The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (38 page)

That made sense to me—I’m there to complement what John does, not compete with him or be compared to him. Before I said yes, though, I was telling myself to get ready to wait—wait to see what he would play and how he would play it, then do the opposite. If he plays up and down the neck, quickly and staccato, answer him slowly, with longer notes, and it’s going to be a beautiful contrast.

It was like Miles had taught me—I’d always be learning, no matter what, because that was just who I am.

Those lessons never went away—I still carry all of them. I feel them today if I have to play with someone I know is great or even if I have to just meet someone like a president or Nelson Mandela. Fear and intimidation are like anger and hatred—all part of the ego game.

Saying yes to record with Mahavishnu—by that time I was calling him Mahavishnu, and he was calling me Little Brother—came down to this important lesson: my mind works for me; I don’t work for it. Whatever it is that I tell my mind we’re going to do, we’re going to do. I told myself, “Yeah, it’s going to be a little shaky the first couple of times in the studio with John, but I’ll find a way.” I still have that attitude, no matter whom I’m going to play with or where I’ll be playing.

We sealed the deal when John flew out to San Francisco to sit in with the new Santana at Winterland at the start of October, which was really the first time the new, full lineup performed. John sat in for the last half hour, and Deborah was backstage for the first time at a Santana concert. I felt so high from everything that was happening—the music coming together and falling in love. I felt light and open to whatever was coming next—like a weight was lifting.

The
Caravanserai
tour across the United States and Canada
didn’t last long—it ended with a few shows around New York City at the end of October. Deborah met me there, and then McLaughlin and I went into the studio with our respective rhythm sections. We used Larry Young and Jan Hammer on organs, John’s wife, Eve, on piano, and Don Alias and Billy Cobham on percussion, balancing it out with Shrieve, Armando, Mingo, and Dougie on bass. The music included a few originals by John—he can come up with some long, gorgeous, celestial melodies, and I know that’s just one reason why Miles loved him. He did two for this album—“Meditation” and “The Life Divine.” There was also a beautiful, meditative spiritual called “Let Us Go into the House of the Lord,” which became a favorite song of mine to play at the end of concerts, because when people heard it they really understood: “Okay, it’s time to go home.”

John and I also did two of our favorite Coltrane pieces—the opening part of
A Love Supreme
and “Naima.” Coltrane was the reason the recording came together, so we had to celebrate his music and acknowledge him, even if we were rock musicians doing some of his holiest songs only a few years after he died. I was too naive to think anything about that—even after the music came out, I didn’t read any reviews about whether or not we had committed sacrilege. I know there’s a jazz police, just as there’s a clave police. Gábor Szabó had a name for them. “Eh, they aren’t musicians,” he’d say. “They’re just a bunch of jazzbos. Real musicians don’t think like that.” That’s how I felt. It wasn’t like we were putting a mustache on the
Mona Lisa
—it never felt wrong to play that music.

John and I would get together again in early ’73 to finish the music for the album. In the end we called it
Love Devotion Surrender,
which was the spiritual path of Sri Chinmoy. Coryell had been the first to tell me about Sri, then John started speaking about him with even more intensity, with a consistency of serenity in his persona. That last week of October, John and Eve took Deborah and me to meet their guru for the first time.

The meeting was at the Church Center for the United Nations,
across the street from the main UN buildings. There were a lot of people around as well as Indian food and some live music. Later, some people read poetry—not that different from the meetings I was going to in San Francisco. I brought along a couple of flowers as a sign of respect—I had heard other spiritual leaders speak, but I didn’t know what to expect. Sri was a short, balding man wearing red robes and a big white smile—an incredible, sweet smile.

John introduced us, and Sri said, “Oh, Mahavishnu has told me about you. Good boy. I am so happy that you’re here.” I learned later that he greeted all his disciples that way—“good boy”; “good girl.” He looked at me intently and accepted the flowers. Then he said, “I can see your soul wants to be here so bad.”

Sri started speaking to everyone who was there—telling stories and speaking about his philosophy. I found out right away that
desire
was the word he used to describe uncontrolled forces of the ego, forces that separate and divide people.
Aspiration
was the effort of the spirit to get away from the yoke of those forces, reaching for a higher conscious and bringing people together. “Aspiration is the inner cry,” he would say. “It cries for endless bliss, boundless peace and light. Aspiration harmonizes; desire monopolizes.”

I closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew it felt like he was getting closer and closer, brighter and brighter, until he was right in front of me, even though he was still yards away at the front of the room. I kept my eyes shut, and in addition to Sri’s voice I remember hearing another voice inside me telling me that this is a man of the elements, that inside him he carried sun, water, and earth. The inner voice said, “You are a seed. A seed needs sun, water and soil. Together you will be able to grow and give divine fruit to humanity.”

I’m not making this up—that’s actually what I heard. Sri stopped speaking, and I had a feeling that I was inside a waterfall, but instead of water there was light, and instead of falling down, the light was all going up. I was thinking to myself, “Did this really happen?” By the time I opened my eyes, I knew Sri’s teaching was meant to be my path. Sri could see that, too. There was no contract to sign or handshake or anything like that. There was no official
welcome—just Sri standing in front of me, smiling and saying, “I take you; I accept you. If you want, I take you as my disciple. But you got to cut your hair and shave your beard.”

I knew that Sri advocated no drugs, no drinking, and no sex until marriage. John had told me about all that. Sri was about discipline—that was the “surrender” part—and he was not into any hippie sort of lifestyle. I was happy he asked me, but I wasn’t sure. Cut my hair? I couldn’t even think of anyone asking me to do that except for someone like Sri. In 1972, your long hair was not just a mark of honor—it was your identity and your strength and your connection to a way of life that said, “I’m done with the old way of doing things.” What Sri was asking felt like some Samson and Delilah sort of thing.

When we got back to the hotel, Deborah asked me what I was going to do—if I was really going to join. She told me how she was feeling, that she was ready. I said, “I don’t know. I don’t want to sound weird, but I got to have some sort of sign.” I had hardly said that when suddenly a bird came swooping into the room—we had left the window open. It flapped around, then flew back out again. Deborah and I looked at each other with our eyes open wide. I was thinking, “Holy shit. Did that just happen?” After a few seconds, Deborah said, “Okay. I guess you’re going to cut your hair.”

We found a barber in the Village. I remember the look on the lady’s face when I walked in, like maybe I had walked into the wrong place. The next time I saw Sri, I was looking all clean. I was wearing a white shirt, and for the first time in maybe six or seven years my hair wasn’t touching my collar. All that was left on my face was a neat mustache.

Deborah and I were welcomed by Sri into his ashram. I felt like I had gotten over a big hump, like I had gotten rid of a cancer of anger and fear and come back from a very, very deep meditation. I immediately could taste and smell better. I felt healthy; my own saliva tasted sweet, with no bad odor, and I noticed that I didn’t smell funky even when I had finished a long concert and hadn’t
yet taken a shower. Something had changed in my molecular structure—molecules obey your thoughts, you know.

Then almost immediately we had to leave New York and join Santana in London for the start of a European tour. When the band saw me they were shocked. I could see in their faces that they thought someone had kidnapped Carlos and sent his twin brother instead. I explained to them that Deborah and I had accepted Sri Chinmoy as our spiritual guide, our guru, and that he had accepted us. I think most of them understood, though my short hair was a big change. The one who really got it was Shrieve, because we both loved Coltrane and because we were both on this planet searching for the same thing: spiritual, mental, and physical stability. Not long afterward, he cut his hair, too, and became a disciple of Swami Satchidananda.

The European leg of the
Caravanserai
tour was a triumph after that—we played at Wembley Arena in London, and I remember that any doubt or frustration and anger I had about people not liking our new music went away after the reviews of our album and our show came out in
Melody Maker
. They were both written by Richard Williams, who was one of the best rock journalists in England then. He said
Caravanserai
was the “Hot Rhythm Album of 1972” and called the progress we were making “logical, organic, intelligent.” He said that each tune blended into the next. The review also compared some of the orchestral arrangements to the sound that Gil Evans got—and any comparison to Miles’s music made me smile.

The praise Williams gave our live show at Wembley Stadium pushed it up even higher—he said, and I’m quoting exactly, “It seemed like the Gods had descended from Olympus and were walking the earth once more.” He said this was the best version of the band yet, and he could tell how I was comfortable being the leader of the group, interacting with everyone onstage. He compared us to Miles’s band again—he gave special attention to Tom Coster and Richard Kermode, calling them a “couple of Keith
Jarretts,” and to the balance between funky and sophisticated in the music.

To this day it’s my favorite Santana review. It wasn’t just the applause Williams gave us—there was power in what he said and in how he said it. He really understood the work we had put into
Caravanserai
and the chance we took going in a new direction. Who would’ve thought it would come from a British magazine and not one back home?

I was on a cloud—the band was working so well. We played various places in Europe, then Montreux again, and the blessings continued. Claude Nobs welcomed Deborah and me into his home. He cooked for us—cheese fondue, even cherries flambé. He gave us an amazing bedroom where he had hooked up his phone with some technology so that it would call up music that he had recorded at his festivals when you hit certain buttons. The music would play through the sound system in the room. Aretha Franklin’s “I Say a Little Prayer” was keyed to the numbers 1–7–9. I’d push the numbers, and the song would play. This was 1972, remember. How Claude got that technology together back then I still don’t know.

When we came back from Europe, we did a few more shows across the States that Bill Graham set up. He had asked me who I’d like to have open for Santana on that run, and it took me less than a second to say Weather Report. They agreed to be on the bill, and during every show I’d be backstage listening to them play—Wayne, Joe, Eric Grávátt on drums, and Miroslav Vitous, who was playing acoustic bass through a wah-wah!

I was loving the music, but I got such an uncomfortable feeling when people would scream “Santana” while they were playing. I wanted to go onstage, grab the mike, and say, “Hey, shut the fuck up! This is Weather Report—this is
Wayne Shorter
. You’re embarrassing me!” I had to take a deep breath. I was thinking that maybe we could open for them and get the Santana thing out of the way and then let them go on, but I remembered Bill saying that it wouldn’t be fair because people would leave as soon as we were done. “They just don’t know the value of this music like you do.”

Wayne is a harmonic genius and was one of the reasons Miles’s band sounded the way it did in the ’60s and why jazz sounded the way it did in the ’70s. He and Joe Zawinul brought electric rock and jazz together in Weather Report with elegance and supreme commitment and courage at a time when people would be complaining about it from both sides. Neither the jazz police nor the rock crowd knew what to think about it.

Later on I got to know Wayne and found that in person he is sweet and warm. He’s now one of the closest friends I have, and I’m very proud to say that. But it would be a few more years before we got tight. I need to express how much I feel for the man. I’ll put it this way: if there could be seven of me, one of them would stay with Wayne and just take care of him from the moment he gets out of bed through the time he gets on the plane or in the car to go to the show or the studio to the time he gets back home again. Just making sure he’s always okay, doing what he does. There are few things more important to me than being able to be of service to Wayne Shorter. That’s how much I respect and revere him.

Wayne’s temperament is like a mix between a kid with a new box of crayons—who’s just discovered orange for the first time—and an old Jedi Knight who has the wisdom of the ages. He might be giggling, thinking about a scene in an old movie he likes—and he remembers them all—then he’ll turn around and say the most profound things.

Once I was with him, the drummer in his band was really mad about the kind of road stuff that can happen anywhere, anytime. Wayne let him go on, listening, giving him respect. The guy finally stopped to take a breath, and Wayne said, “So what did you
learn?
”

What a perfect way to put it and make him think and end the complaining at the same time. Wayne has a way of framing things that gets you to totally change your perspective, such as the way he thinks about music. One time I saw him sitting at a piano, thinking, sweating, hanging over the keys like a praying mantis, getting ready to hit a chord. All of a sudden he brought his hands down, then jumped back and said, “Did you hear it?” Someone else there
said, “Well, that’s an inversion of a B-flat augmented seventh with…” Wayne didn’t even let him finish. “No, it isn’t!” The other guy said, “But, man, it is—see, you have…”