The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (52 page)

Tramaine came out of San Francisco and was with the Edwin Hawkins Singers for a while; she was perfect for
Spirits
. When I was doing that album I also got to meet Benny Rietveld, who was with Miles at the time. Alphonso was gone, so Benny ended up playing bass on the album and has been with me since ’91. He is now the band’s musical director. I’ve come to know and love Benny.

I had just started thinking about the album in ’90, and Wayne told me about the songwriter Paolo Rustichelli, who played synthesizers and was recording with Miles and Herbie and who had written a song for me. I ended up playing on Rustichelli’s album
Mystic Man
—with Miles on some tracks! Paolo gave me the song “Full Moon” to record, which I was working on when I found out that Benny was coming over. Meanwhile Benny heard we were auditioning bass players. We met, and he asked, “Hey, can I try out?” I looked hard at him. “You’re still with Miles, right? You can play with us, but you got to tell him.” I didn’t want any tension.

Of course you know what happened—Benny didn’t tell him, but Miles found out he recorded on my new album,
and
he heard we talked about Benny auditioning. I was at the Paramount in Oakland, where I had just given Miles a bunch of flowers and a gift for winning the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. After the show, I was getting ready to leave and was in the parking lot with my friend Tony Kilbert when John Bingham, who played percussion in Miles’s band, came to tell me Miles wanted to see me backstage. “Sure, I’ll be right there.” So I went back inside to his dressing room. “Hey, Miles.”

“Close the door.”

Uh-oh.

“Thank you for the flowers; thank you for the gift.”

“You’re welcome, Miles.”

“What’s going on with Benny?”

“I don’t know what’s going on with him. He’s in your band.” Benny had to do his own talking. Miles let me slide. The next thing I knew, Benny did tell him, and he joined the band and played on the album
Spirits Dancing in the Flesh.

Spirits
came out in 1990, but by that time Columbia and CBS had become Sony Music, and they didn’t know what to do with that album or the ones before it, many of which were not available anymore. I remember thinking just before
Supernatural
came out that I wish the record company would rerelease some of those albums, because they were so great—
Freedom, Blues for Salvador, Spirits Dancing in the Flesh
. I had that in mind a few years later, when I got a chance to put together
Multi-Dimensional Warrior,
the compilation of Santana music from the late ’70s and ’80s.

Spirits
was the end of Santana’s relationship with Columbia, CBS, and Sony Music. They put a guy named Donnie Ienner in charge, and I couldn’t work with him. He wanted to work with me, but I was more in charge of the business side of Santana than I had been before, and I felt the same thing I think Miles felt when it was time for him to leave Columbia in 1986. Miles couldn’t work with the top guy at his part of the label, and if you feel that way, why stay? I remember my last conversation with Donnie—I listened to what he had to say and responded by saying something about how dealing with the situation was like “artists versus con artists,” and it didn’t get much better after that. I felt Santana needed to be somewhere else, and first we started to go with Warner Bros., then we ended up signing with Davitt Sigerson at Polydor.

The year 1991 was not easy—it felt like the spiritual training wheels were off. My pillars weren’t there anymore. My angels were leaving. It was very difficult. It made me grow up in another kind of way, as if God were telling me, “You’re on your own now.”

It all happened in one month. Santana was playing in Syracuse the day Miles died in California—September 28. Wayne called and told me that night. He said he had seen Miles playing that summer at the Hollywood Bowl. “He played ‘Happy Birthday’ for me, and in the middle of the song he looked at me and I saw a fatigue in his face that I had never seen before. Fatigue from many, many years back.”

I had seen Miles sick before, but I wasn’t expecting him to die. I got on the elevator with Benny and said, “Benny, Miles just passed.”

“No!”

We both looked at the floor, and I don’t remember much else. When someone like Miles or Armando leaves, there’s a vacuum, and you can feel the energy level go down. That’s the best way I can describe it.

The next morning I got up at five to take a plane so that I could attend Stella’s first-grade graduation. I was still numb. That night we played at Ben & Jerry’s One World, One Heart festival in Golden Gate Park. I sat in with the Caribbean Allstars, and we did “In a Silent Way” as a tribute.

I hadn’t seen Miles much in the previous year. I had sent him flowers in the hospital when I had heard he was sick, and he called to thank me. “This means so much, Carlos,” he had said. “What are you doing now?” I told him what I always said: “Learning and having fun, Miles.”

“You’re always going to be doing that—that’s the kind of mind you have.”

That was the last thing Miles ever said to me, and I wish more people could have known that side of him. His autobiography had come out the year before, and when I read it I thought he could have been more supported by the people who wrote it with him; they could have given him more honor. I thought they were overselling the Prince of Darkness bit. Not everything that came out of his mouth had to be written down. I’d rather read endearing things about him and other musicians. I like romance—I’m a romantic through and through.

Like an elephant, Miles remembered things. That time in ’81
when he came by the Savoy and we hung out all night, I had told him when we were backstage that the world would be grateful enough to him even if he never played another note. I said, “We just want you to be healthy and happy.” He said, “What’s that?” like it was a strange thing to wish on somebody. I immediately said, “Miles, you’re not one of those people who aren’t happy unless they’re miserable, are you?” He just stopped and looked at me. A whole year later I played a big rock-and-tennis event in Forest Hills, Queens—John McEnroe and Vitas Gerulaitis and Todd Rundgren and Joe Cocker and bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma and the jazz drummer Max Roach were all there. We finished playing, and I was getting ready to leave when I heard someone call me. “Carlos! Hey, Carlos!”

It was Max Roach. “I need to talk to you, Carlos.” He looked serious. He said, “Miles came to see me. What did you say to him?”

Man, I had to run the videotape back a long way to remember our last conversation—it was that long night that started backstage at the Savoy. I thought about it, and two things came to my mind. First was the story Miles told in his book from way back in the early ’50s, when Max put some money in his coat pocket when he had been strung out on the street. Miles said that was what had shamed him into getting off heroin.

The second thing I thought about was the look he gave me when I asked him about only being happy when he was miserable. I had called Miles on his stuff that night, and I told Max the story. He listened to me and said, “I want you to know it’s working—he’s starting to look different.”

Who was Miles Davis? What made him do what he did? He maintained a vicious, ferocious pursuit of excellence no matter what he was doing or with whom—black, white, or any other color. As Tony Williams told me, “Before there were Black Panthers or black power or any kind of revolution, Miles wasn’t taking any shit from white or black people.” He had the fire and the fearlessness. But whether he was happy in the end is another thing.

If you look at advertising and movies and magazines, you’ll see
that what they tell you is that success comes and then you’re happy. Here’s how to be happy: wear this, eat that, get this, get that. The truth is the other way around. I think what screams out loudest about anyone’s success is whether that person is actually, truly happy.

A few weeks after Miles’s memorial I was home and the phone rang in the morning and Deborah answered it. “No! No, no, no!” She started crying right away. “Bill is gone!” I said, “Gone where?” Then I got it, and that was it, man. For at least two months I was numb. Two of my closest friends—gone. Suddenly Miles was not there to call late at night and tell me when to duck. Bill is not there with a clipboard. Now I would have to do it all inwardly.

The last time I saw Bill was the month before at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. We had done so many shows together by then—it was an incredible evening. I remember being backstage after the concert, holding Jelli, who was just two years old. She was looking up at me with an expression of joy on her face, speechless. During the show, the energy had never dropped. Every song felt as if it had been just the right length and had segued perfectly into the next. The audience was a mix of white, black, Mexican, Filipino—a rainbow crowd. They were on their feet from the start of the show. Like Jelli, I didn’t know what to say. People were all around us—everyone was happy. Just perfect vibes.

Bill came over with his clipboard and looked at me. I waited. He slowly pulled off a page and turned it around to show me. It was blank. “Come on, man. Really? Wow, thank you, Bill.”

“Thank
you
.” Then he walked away.

My dad, José Santana, and me at the Bullring by the Sea, Tijuana, March 21, 1992.

When I became a dad, I let my kids know I love them all the time. And naturally I would think about music and my obsessions and my kids. Of course I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed if Salvador, Stella, or Jelli chose music for a career—we’d have more to talk about. But they could have done anything they wanted and I’d still have been proud of their life choices. The only thing that would have made me disappointed would have been if they had let stuff get in the way of achieving what they want to do. Our family is a no-excuses family. Our children are responsible for their own quality of thoughts so that they can choose to turn them into actions and deeds and create their own lives.

It takes strength, man, to know when to let go of your kids—really, really let them go and trust them with the one who made them in the first place. One time in the mid-’90s, when Sal was a teenager, I needed to talk to him. I had been on the road for five weeks and had just come home. I understand that for kids between the ages of twelve and twenty-two, parents are the most uncool people ever. Right then Sal needed to play that out. I was thinking, “The kids’ll get over it, as I did, and then they’ll realize that their parents are exceptional.” But back then I was feeling a separation between father and son.

“Salvador?”

“Whattup?” That was his thing to say then—“Whattup?”

“Son, I’ve noticed lately that it’s your duty to contradict whatever I say. It seems to be a real 24-7 job, you know?” He kept looking at me. “But look outside: it’s an incredible day—the sky is blue, the weather’s warm. We can’t argue about that, right? Would you consider taking the day off with me and just sitting on top of Mount Tamalpais and looking at the hawks and the eagles and getting quiet?”

He surprised me a little, because he only thought about it a few seconds. “That sounds good.” We went up there and took our time, lay back, and looked up at the birds floating on the updrafts, and I didn’t say a word. In fifteen minutes he opened up, telling me stuff about himself and his girlfriend and school and the way people treat him because he’s a Santana and the fact that people are always asking him for money. It was a challenge to sit there and listen, just listen. I had answers and ideas to tell him. But I tried to look at him and see him as his friends and teachers do, and I saw that he was starting to figure things out on his own. He was always well behaved and respectful—he still is.

I’ll give you an example. We were on tour together in 2005—Santana and the Salvador Santana Band—and we were in San Antonio. Someone knocked on my dressing-room door. “Who is it?”

“It’s me, Dad. Salvador.”

“Son, you don’t have to knock. Come on in.”

“Dad, I need to ask you something.” I put my guitar down. “Can I get a bottle of water from your cooler? We ran out in our room.” I mean, he really does that. My heart just burst open.

“Sal, you can have anything, man, my heart included. Anything.”

“Uh, okay, Dad. Thanks—have a great show.”

I still embarrass him, I know. But I’m not changing, and neither is he. “How you feeling, Salvador?”

“Thanks for asking, Dad. I’m feeling good.”

You know, I want to be like him when I grow up.

I
n 1997 Prince called me to tell me he was playing in San Jose and asked me whether I wanted to come by the show and jam and just hang out. Did I? I love Prince. When I got there, he said, “Come here; I want to show you something.” Okay—what? Maybe a new guitar? He took me to a room backstage and opened the door, and his whole band was in there, watching a video. Prince was smiling. “They can tell you: every time before we go onstage, man, I play
Sacred Fire
. I tell them that this is what I want them to bring.” I looked at the band and thought, “Great—here’s another whole band that I’m telling what to do.”

It was an honor to be shown that by Prince—especially because
Sacred Fire: Live in Mexico
was as personal and special to me as
Havana Moon
was. It was a live video, and there was also a live album—
Sacred Fire: Live in South America
—that all came out together, the first time I did that sort of coordinated package—a tour, an album, and a video.

Sacred Fire
came out in ’93, and the tour came from
Milagro
—my first album for Polydor the year before. There’s no doubt about it—there is a certain amount of spiritual confidence in
Sacred Fire
. My going to Mexico and playing there is a little like Bob Dylan going to play in Jerusalem. These are your people. You better bring it. In fact, I take a lot of pride in saying that Santana has never dropped the ball in Mexico City, New York, Tokyo, Sydney, Paris, Rome, London, Moscow—or any of the big cities. Yes, we have dropped the ball in other places because we’re human and we’re fallible, not because we planned to. Whenever it’s a major gig, I just take a deep breath and I say, “May all the angels really come forth and help me with this one.”

Milagro
was a good-bye letter written especially for Bill and Miles. It opened with Bill’s voice introducing us as he always did—“From my heart, Santana!”—then followed with “Milagro,” which means “miracle,” because that’s what those guys were and what each of us is. That song used a line from Bob Marley’s “Work.” “Somewhere in Heaven” was the next tune, and it began with Martin Luther King Jr. speaking about the promised land. I didn’t know exactly where my angels were, but I knew Bill and Miles would still be calling and connecting, giving advice and spiritual blessings. I asked my old friend Larry Graham to sing on the album, and he came up with “Right On.” I put on “Saja” as the intro—that came from a very rare album called
Aquarius
and was written by the saxophonist Joe Roccisano. When I heard that song it sounded so much like something Santana would do if we had worked with Cal Tjader. I added that “Shadow of Your Smile” feel, then it slips into a soulful
guajira
.

I still like Marvin Gaye’s words, like “For those of us who tend the sick and heed the people’s cries / Let me say to you: Right on!” They have a strong message. I think it conveys the same message that’s in Santana’s music—it’s what I thought still needed to be heard in the ’90s. Still today.

I remember that after Larry’s first take, he asked me, “What do you think?”

I said, “Larry, you’re going around the block—you need to get inside the sheets.”

He laughed. “Okay! Got it.” The next take was it. Everyone knows about Larry’s bass playing, but he’s an incredible singer, too—at that same session, he did this amazing vocal warm-up. He went to the piano and played the entire keyboard, from the lowest to the highest key, and matched every note with his voice.

Another great Santana lineup came together on that album—I had CT, Raul, Benny, and Alex, plus we added Karl Perazzo, who had played congas and timbales with Sheila E. and Cal Tjader; Tony Lindsay, who had been singing around the Bay Area and had a nice, clear R & B voice; and Walfredo Reyes Jr., who’s from Cuba and
played drums with David Lindley and Jackson Browne before he came to us. I also had a horn section that included Bill Ortiz on trumpet. Bill, Tony, Benny, and Karl are all still with Santana today. That pairing of Raul and Karl was especially nice and flexible—they respect the clave. They honor it: they know exactly where it is, as Armando did, but they’re not fixated with it.

The
Milagro
tour was going to Mexico, and my brother Jorge had already come along and played on a number of legs, so the idea of family was in the air. The plan was to shoot and record our Mexican dates: my father would come down to help open the show in Tijuana; César Rosas from Los Lobos and Larry Graham would play, too. I remember we took a flight to San Diego from wherever we were before, and the weather was really bad. It got so bad we thought the plane was going to go down. It started shaking a lot, then suddenly it dropped, and the coffee mugs the flight attendants were rolling down the aisle all hit the ceiling. One flight attendant ran to her seat, and I could see her crossing herself. The plane dropped again, and a little girl who was sitting near me started screaming—and laughing. “Whee! Do it again! Do it again!” Everybody started laughing, and that got us all relaxed. Then the shaking stopped.

In Tijuana, the local promoter called the concert a
regresa a casa
—a “homecoming.” They put the name on posters, and they got permission to use the city’s Bullring by the Sea. I think you could say that was really a turning point for me, when I became fully positive about and supportive of my Mexican self. It was a lot easier to go to Autlán, because so few people remembered me there. But in Tijuana a lot of people still knew me, and the whole town knew about my beginnings there on Avenida Revolución, though I didn’t have time to visit the old bars or clubs—and El Convoy was gone. We drove down the road, and in some ways it looked like it probably hadn’t changed that much. There were different names, different clubs, new places to dance, and not so much live music, but being in Tijuana was definitely like a homecoming.

We did two nights in the bullring, and the concert went on and
on. It started with my father singing and playing with a band of local mariachis; then Pato Banton played, because reggae was really getting popular in Mexico then; then Larry Graham went on; and finally Santana played—with my brother Jorge and even Javier Bátiz gracing us by coming up and jamming. It was footage and music from that concert and other cities on that tour that became the DVD
Sacred Fire
. We also decided to shoot some black-and-white stuff in Tijuana, and we used that in the video for “Right On,” which was the lead single from
Milagro
—that’s the Tijuana bullring you see me playing in. Those shots of people crossing the border at night? That wasn’t staged—that was real.

There’s a tape that I found of that concert years afterward. I finally sat down with it and listened to it, starting at the beginning and going all the way through to the end. It was significant for me because that was the first time I heard my dad validate my music. At the end of his mariachi set, he spoke to me backstage. He was speaking a lot more than he usually did. “You know, Carlos, I heard your music many times on the radio, and I’ve seen you play, and there’s something very distinguishable about what you do. When I hear ‘Batuka’ or ‘Ain’t got nobody that I can depend on’—
that’s
Santana.”

I had never heard my dad say anything like that. I didn’t even know that he knew the names of any Santana songs, much less the lyrics. He knew the melodies. We had gotten so big so fast that I never got to see how my dad’s feelings about my music had changed. Anyway, he never did say much. He honored me by allowing me to become what he had been. It was like I became him, but on a vaster scale, and that was enough for him to stop telling me what to do and what not to do.

I got a chance to tell my dad what I had been holding inside me for many years. In ’93 the whole family got together for two weeks in Hawaii—it was all my brothers and sisters and their kids, plus my ex-wife’s parents and my parents. I said, “Hey, Dad, let’s take a break from all this—let the kids blow off some steam.”

We started walking, and I said, “You know, I’ve been wanting to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“I need to tell you how proud I am of you for taking care of all of us with that violin. I know you had to travel without knowing how much money you were going to get. We never missed a meal. I wanted to thank you.” He just looked at me. It felt good, like the look between any father and son that says, “We’re interconnected.” I could see validation not just for himself but for his father and my son, too.

I didn’t know he was only going to be around another five years. I still get choked up when I hear the tape from that bullring in Tijuana.

Playing in Tijuana was very difficult because of the local government and politics and the corruption that we had to deal with, but the guys at Bill Graham’s company—Bill Graham Presents, or BGP—get the thanks for making that happen.

But let’s just say I’m not a huge fan of what happened to BGP after Bill died. I think a few of the people who took over were the ones who would tell Bill what he wanted to hear, and they didn’t share his vision or his priorities or his commitment to music and the music community. I used to tell Bill flat-out that he’d never find out I was speaking about him behind his back because I didn’t mind saying whatever I had to say to his face. I wouldn’t kiss his ass, like some people who worked for him—but some of them talked horribly about him. I don’t think Bill had taken care of that side of his business before he died, because there had been no reason to—of course he hadn’t been planning on leaving that soon. Today some of Santana’s business is still in BGP’s hands—they own the memorabilia site Wolfgang’s Vault, for example, and you can find Santana posters and T-shirts there. We’ve learned to do business together, but I still feel like part of what Bill created was sold down the river.