The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (54 page)

At the White House for the Kennedy Center Honors I was talking about this with Shirley MacLaine, and suddenly she stopped me. “What did you just say?” I said, “Patriotism is prehistoric.” She nodded her head. “Is that expression yours?”

I think what I was saying resonated with Shirley because she’s a forward-thinking person. I mean, we do need to upgrade the software in our brains and start looking at our planet from the aerial view. Even though you may not ever travel outside your hometown or even your neighborhood, you still are living here in a world that
is all connected. It’s there for you to know and realize and hear—the Universal Tone, the sound vibration that reminds us that distance and separation are all an illusion.

To this day I detest anyone who tries to indoctrinate others into hating people because they are different and trying to get ahead and uplift themselves. I detest it as much as I did when some Mexicans were trying to get me to hate gringos. That’s what they tried to tell me in Tijuana, and I didn’t buy into that lie, either. We’re all people. The other stuff—like flags, borders, third world, first world—that’s all illusion. I like the idea of one global family under a single flag: a sun and a silhouette of a woman, a man, a little girl, and a little boy. All this other stuff keeps us stuck in the same place we were ten thousand years ago: Neanderthals fighting over some damn hill.

Any father can see himself in his little girl or boy. I think each of my children inherited a part of me, and then it got amplified. I also think each one of them—Salvador, Stella, and Jelli—have supreme conviction, like their grandmother Josefina. Sal is about respect and spiritual commitment. Jelli is political, the fighter for rights. She knows history and works in the Santana office with the archives. Stella always has something strong to say—she’s okay with the spotlight.

We used to call Stella CNN because she was always the first one jumping up to tell me everything when I came home. She’d be sucking her thumb, scratching her eyebrow, and talking: “And then you know what happened?” I would say, “No, but I’m sure you’re going tell me.” And then we’d hear about it in full detail. Stella was the one, if she thought she smelled any grass being smoked, who’d threaten, “I’m going to tell Mom!”

Stella’s my Josefina—the one who’s going to test you—more than Jelli and much more than Salvador. She’s also so like me in her feelings about school and church. Once I got a phone call from a teacher at the Catholic prep school that Stella was going to at the
time. “I’m sorry, Mr. Santana, we seem to have a problem with Stella. As you know, we are a Catholic high school, and we teach Bible study. Today we were reading about Eve being made from Adam’s rib, and right out loud Stella started arguing about the passage—saying things like, ‘You guys don’t believe this stuff, do you?’ ”

That’s my girl. Then the administrators asked me to come in to the school about this one morning, and even though I usually am up late, I got myself there at 7:30 a.m. We didn’t really talk that much about Stella, but they showed me around the school for forty-five minutes, and then I knew what was coming. They showed me a space where they hoped to build a new gym, and would it be possible to do a few concerts to raise some money? Or maybe I could donate the money?

I was driving back home and was in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge when I got a call from Stella. “Dad, what did you tell them?” She was asking about her argument over the Bible—she didn’t know about the fund-raising pitch. I told her I had the same answer to both things we discussed—no, I wasn’t going to reprimand her for questioning their beliefs, and when they asked for a donation I said, “Thank you for taking the time to show me the school. I have two questions—you do get tuition from all the students here, right? Also, I saw a huge photo of the pope when I came into the school. The Catholic Church is worth billions—can you ask him?” The principal said that for some reason or another they’d had an official divorce from the Vatican. I said, “Didn’t you get any alimony?”

The way I’d summarize Stella is that she was born to be the center of attention in the way she looks and holds herself, but at the same time she wants to be invisible. I’ll tease her and ask her how she can make that incognito thing work. She’ll just raise her hand and hold it to my face—“Talk to the hand.” I’m always learning new ways of communicating from my kids.

Jelli is the hippie of the family, the one who wants to help save the world. She called me the other day, and she was so excited—“I’m
with Angela Davis!” She was at a lecture, and they had just met. Later Jelli told me that Angela had told her something that really stayed with her, something about having had more courage when she was young. I said, “Hmm. What do you think about that, Jelli?”

Jelli’s deep-rooted and no-nonsense. She’s a deep thinker, and she has a way with words. She loves Dolores Huerta. She also got arrested for trespassing last year at a protest in honor of Trayvon Martin. She got handcuffed, and we had to bail her out. I don’t know if she’ll do it again, because that was pretty intense, and you don’t want that on your record. But Jelli is Jelli.

When Jelli graduated from junior high school, all the students had to speak and quote somebody, and she got up and said: “I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die so let me live my life the way I want to.” I remember thinking, “Dang!” She was quoting Jimi Hendrix. Jelli’s going to be a tough cookie. I remember looking in her eyes when she was born and thinking, “This one is really going to be intense—she has a different kind of thrust about her. She has the capacity to make a worldwide impact with whatever it is that she decides to be and do.” She hasn’t let me down yet.

My kids, when they come into a room, they bring the light with them. When I talk to them individually or collectively, they aspire, as we all do, to make this world a better place to live. I love them for that.

In the late ’90s, my dad began to play music less and less often. He still liked to walk and had never learned to drive a car. He also liked to listen to his music on cassettes. I think one of the best gifts I ever gave him was a Walkman—he would walk back and forth, listen to his music, and then transcribe the songs onto paper. I would visit my dad, and we’d sit on the sofa together. He’d reach out to hold my hand, and his hands were just like John Lee Hooker’s—incredibly soft. He used to touch my fingers and say nothing. That’s how we communicated at the end. José died on November 1, 1998.

When the end came I was by his bedside, watching and waiting, as everything started to shut down. The spirit stayed strong while
the body got weaker and weaker. I went through that with my dad, then with my mom in 2009, and just this year—2014—with Armando. They all started to look like babies after they’re born: wrinkled and nearly hairless. They were filled with a light that got brighter and brighter. I wasn’t afraid, and I didn’t cry—it was time for each of them. I sat with them and held their hands and told them it was all right for them to move on if they wanted to. Everything would be okay here.

I’ve seen a lot of people crying. The only times I cried were at memorial services for Bill Graham and Tony Williams, maybe because their deaths were unexpected. I don’t remember crying for my mom or my dad—I think because I had a chance to say everything I wanted to say to them. When it’s my time to leave I pray that I have the strength to accept that all the things I had—my body, my skills, my brain, and my imagination—were borrowed from God. When he wants them back I’ll say, “Thanks, man, for letting me have fun with all this, because I really did.”

The last time I saw my dad clearly and closely was in a dream I had around a year and a half after he died. He was on a mountain, wearing his favorite blue jacket. I was in a car with my brother Jorge. “There’s Dad! Stop the car!” I ran up to him, and he was looking away, at a river that was bright and sparkly, like it was made of diamonds.

“Dad!” I really grabbed him because if I didn’t, I thought I might wake up and lose him. He turned around, and I could smell his scent. I felt his skin next to mine. Before I woke up, he looked at me and said, “He’s calling me. I need to go to him now. I need to tell you that I didn’t understand a lot of things that you did or said, but I want you to know that I do understand now why you are the way you are.”

I’m not a big fan of awards shows, whether I’m watching them or in them—all the performers are going for the big bang, the big moment when they get to bring down the house. Too many times you can feel that desperation—“This is it, man. I got to take it to the top!” It’s the same kind of desperation felt by those guys who get to sing the national anthem, which is so difficult to sing because it’s such a strange song. I was watching an NBA game sometime in the ’90s, and I remember a guy who was dressed in a red suit and was a sports star who was not known for his singing at all who got up there and said, “Are you all
ready?” like he was going to knock it over the fence. I was thinking that was a pretty cocky thing to say, but now you’d better bring it like Caruso, my friend.

I knew he was in trouble from the first note, because he started much too high—I was thinking he’d need an express elevator to get to the “rockets’ red glare,” you know? I believe if you’re going to go for the moment it should be the same moment you try to hit every night—success comes from lots of practice and supreme confidence in knowing who you are.

I’ve gotten better at playing awards nights and TV shows and knowing what to say when I’m asked to say a few words. I like it best when the band gets to play—I’m proud that Santana will bring it in one take, no matter when the red light goes on. We always know what we’re doing and what we’re going to sound like.

I also like some moments when it’s not Santana—it’s Carlos with somebody else, such as the time I got to play “Black Magic Woman” with Peter Green when they inducted Fleetwood Mac into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. I was proud Santana got in the year before, but that was also when I gave them hell for not already having Ritchie Valens in there. I mean, what’s rock and roll without “La Bamba”? Rock and roll doesn’t mean white and popular—it means forever relevant. Ritchie was finally inducted in 2000.

I’ll tell you one of my all-time favorite moments. In 2004 I was being honored with a Latin Grammy Person of the Year award in Los Angeles. It was the usual scene—famous people in tuxedos and long dresses getting out of limos; lots of speeches and ovations. Quincy Jones and Salma Hayek presented me with the award, and before I even started talking someone yelled, “That’s my brother!” It was Jorge. The way he said that out loud and straight from the heart was so endearing I almost lost it.

Please don’t ask me to walk the red carpet. I did it for Deborah when her book came out—and I would do it anytime for Cindy. But most times when I show up to these kinds of awards shows, I go through the kitchen and greet the cooks and waiters and dishwashers. I still remember the feeling of my fingers in that warm greasy water and my hands getting all wrinkly.

And don’t ask me to
sing
the national anthem. I get invitations all
the time to play it on the guitar; all I can do is try to play it as well as Jimi did. That guy who sang it at the NBA game? Clive introduced me to him one time at a
Supernatural
party—he was standing there with the saxophonist Kenny G. I didn’t laugh or smile, but I was going crazy telling my brain not to think about what I felt about smooth jazz and that performance at the basketball game. My inner voice said, “Just don’t go there, man.”

I
n 1997 I started to have a feeling that I was pregnant with something new—I had a new album inside me, and it was going to be something special. At that time I was going to call it
Serpents and Doves,
and it was going to consist of singles—the kind of songs that grab you immediately, something powerful with a message that can uplift and teach. It was time for some new music for the new millennium.

That year I was asked to speak in a documentary about Clive Davis and his philanthropy. I hadn’t seen or talked to Clive in more than twenty years at that point, but I knew that since CBS let him go in ’73 he had started his own record company called Arista and he’d had hits with people like Barry Manilow and Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin. I also had heard about his philanthropic work because of what we were doing with the Milagro Foundation—we were all in the same world.

I said I’d be happy to say a few words about Clive. “I’m going to tell the truth: the guy is really important to the music world and the well-being of people, too.” The producers sent a crew with a camera, and when Clive saw the interview I did he called me up. “Hey, Clive, how are you, man?”

“Carlos—thank you for what you said. What’s going on—what are you doing now?”

It was a good question. I hadn’t made a new Santana album in more than four years. “I’m trying to get out of my contract with Island Records. I owe them two more albums.”

“Well, as soon as you’re out of it, call me.”

By this time, Island was just part of the big salad at PolyGram, and it felt like Chris Blackwell was on his way out, so I was going to be stuck there in limbo with nobody. Chris heard I wasn’t happy, so he came to see Santana play in London, and he knew that the group was kicking booty as much as we ever did. Then he flew out to Sausalito to meet with me. We met at a restaurant called Horizons. He was going to try to convince me to stay. I remember he had to take a phone call, and when he came back he was complaining that he was having trouble with the new configuration at the record company. “They won’t spend the money to make sure I have good phone communication with my people.”

I was thinking, “Dang! What kind of message is that? Now he’s going to try and convince me to stay?” I didn’t want to take any more of his time or mine, so I jumped in.

“Chris, I respect you, so I want to be really up front with you. I have deep admiration for everything that you’ve done with Bob Marley and Steve Winwood and Baaba Maal and so many other musicians from Africa, Haiti, and around the world. To me you’re an ally and you’re an artist. But I know I have a really good album coming—I can feel it right here in my belly. It’s really important that I don’t give it to a label that’s going to let it sit in the back of some warehouse and end up being a tax deduction that nobody is going to hear.

“From one artist to another, let me go.”

Chris looked at me, and he looked at the ceiling for a while. He could see I wasn’t going to change my mind. Finally he said, “Carlos, tell your lawyer to call my lawyer. You’re free.” Just like that. He could have asked me to pay for the albums I still owed him or charged that amount against
Supernatural
when it came out—but he didn’t. He let me go with no strings attached, in a way that had a lot of integrity. For that I’ll be forever grateful to him—you could say that the first person responsible for creating
Supernatural
was Chris Blackwell.

The other initiator who brought me together with Clive and must get credit for making
Supernatural
happen is Deborah. Once
I was free from Island, she was the one who said, “Okay, now you have to get back with Clive. It could be a good opportunity for you to hook up with him again and maybe get back on the radio.”

Radio? I remember wondering whether that was still around and whether it mattered anymore. It had been so long since Santana had any music on the radio. There was part of me that was thinking, “I just don’t have the wherewithal to understand radio now.” Not that I really did in the beginning, either.

I resisted calling Clive at first, because our last interaction had been way back in 1973, and Clive hadn’t been happy with the direction of Santana at the time. I knew that to work with Clive now would mean more than just discussing a song or two and then saying, “See you later—I’ll send you the album when we’re finished.” But Deborah told me to hear what Clive had to say. She was the key to us getting back together. She helped me get out of my own way when an angel was trying to help me.

I called Clive and invited him to come hear Santana at Radio City Music Hall. I stopped the show at one point and acknowledged him from the stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have in the house someone who, like Bill Graham, is an architect of this music. Without him it would have been really difficult for you to know who Janis Joplin, Sly Stone, and Simon and Garfunkel are—and a lot of other bands, too, including this one here. His name is Mr. Clive Davis.” It felt good to do that: it was the first time I had the chance to publicly acknowledge him that way. The audience gave him a standing ovation.

We talked after the concert. There really were only two questions: did we want to work together? And if so, how would we do it? Clive said something I liked—he was very direct, and he used a very spiritual word. “Do you have the willingness? Do you have the willingness to discipline yourself and get in the ring with me, to work together when I start calling everybody in my Rolodex? Will you trust me?”

He explained that he wasn’t into doing just another Santana album—he wanted hits. Anyone who has worked with him knows
that Clive Davis only has one thing on his mind—it has to be number one on the radio every time. The message was that he would be involved from top to bottom—picking out songs, suggesting things in the studio, and deciding on the promotion strategy.

Clive told me something else. Even before we got together, he’d spoken to a bunch of musicians he was working with and asked them, “Would you be interested in working with Carlos Santana? Do you want to write with him?” I was surprised, because I was thinking he might have gone to some classic rock people—people from my generation. In ’95, we had done a tour with Jeff Beck that was great, and Santana—the original lineup—had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in ’97. I was thinking old school, but Clive said, “Yeah, Lauryn Hill from the Fugees, Rob Thomas from Matchbox Twenty, Dave Matthews, Eagle-Eye Cherry—all those incredible artists and musicians, they want to work with you.” I knew the names and some of their music, and I liked this idea.

“They want to bring it to me, help get Santana back on the radio? Okay, then—let’s do this.” We signed with Arista.

Later, Clive told me that what persuaded him to do the project was that when he started making phone calls to see who’d be interested, everybody said yes. “I’m not lying—everybody. I knew I was going to do something with you, because no matter who I went to, the answer was yes.”

I was excited, because I had already started recording. Some of the songs on
Supernatural
I’d been wanting to record even before we talked. You can guess which ones. They sound like typical Santana, the kind my dad would have picked out: “(Da Le) Yaleo” and “Africa Bamba.” Clive got more involved with the sessions over time because of the collaborations and because of who he is and how he works—he can be hands-on, with supreme dedication to details such as song form and the match between musicians and producers. I had worked on collaborations before, but this was a Santana album that would have different groups and different producers on each track, depending on the style and direction of each song. That was a new thing for us.

I was blessed at the time with an amazing band—CT was with me, as were Benny and Rodney Holmes, who is a superb drummer with really incredible energy, a killer-diller. It was an honor to create
Supernatural
with him and some of the other people in Santana, as well as with the many other musicians who came in for each track.

I have to stop and focus on Rodney and some other drummers for a moment. Rodney is one of those musicians who is the whole package: he’s smart and can listen and react, and he has the right combination of chops and musicality. I first saw him play in a New York City club—I noticed that the pianist Cecil Taylor was there and went crazy just checking him out. Wayne Shorter called him Rodney Podney and put him in his band in 1996.

I’m particular about drummers. I make no apologies for that, because I’ve known for a long time that for Santana to be Santana we need a drummer with a nice fat groove and fearless drive—and the ability to listen and learn, to get into the music and make it spark. Just before Rodney we had Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, who brought a strong Cuban feel, and a few years after Rodney, Dennis Chambers came into the band. Dennis is maybe the best power-groove drummer on the planet right now—such a serious pocket. He’s an institution unto himself—just mention his name and most drummers will get down on their knees to pay respect. Dennis was with Santana longer than any drummer—I think he intimidated some of the guys in the band at first because of his reputation, but as they got to know him they realized that he loves to joke and is very easy to hang with. Funny thing is that I met Dennis when he was playing with John McLaughlin in the ’90s. Right in front of John he said, “So when are you going to call me?”

That was one of the most important signatures of Santana through the years—a flexible drummer with a serious pocket and powerful drive, and two percussionists who can play anything and make it all happen together. We kept that sound for
Supernatural
.

Clive would call me. “I have a song for you. I’m coming over.” Or he’d say, “Wyclef Jean has something he wants you to hear.” Wyclef showed up and sang the song right there in the studio. He
came in and walked up to me and put his face close to mine. It was like he was reading a musical score in my eyes—the next thing he was showing us the words to “Maria Maria” just as if he knew all about my family watching
West Side Story
and what that movie meant to Mexicans like us.