The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (55 page)

Clive could really get into the details. One time in the studio we were recording a tune, and he went right up to one of the singers. “Make me feel it. Make me feel it
now,
do you hear me?” His veins were popping out. I was like, “Oh, damn.” I didn’t know this side of Clive—I never saw it back in 1973! But he was right—that’s the same thing I ask for from singers: don’t be selling something, offer your heart. It impressed me that Clive could hear the difference. The singer looked at me like, “What’s going on?” I was thinking, “You should have brought it in the first place, man.”

The sessions were fun because they were all different. New people were coming into the band, such as “Gentleman” Jeff Cressman on the trombone, and I was getting to meet more musicians than I usually would. There were two I got to know really well and I’m still very close to—Rob Thomas and Dave Matthews. They’re both people who are very present with their music and their spirit, and they’re dedicated to both the spiritual and the outer realms. They want to make this world beautiful, and I think Clive knew that about them when he put us together.

The last two songs that we made for the album were “The Calling”—the blues workout with Eric Clapton—and “El Farol,” which has a melody that Sal helped write and is really a testament of the love that my son and my father had for each other.

By the time we started recording, I had a name for this album:
Mumbo Jumbo
. I liked it because there really was a Mumbo Jumbo—an African king. We even had the artwork ready for the cover—a painting called
Mumbo Jumbo
by the artist Michael Rios, who designed many of the T-shirts I like to wear.

But when we were down to the last song, Clive told me, “You know, Carlos, I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you. Most people think that ‘mumbo jumbo’ is a negative thing, like
magic words that aren’t really magic, which is not what you want. Also, I think the press would have a field day with that name, and not in a complimentary way.” I said, “But Mumbo Jumbo was a real dude, you know—he was historic, and he healed people.” Clive said, “Yeah, okay, but… well, whatever it is, we need to go to press pretty soon.”

We came up with
Supernatural,
which has two meanings—“mystical” and “
extra
natural.” I was definitely okay with the invisible realm and with being very authentic. Plus it did bring to mind Peter Green and his instrumental “The Supernatural”—that’s a tune I still love. So okay, Clive—call it
Supernatural,
then.

Clive called a meeting when the album was done to get the troops ready, and he wanted me there. I was in his office with all the soldiers and warriors who were going to push the album—promotion people, marketing people, publicists. Clive played the whole album, and they gave me a standing ovation. I said that I was really grateful to Clive and to each of them because I knew that was the first time we were working together. Then I talked about the music. I said I tried to make sure that each note I played was as genuine and as fresh and as dangerous as a first French kiss in the backseat of a car—as fresh as the eternal now.

Suddenly Clive said, “Hey, Carlos—I’m very sorry for interrupting, but you just said something that I think says exactly what I feel about this album. Everyone knows you have a long history, but that’s not what is most special about this music. It’s so new and different, just like you were saying, and that’s what people need to know. We’ve got to work on it like it’s your first time making music.” I was thinking the same thing Bill Graham said: “Didn’t I just say that?”

Clive and I were really on the same page with
Supernatural,
all the way. He made sure that the world knew
Supernatural
was coming soon, in June of 1999, with magazine ads and billboards in Manhattan and Las Vegas. We were on tour that summer with Dave Matthews, and I remember Dave was always talking about how much support we were getting from Arista, and he was being very supportive too.

Dave really believed in the music—he came onstage one night
in Philadelphia and introduced us, and we played “Love of My Life” together, and the audience loved it. We had written that one together—he came up with the words, and I got the opening part from a Brahms melody I had heard on the radio. After I went to Tower Records and sang it for the sales guy in the classical department, he recognized it right away. I got the CD, and Dave and I built the song around it.

I loved the way Dave shared his audience with me—talking to them about the music we had just made and opening his heart about how he felt. That was what I try to do with my own audience—putting stretch marks in their brains, opening some ears. That was the first time I really felt that this new music was going to be big—when the audience loved it. Just a few days after that Philadelphia show we were playing at the Meadowlands arena in New Jersey, and Dave looked up and saw an airplane pulling a gigantic banner that said
THIS IS THE SUMMER OF SANTANA
. He said, “Clive really likes you, man. You guys got it going.”

Clive had been saying that even before the album came out: “Carlos, this isn’t going to be just one or two million sold. This is going to really, really be something.” Then the music came out, and “Smooth” started slowly, but pretty soon it took off like a rocket.
Supernatural
starting selling hundreds of thousands of copies a week, and Clive would call me wherever I was and give me the updated sales numbers. I was in a taxi one time, and he was on the phone saying, “Carlos, they’re playing your music
everywhere
.”

I was having trouble hearing him. “I know, Clive—it’s on the cab’s radio right now.”

It went crazy, just crazy. Then “Maria Maria” came out, and it pushed sales to another level—even higher—and it just never came down.

The Santana lineup on the first
Supernatural
tours was on fire—we had CT, Benny, Rodney, and Karl, plus the horn section with Bill Ortiz and Jeff Cressman on trumpet and trombone. Because of them we were able to do some melodies from one of my favorite Miles albums—his sound track to the 1958 film
Elevator to
the Gallows.
We also had René Martinez, who is a classical and flamenco guitarist who actually was our guitar tech, but he played with such dignity and elegance that we gave him a feature spot just before we did “Maria Maria,” and he’d bring the house down.

We crossed paths with Sting in Germany in 2000 at a few festivals, and he was scheduled to go on after us, but the first time he heard us, it was obvious he was impressed. Sting told me this in my dressing room one night when I was having a beer with my friend Hal Miller, who can be a real funny guy sometimes. “Carlos, who the hell is that drummer?”

“That’s Rodney Holmes from New York. He played with Wayne Shorter and the Brecker Brothers.”

“He’s amazing!” Sting said. “And who the hell is that guitarist?”

“Oh, that’s René Martinez, my guitar tech.”

Sting got quiet for a second. “Wait: he’s your tech? Unbelievable.”

Like clockwork, Hal stepped in and said, “Yeah. Wait till you hear the drum tech sit in—his name is Elvin.”

Sting just started laughing, and then we all did. That really was an incredible lineup, and I’m proud that many of them are still playing with Santana.

It’s really hard to describe how it feels when something hits that big, all around the world, and you’re in the middle of it. It’s like being that cork floating on a big ocean wave—how much am I controlling, and how much is controlling me? Every day the ego games have to be checked, and you have to find your balance again.

In February of 2000, Clive told me that
Supernatural
had been nominated for ten Grammy Awards. Deborah started calling me a new name even before we got to the show. “So, Mr. Grammy, how many do you think you’ll win?” The kids were like, “Yeah, Dad, how many?” I was feeling that I’d be lucky and happy with one. That’s why, when I won the first one during the event that takes place in the afternoon, I thanked everyone I could—Clive, Deborah, my father and mother and the kids. When I won the next one,
I was thanking my siblings and the musicians and songwriters. By the time of the evening event, which was on TV, I felt like one of those dogs playing fetch with a Frisbee, and it became something to laugh about: winners in other categories, such as classical music and country, started thanking me for not doing an album in their genres.

The whole thing was a blur, really. The two things that I was most proud of were playing “Smooth” onstage, with Rob Thomas singing and Rodney Holmes bringing everything he had. I hit that first note, and everyone in the whole place jumped to their feet. My other favorite moment was when Lauryn Hill and my old friend Bob Dylan presented the Album of the Year award—that was the eighth and last Grammy that
Supernatural
won. They opened the envelope, and all Bob did was point to me—no words. I got up to accept it, and suddenly it was clear what I had to say.

“Music is the vehicle for the magic of healing, and the music of
Supernatural
was assigned and designed to bring unity and harmony.” I thanked the two personal pillars who first came to mind: John Coltrane and John Lee Hooker.

I have so many thank-yous to give, and a big one is to Deborah for helping me see the anger that was still inside me when I first went public in 2000 about being a victim of molestation. I hate that word—
victim
. I’m not someone who would walk into a room and say, “Hi, I’m the guy who was molested.”
Survivor
is better.

It used to piss me off, what had happened to me in Tijuana, and it pissed me off that I didn’t have a support system to protect me. At the same time, why didn’t I say something about the abuse myself? So it was anger and guilt and blame, spinning one to the other to the next, and it felt like a ball and chain. Even when I didn’t know what to call it, I knew I wanted a higher level of consciousness because I could tell that low consciousness is always dragging a ball and chain.

I think all people have something from the past, some pain or suffering that they must deal with, a negative energy that they need
to transform and direct toward a place and time where it’s not hurtful to themselves or anyone around them. You have to heal yourself, and one thing I’ve learned in all my years on this planet is that if you want to heal something, you can’t do it in the dark. You have to bring it into the light.

That was when the angel Metatron said to me that it’s a must—I had to speak publicly about my past.

Metatron is the archangel whom I spoke about in all my interviews that year, the one who had promised to put my music on the radio and make it heard more widely than it had ever been heard before. “We kept our promise,” he told me. “We’ve given you what we said we would. Now we’re going to ask something from you.”

To explain it further, Metatron is an archangel, the celestial form of the Jewish patriarch Enoch, who appears in many books. I had been introduced to him in ’95, when I found
The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of
Enoch,
which at first went
whoosh!
—right over my head. But the closer I studied it, the more I realized that in many ways it was a companion to
The Urantia Book
and continued what I now call a velocity to luminosity—understanding how the physical and spiritual planes, the visible and invisible, are interconnected in so many ways and how certain books can attain a divine synchronicity.

J. J. Hurtak is the author of
The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch
and a metaphysical historian and multidimensional archaeologist. I met him and his wife, Desiree, around the time of
Supernatural,
and they’ve become for me thought adjusters and enlightenment accelerators—like Jerry and Diane, Wayne, and Herbie. J. J. created a video of symbolic imagery, light, and color that corresponds to and almost dances with some prayer music by Alice Coltrane when I played them at the same time. That realization led me to introduce the two of them and suggest they work together. The result was an amazing album called
The Sacred Language of Ascension,
which combines Turiya’s melodies and organ playing with lyrics and chanting in English, Hebrew, Hindi, and Aramaic and which will, I hope, be released soon.

Back to Metatron—after
The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch,
I found
The Revelations of the Metatron,
in which Metatron takes center stage, and after studying that book I found that he would sometimes speak to me when I meditated. One night when I was in London doing promotional stuff for
Supernatural
—TV shows and interviews—Metatron spoke and said, “Now that you’re on the radio, you have to remind everyone they have the capacity to make their lives a masterpiece of joy.” But there was another thing.

“Then we want you to reveal that you were abused sexually, because there’re a lot of people walking around with that same kind of wound. Invite them to look in the mirror and say, ‘I am not what happened to me.’ ”

I resisted. I had to battle myself, because I knew my parents, my kids, and all my sisters and brothers were going to see whatever interviews I did. The
Supernatural
album was the biggest thing that year, so the spotlight was on me. It was time to get out of obscurity and go back into the mainstream—but I told myself, “No; I won’t do this.”

The angels didn’t back down—Metatron required selflessness. There was an interview in
Rolling Stone
and one with Charlie Rose coming up. I didn’t want to do it in either interview; I didn’t want to do it at all. I didn’t sleep for nights thinking about that. Then I did it in
Rolling Stone:
I told the world about what happened to me when I was in Tijuana. No dirty details—just the plain fact that I had been molested as a child and that I am still with purity and innocence.

It’s my inner voice—everyone has it. I had it at the Tic Tock, even in Tijuana. It stayed with me. If you don’t hear that voice you’re like a boat without a rudder. You learn to trust it. When I chanted or when it was quiet and late, I could hear it and would write down what it said. I told
Rolling Stone
about Metatron, too. “My reality is that God speaks to you every day… you got the candles, you got the incense, and you’ve been chanting, and all of a sudden you hear this voice:
Now, write this down.
”