The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (47 page)

Around 1989 some of my guitars got stolen, including those original PRSs—we had someone in our organization who trusted somebody he shouldn’t have to store some equipment he shouldn’t have stored. We did a big APB campaign to get them back, and by the grace of God we found them in hock somewhere because they were so unique. The happy ending of that story is that we found the guitars, and Paul decided to use the original mold to make some new guitars in the old style, and now we’ve had a long relationship and PRS has my endorsement.

I have learned about the value of product endorsements and have also learned to trust my first instincts about some things. Here’s another example: like Paul Reed Smith, I will always have affection for Alexander Dumble and his amplifiers and of course for Randy the Boogie Man and his Boogie amps. In 2013, Adam Fells, who works in our office, sent me a video that the people at Sony Music had found of Santana in Budokan in ’73. I watched it and heard the guitar sound and looked closely at the amplifier and it hit me—“That’s my old friend. I miss that sound!” It was Randy’s original snakeskin Boogie amp that I had long ago moved on from and hadn’t thought about in years. “Adam, you guys got to find me one of those snakeskin Boogies!” He told me, “We still have them—we haven’t seen them in a while, but they’re in the
warehouse.” Adam found them, then Randy fixed them up and worked on the contacts, and I plugged in—and there was that voice. That’s what I’m playing now, along with a Dumble, and I’m getting the best from both.

The point is that after this Randy went back to that old model and design, too. He made more than seven hundred snakeskin Boogie amplifiers. Then he and I signed them, and now everybody wants them. They’re selling like crazy in Japan. So please don’t tell me about something being cost-prohibitive.

By 1981, it felt like the spirit of the ’60s had left America and gone overseas—that was the year Santana played the Live under the Sky festival in Japan, an event that put rock and jazz together. Santana played, Herbie Hancock’s V.S.O.P. band played, and then we played together, along with Herbie and Tony Williams. The old Fillmore Auditorium spirit was alive again—there, anyway.

At that point, when everything in America got so big and was sounding the same to me, I felt free enough with Bill Graham to express myself and call him on what was happening in the music business. If he could walk around with a clipboard taking notes on my show and critiquing me—well, it goes both ways. At least we had that kind of relationship. So I asked him, “What happened to you, man?”

“What do you mean, what happened to me?”

“You used to put Miles Davis and Buddy Rich and Charles Lloyd on the bill with rock acts. You used to stretch everyone’s consciousness and show us all that there was great music out there that was not just what we heard on the radio. But now you’ve stopped.”

He looked down. “Good point.” He had stopped doing concerts in ballrooms and theaters and had started packaging stars such as Peter Frampton.

“I’m sorry,” I said to him, “but why are there no more jazz musicians on the bill?” It was still possible to make that Fillmore spirit happen again—that was my message to Bill. Yes, I know—the
business had changed. But it was Bill who had built the business and set the example, and he still had the power.

I’m proud of all the albums Santana recorded in the 1980s and ’90s. Each of those records captured a moment in time; they’re like snapshots of where I was and what I was listening to at the time. They each had an identifiable spirit. With each Santana album I had learned to be present with openness—to listen a lot and be open to not only the musicians and the music itself but also to the producers, because Santana is like the Raiders or the Seahawks—a team. Maybe I’m in charge, but Santana is a collective vision and includes many spirits and hearts and aspirations. We’re going to have to carry that music out of the studio, take it on the road, and play it night after night—maybe not all of it, but you never know until you see how the songs feel and how they are received after the album comes out.

When I did my own albums, my only responsibility was to myself—it was just my vision. In ’82, I made
Havana Moon
on my own as Carlos Santana, with Jerry Wexler producing. The album started from the idea that Chuck Berry wrote the title song, which is part of the architecture of rock and roll, by pulling from T-Bone Walker and Nat King Cole, especially Nat’s “Calypso Blues,” which had Nat, accompanied only by a conga player, singing as if he had been born in Jamaica. My dad got to play and sing on
Havana Moon,
and we recorded my mom’s favorite song, “Vereda Tropical.” I also got to collaborate with the fabulous organist and arranger Booker T. Jones as well as one of my favorite vocalists, Willie Nelson.

The songwriter Greg Brown wrote a song that Willie was going to sing called “They All Went to Mexico,” and when I heard the lyric “I guess he went to Mexico,” I thought, “Whoa: this is like something that Roy Rogers or Gene Autry used to sing; it’s like Wayne Shorter’s quotations from ‘South of the Border’ in his solos.” Then it dawned on me that most of my friends saw something about Mexico that was different from what I saw. But I was still a little too close to it all. I grew up in Tijuana, so a lot about Mexico was not necessarily all that groovy for me. But others see something good
in the country, and I was trying to see that and see myself in a different light, too. I also started thinking that Willie is from Texas, and that used to be Mexico, so really Mexico is part of his roots, too. Then I thought, “It all connects—we are all part of it. Let’s do this song.”

I have Willie Nelson to thank for helping push me with that tune. Two years later, after Deborah and I were blessed with Salvador, I went to visit Mexico on my own, and the real reconnection began.

As a result of
Havana Moon
I also discovered Jimmie Vaughan, whose playing I just loved. Jimmie and his band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, could play shuffles like nobody else, and Jimmie had that Lightnin’ Hopkins and Kenny Burrell thing down to perfection. We bonded right away, and he kept telling me, “Wait until you hear my brother.”

When I met Stevie Ray Vaughan for the first time in 1983, he had a little bit of an edge to him. He tried to challenge me: “Here’s my guitar; show me something.” Show you something? I looked him straight in the eye and told him to put the guns back in the holster. “I love your brother, I love you, and I love what you guys love. Let’s start with that.” He stopped right away and apologized: “Sorry, sir.” I told him he didn’t have to call me sir, but don’t come at me like that.

As I had with Jimmie, I had a profound connection with Stevie from the start—both of us had an incredible, deep devotion to the music we call the blues. When I say “deep,” I mean from the center of the heart. Stevie Ray knew that, and you could hear it in his music, the same way you could hear it in the music of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Peter Green before him. Now there are people like Gary Clark Jr. and Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi and Doyle Bramhall II and Warren Haynes, along with many others, who keep the flame burning.

The thing that was so different about Stevie Ray is that he wasn’t playing just the flavor of the blues, as many others were at that time. Maybe you can do that with some kinds of music, such as “lite rock” or “soft rock” or “smooth jazz,” but not with the blues.
For it to ring true, you got to be all the way in it. Believe me, Stevie Ray was all the way in it. Man, I miss him.

In the fall of ’82 Deborah and I went to Hawaii, and our parents came along, too. One day in front of everyone, my mom told Deborah, “I had a dream that you were pregnant.” I remember my dad jumped on her for saying that, for saying that out loud in front of everyone and putting her on the spot. My mom said, “What? I can’t tell someone about a dream I had?” Mexican moms take their dreams seriously—I guess that’s where I get that.

It turned out that Deborah was already two months pregnant—she asked me how my mother could tell. “She was pregnant eleven times—she knows.” The following May, when I was home from a long tour of Europe, Salvador was born. Just like that you become a parent.

I believe Salvador was a culmination of many, many years of praying by both of our moms. He also came from divine design. Deborah and I would meditate and ask for a special soul to be selected, and then we each took a shower, and we got together. Salvador was conceived with divine intentionality. So were all our children.

Years later I told Sal how he came to be—a few times—and the older he got the more he understood. The first time was when he was just five or six years old and going to public school. Deborah and I knew we could afford to send him to private school, but we wanted him to have a full experience of cultures and people and not be separated by privilege. Sal was very smart—he understood what we were trying to do, and he was okay with that. When he didn’t understand something, he would ask questions.

I came home one day, and Deborah told me, “Your son wants to talk to you,” which was code for “This isn’t going to be a piece of cake.” He had heard some rough words at school—one in particular—and he could tell it was wrong for some reason and didn’t want to talk about it with his mom. I asked Salvador what word it was. “It sounded like ‘duck,’ but it started with an
f.
”

I was proud of Sal for figuring out a way to say the word without
saying it. I explained to him that it was a bad word for something that could be very good, and that something was part of why he was here. I said, “Your mother and I—we prayed for you, we lit a candle, we meditated, we asked for your soul, and then we got in bed and we made love and that’s how you got here. You were made in love. That’s the opposite of that word.” I remember Sal looked at me with his head to one side. “Oh, okay. Thanks, Dad.”

Then he thought for a second. “But what’s it mean?”

“You’ll really have to find that out for yourself when you’re old enough, son.”

Three times it happened—and it was almost always the same thing. Deborah got to the hospital first, and I would get there and see my parents and in-laws waiting. Then the nurse would come with the baby wrapped in a blanket, and we’d all crowd around to get a peek. The first thing we’d see would be the eyes, sparkling just like diamonds. All our children—Salvador in ’83, Stella in ’85, and Angelica in ’89—were born with their eyes open. They were so pristine—we’d all look at Deborah and go, “Good job, Mom.” Then each time I would need to go to the car and suck up some fresh air because the experience was so intense. I’d be alone, sitting there quietly, and slowly I’d start to hear a song.

Every child brings a song with him or her. It’s up to the parent to hear it and get a tape recorder or a pen or something and get it down. “Blues for Salvador,” “Bella” for Stella, and “Angelica Faith”—each one of our kids has a special song, whether it was written for them when they were born or it came later. You look at the child and you just hear the melody. Probably some of my best melodies fell into the couch and got lost while I was sitting there making up a song to sing to the babies—to stop their crying and get them to sleep again.

At three in the morning, when the baby can’t stop crying and his mother is already spent and out like a light—just gone—it’s your turn. So I learned how to hold the babies, strong and secure,
tummy-down, and they’d relax. It would get them out of the crying mode. We had a clown doll that you could knock down but it always sprang back up. I hit it by accident one time, and the baby stopped crying, looking to see what happened. We turned it into a game, and it worked almost all the time, at least to break the crying rhythm. There are things any parent can do to be creative with silly stuff lying around at home.

Even before Sal was born, Deborah and I agreed that once he arrived I would never go on the road for more than four weeks—five weeks at the most. Five weeks and home, no exceptions. This was family time. Maybe I could do some recording, but only in San Francisco, and we kept to that. This way I did not miss birthdays or graduations. We have a lot of family videos that I am in—I’m very proud of that.

Sal was only a few months old when we took him to Japan in the summer of ’83, and he was pretty happy his first time over there. He was a big boy, a butterball, for his first few years. He looked like a sumo wrestler. Mr. Udo was helpful, but for Deborah and me it was a wake-up call because of all the crazy hours and the fact that we got sick for a few days. Then we thought about all the germs we could catch by traveling on a plane. Rookie parent stuff. We said, “Let’s not do this anymore.” But when our next two children were born, we still took them with us as much as possible until they started school. I wanted them to see their dad at work, to know what he did when I couldn’t be at home with them—I wanted them to see the world.

I was amazed, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. As soon as the kids came, so did the family. My mom came around, and my sisters and brothers would help out, and Deborah of course had the support of her mother and father and sister, whom the kids loved. They would yell “Auntie Kitsaun” every time they saw her. Not long after Stella was born, we decided to move back to Marin County to be nearer to family and friends. We also had to think about schools. All this pulled me closer to my parents and got me thinking about the fact that my son was part of their legacy.

In 1985 Salvador was almost three, and Deborah and I visited Mexico incognito—my hair was still pretty short, so no one recognized me. I have to say that one of life’s greatest luxuries is to be anonymous in a crowd. Most people should take that to heart. We had decided to go with my mother to visit her relatives in Cihuatlán, so because we were in Jalisco anyway we made a snap decision to visit my hometown of Autlán. We had a driver, but for some reason it took most of the day to get there—four hours there and six hours back.

We met a lot of people who remembered my mom. I was still a kid when I left. Sal was still just a baby but was starting to grow, and he had big feet then. He still does—size 15, bigger than Michael Jordan’s. I know that because when he was a teenager Sal got to spend some time at Michael’s summer basketball camp. It’s crazy sometimes the details I remember.