasn’t home so I could do one thing.

Dorian left me for a quarterback. He’d play ball, as it were—she couldn’t rely on me. A few years later I saw the same thing happen to a bass player who came into the band just after Gus—Steve De La Rosa. He had a lot of strings attached to this beautiful lady who wanted him to spend more time with her than he did with his music.

I saw it happen many times after that, too. It’s a horrible thing when anyone says to you, “Choose me or the music.” Please do not ask me to live according to your insecurities. That’s like asking me to stop breathing. For me, there was only one possible answer—“Bye.”

In September I moved on to the high school that James Lick was a feeder for—Mission High. Linda, Yvonne, Danny, and Gus were all there, too. Mission was a big change from James Lick. It was really, really mixed—blacks, Mexicans, kids from all over South and Central America, and Filipinos. Other high schools had more Chinese and Italians, but Mission was the hard-core center of San Francisco, so kids were coming from the Mission, Bayview, and Hunter’s Point, and it was probably one of the most diverse schools in the city. There was a lot of tension, mostly between blacks and whites. The hippies were just coming up at that time, and it wasn’t fun, because straight people would call them faggots for having long hair. Whites and blacks and Latinos would say that. If anyone was with a crowd of their own people—white, black, brown, or just straight—and someone came by alone who looked different, you knew the crowd was going to start picking on that person. That’s high school.

My circle of friends got larger. It was a bigger school, and they had dances that were bigger, too. I remember that year Freddie Stone—Sly’s brother—came over from Jefferson High and played for us with his band, Freddie and the Stone Souls. They put on a high-energy show, jumping over each other while playing their instruments. That was the first time I heard Greg Errico on drums.

The summer of 1964 was all about the Beatles, the Rolling
Stones, and other groups from England. I noticed the girls really liked them. They were all over the radio. I could tell some of them were coming from the same place I was—they had been listening to the blues. Groups like the Animals and the Yardbirds were trying to learn that language, too. Later I would read about how they started: pulling themselves up, hitting the road, sleeping in vans, doing what they had to do—they were comrades in arms, as far as I’m concerned, for what they went through for their music. I’m talking about Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, John Mayall, Peter Green—all of them.