The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (48 page)

The whole town was passing Sal around as if he was the first baby they’d ever seen, to the point where Deborah and I were getting paranoid. “Hey, where’s our baby?”

Autlán was so much smaller than I remembered, which of course is normal because
I
was much smaller the last time I had been there. It felt like what it was—a small town, or a big village. I started kissing my mom on her forehead, kissing her hands. It was in that moment that I began to see clearly what she had done for us. I was thanking her for taking us out of that town and to a place that had bigger opportunities and better possibilities. This is not a put-down or a negative comment about Autlán. I’ve gotten to know the town again, and I’m proud to call it my original home. This is about the immensity of my mother’s conviction in taking us to a place so far away and changing the destiny of our whole family—all because of just one decision in her mind.

Angelica, Salvador, and Stella, 1990.

I call it domestic rhythm, and it’s something that many musicians have trouble with. But I think any parent who has to do a lot of traveling has to deal with it. I open the door to that subject all the time when I’m with other musicians: “Hey, man, how’s the domestic rhythm?” They look at me—some will get it, and some will go, “Domestic rhythm? What do you mean?”

“You know, man. How long have you been on the road?”

“Oh, that.”

Even with my kids grown, and now with Cindy as my partner, I still do my best to keep the domestic rhythm balanced with other rhythms in my life, like the music and the shows and the traveling and the recording. It’s easy enough on the music side when you think about it—once you have the music down, all you really have to do is show up and do your best with the band. But I learned early on in my family that when it was time to come home, I had to do a lot more than show up. I had to be willing to become a mopper or a duster or a rug cleaner or a hair brusher or a sandwich maker. I had to be willing to put the same energy and care and intention into my life with Deborah and the kids that I put into a great guitar solo.

I remember how my father would do it when he came back after having been gone for months. There’d be all this craziness going on around him, kids walking in and out of the place, and he’d find a place on the hard floor and just stretch out. It was like some sort of Mexican yoga—he would extend his arms and legs, then he’d shake his fingers. I tried that once after a long tour because it felt like the walls kept spinning and wouldn’t stop. It eventually worked—the walls stopped moving, and I had arrived, ready to get up and help out and say, “Okay, how can I help?” or “What can I do?” or just go ahead and take out the garbage.

I think a lot of people, not just musicians, are not secure enough in their inner peace to handle the madness of domestic rhythm—children screaming; parents and family dropping by. Relatives mean well, but sometimes their visits can add to the pressure. But that’s the rhythm you’re supposed to enjoy the most—being part of it and letting it happen.

T
he first few years with the kids were fun, and with the family coming around to visit—my parents and sisters and brothers and in-laws—it was a new experience for me. I hadn’t thought about family that way. Each of the kids’ steps along the way was a new thing—learning to walk, to eat grown-up food, to talk—and it was amazing to see their personalities develop.

We took them on the road when we could—I remember one time when Sal was already in second grade and Stella had just
started school and Jelli was really small we all went to Europe together. We went to Switzerland, where Claude Nobs was an amazing host; then to London, where the kids loved riding in the city’s big taxis; then to Rome. Then there’s the other side of touring—the sadness when the kids knew they couldn’t go with Daddy and I’d be getting ready to leave, waiting on the car to pick me up. Every time this happened they would all run and get their crayons and paper and start drawing pictures and get really focused so that they wouldn’t have to hang with a feeling of separation. I’ll never forget the sound of their scribbling with so much force and concentration. That was their way of saying, “It hurts us to see you go, so we’re not going to wait with you and look at you. Good-bye!”

Damn. Of course it reminded me of the fact that my dad was gone all the time when I was a kid, and I remember how it felt in my stomach. “Where is he? When will I see him again? Did I do something wrong to make him go away?” I know kids have a habit of blaming themselves when parents can’t be present. I didn’t want that for my kids, so I would speak to them and explain what Daddy had to do. No tour more than four weeks—and even in the middle of the tour I would get on the plane and fly back home for birthdays and graduations and special occasions. I decided to do all I could do to see them as much as possible. When the car would come to take me to the airport, I would go over to each of them and remind them how much I loved them.

We went through that moment a bunch of times. Around the mid ’80s Santana was touring a lot with other big acts. We’d be opening for the Rolling Stones, and I was always grateful for those opportunities. Bill Graham put together many of those tours, and they were all great and memorable experiences—including the one in 1984, when Santana was opening for Bob Dylan. I loved that Santana band of the mid-’80s. It was a powerful, fun band, and when that band hit, it was like, “Oh, damn.” I learned so much from all of them.

On bass we had Alphonso Johnson, who came to us in ’83 and had just the right kind of mix and experience for Santana at the
time. He had played with Billy Cobham and Phil Collins and was a consummate gentleman and pure class. I first heard him when I went to see Weather Report in ’75 at the Berkeley Community Theatre. The band was fluid and powerful, but the cat on bass absolutely freaked me out. What is it about bass players from Philadelphia? Stanley Clarke, Victor Bailey, Jimmy Garrison, Reggie Workman, and Jaco Pastorius were all born there.

Alphonso is intelligent and warm, and I could hear that in his playing. He was with us for a few years—he had many great moments with Santana, but you can start with “Once It’s Gotcha” on
Freedom.

We also had David Sancious in that band. I admire him like crazy. He’s just as I described Alphonso—a gentleman with great spirit and no baggage. Besides being a wonderful keyboard player, he’s a hell of a guitar player. He wasn’t afraid to plug into a Marshall and play from his heart. He reminds me of Coltrane in the way he looks. He could play Trane in a movie—he’s got that quiet loudness.

We had two Chester Thompsons. One was the amazing Chester C. Thompson on drums, who had played in Weather Report with Alphonso and later in Genesis. The other Chester Thompson played organ, piano, and synthesizers, and just as Ndugu was vitally important to the sound of the band in the late ’70s, this guy was the cat who helped to define where Santana went after the mid-’80s and for the following twenty-five years. If you want to know who he is, check out his organ solo on “Victory Is Won,” the song I wrote for Archbishop Desmond Tutu. When Chester and I first played the song, it was for Tutu himself when he visited my house in 2001.

I met Chester—everybody calls him CT—around 1977 or ’78, when I was doing a lot of sessions in San Francisco, trying out different things, not necessarily for albums. I remember it was very easy to connect and play with him, but he was in Tower of Power at the time so I didn’t think any more of it. It wasn’t until around 1984, after Tom Coster had left Santana, that I thought of CT again.
I figured I had nothing to lose, so I asked him if he’d be interested in joining Santana, and he said yes.

CT came into Santana with some of everything I love: some McCoy Tyner, some Herbie Hancock, a lot of church, and a whole lot of soul. I knew he was going to fit in right away, because that’s what the music calls for—if you’re going to cook bouillabaisse you have to know what ingredients you need to put in the pot. With CT it was all about camaraderie. We could talk until six in the morning after a show, just talking about the music we love. I don’t think I was closer to any keyboard player in Santana other than Gregg Rolie.

I had needed someone in the band who had different ideas from mine. I had been wanting someone to bounce things to me; I didn’t want to have to be constantly feeding others. After just a few shows I could tell that CT would be comfortable with bouncing ideas, and he had a lot to bounce. I also knew that every time he took on a solo he just tore it up. You can hear it on tunes like “Wings of Grace” and “Hong Kong Blues.” Onstage, he’d get a certain look, almost like he was possessed, and I’d say to myself, “Man, I want
that
in my band.” Then he’d just take over, and while our albums stayed with the song format, onstage he liked to stretch out, and so did I. Even with his intensity, he made it really easy to go on tour because he is very stable—I never saw him throw a tantrum or do anything desperate or frantic. CT was cool and soulful, and I appreciated that.

It was also very easy for CT and me to write together—we came up with songs like “Goodness and Mercy” and “Wings of Grace” on the spot. “Brotherhood”—from the album
Beyond Appearances
in ’85—was written by CT, me, and Sancious. For some reason, Miles really focused on that one, with its funky line and preacher’s message. “Really, Miles?” He put his face close to mine and said, “Yeah, and you ain’t even black.”

In ’87 we recorded the album
Freedom,
and that title really ties into things that were happening at the time, such as Buddy Miles getting out of jail and getting his life together in the Bay Area. He sang his ass off on some of the tracks, including “Mandela,” which Armando wrote; of course the whole world was looking at South
Africa then and asking themselves, “What can we do to accelerate change in the apartheid system and get Nelson Mandela out of prison?”

It was like the ’60s for a brief time, a period when we felt that music could make things evolve. That was really when the Santana shows got to be more socially aware again and I would remind people in the audience that they were giants who could create miracles and blessings. We wore T-shirts with our heroes on them and announced that no woman or man is free until we’re all free, as Martin Luther King said. I asked the sound crew to put together special songs—message songs—to play on the PA before and after our shows to deepen the meaning for the audiences.

Freedom
is also special because Graham Lear had come back, and, briefly, so did Tom Coster—so we had TC and CT together. For the
Freedom
tour in ’87 we kept the band personnel down to Alphonso, CT, Graham, Armando, and Alex, with Orestes Vilató and Raul Rekow on percussion. We traveled to many places in Europe we’d been before and some places we hadn’t been, like East Berlin, with Buddy Miles as a special guest, and Moscow, where we did a historic Soviet-American concert with the Doobie Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, and James Taylor. I remember Steve Wozniak paid for it, and because it took place on July 4 it was called the Interdependence Concert—Give Peace a Chance.

I also remember Deborah knew someone living in Moscow whom she had gone to school with and had been a ’60s revolutionary. She wanted to take a cab by herself in the middle of the night to visit her friend, so she did. That’s part of Deborah—very fearless. There’s a video of me talking with some Russians through a fence, and some of them were young enough to have grown up with “Black Magic Woman” and
Abraxas
. They told me that our music had made a big impact on people’s consciousness, that it got people through hard times.

In Moscow the music started off with a Russian marching band playing “When the Saints Go Marching In,” then some Russian bands played, then Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, and the Doobie
Brothers went on, so the program was building in intensity. By the time we went on the crowd was flying, and we rode that energy, man. We tore it up so bad that when we played the last note and were walking offstage we started hearing a rumble with screaming on top—“Santana! Santana!! Santana!!!” I remember Bonnie kept looking at me afterward, not saying anything, just shaking her head.

One of the best compliments I ever got came from Bonnie after some other concert featuring us both.

“Hey, Carlos!”

“Hi, Bon!”

“I got a new name for you—Fearless! You’re not afraid to play with Buddy Guy or Ry Cooder or Ray Charles or anybody.”

I said, “Thanks, Bon!”

Why should I be afraid? This isn’t the Olympics, and it’s not boxing. That’s still how I feel—playing music should be a win-win situation.

In East Berlin I realized we had a different energy from any band that the Russians had seen before. Music does break barriers. Their country was just starting to really open up back then—I think they had to catch up faster than they were expecting, too.

Santana played Jerusalem for the first time on that tour—the city where Jesus preached and ran into trouble. I remembered all the stories from the Bible that I heard in Autlán about that city, and there really was something special about it. I remember waking up in the morning and seeing the sun coming out, just as it’s done for thousands of years, and it’s so beautiful. Then you see the twilight, and you can’t help but wonder why people fight so much there. I went walking around, and I realized that on the one hand Jerusalem is a very, very sacred and historic place, but on the other hand it’s like so many other cities in other parts of the world—vendors and marketplaces and people hustling each other, just trying to get by. Parts of that city are about as pristine and spiritual as the backseat of a New York City taxicab. I was thinking it really doesn’t matter where you are when it comes to the invisible realm—it’s what you bring to that place in your heart that can make it divine and holy.

All those dates in the Soviet Union and Israel? That was Bill Graham—he put those together. He was putting together a lot of international tours. Just the year before he put together the Amnesty International tour that was supposed to be like the old Fillmore days—rock, jazz, African, Latin. All flavors, multidimensional. And big headline names, including Peter Gabriel and Sting. I played at one of those concerts—at the Meadowlands in New Jersey—but not with my band. That was okay—it was the only time I played with Miles.