The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (49 page)

Being who I was and who I still am, I got into a conversation with Bill before the tour about whom he was booking. “Why don’t you work on putting Miles Davis on at Amnesty International?”

He was like, “What?”

“Do the same thing you did at Woodstock—tell them that if they want your help they have to put Miles in there.”

Long silence.

Later, I was on tour in Australia when the phone rang in my hotel room—it was four in the morning, New York time. “Hi, Bill. How you doing?”

“Miles is going to play.”

“Holy shit, Bill. You did it!”

“But I need you here, and I can’t afford for you to play with the whole band because I already used up my favors with Miles. Can you come by yourself?”

That was my reward for pushing for Miles. Of course I was coming. I flew from Australia to Honolulu, then from Honolulu to San Francisco. I picked up Deborah, flew to New Jersey, and went to the Meadowlands. When I got there, Bill said, “You’re playing with Rubén Blades and Fela Kuti and with the Neville Brothers.” No problem. “And Miles.”

Wait. “Bill, I’m playing with Miles?”

“Yes, and Rubén in half an hour. Miles wants to see you in the trailer.” This was epic. Did Miles ask for me to play with him? Why didn’t he mention this before?

I had a major case of jet lag. My eyeballs were red, and my brain was just not functioning. When I went into his trailer, Miles was in a state I’d never seen him in before. He was looking at me a little sideways. He looked at my shoes and at my shirt, grabbed my pants, and said, “You’re even trying to dress like me and shit.” I was like, “What?” And he went off on me, telling me I’m just following him. I could see that maybe he was thinking I arranged this gig just so I could play with him. Before he got too far I said, “Look, man. I don’t need to play with you. I asked Bill Graham to bring you here because I felt that this thing would not be complete without you. Whatever he said to you, that wasn’t part of my condition.” And I walked out.

Wow—okay, so that was how it felt to get on Miles’s bad side. I thought he’d give me the benefit of the doubt on that one. I was on his side. He should know that.

Just a few years before he had called me. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Listening to a CD, Miles—
Thriller
.”

“What’s that?” I told him about a new format—compact discs—and about the new album by Michael Jackson that everyone was crazy about and that Quincy had produced. “I can’t stop playing a song called ‘Human Nature.’ ” Next thing I knew Miles did it on
You’re under Arrest
and was playing it in concert every night.

I had to go get ready to play—even if Miles was pissed and it was going to be awkward. I was waiting next to the stage, and just before my turn to play it came into my head to check the tuning of the guitar. It had been tuned by the guitar tech, but it had been sitting out there by itself with a lot of people onstage, and who knows what had happened, but it was totally out of tune. On the video of that set, when it’s time for me to come in, you can see me standing with the audience behind me. I’m facing away from them, toward the camera, because I still have the guitar up near my face so I can work on the strings. Just when I got it tuned, it was time for me to play. I turned around and was on my tippy-toes, the energy was so intense! Then I hit the note and just killed it. Later, Deborah came
up to me and said, “That’s what I want to hear! Why don’t you do that all the time?” She used to say that now and then.

We played “Burn,” and I thought I played well for being so jet-lagged—I was really zonked out of my head. When we were walking off the stage, Miles was a totally different guy. “Hey! How was that for you?”

“It was great, Miles; it was really an honor to play with you.”

Man, I thought Miles was going to chew me out again. That day, before we played, had been the only time he ever snapped at me. Later on I realized he had just gotten nervous before doing such a big show.

“Oh, yeah. It was weird for me. I couldn’t hear shit.”

I said, “Well, you know, if that happens to me, I move around like a boxer until I find the sweet spot somewhere between the bass player and drummer, and I make my own mix.”

Grandma Jo and Deborah and Emelda, who was married to Deborah’s cousin Junior, started taking the kids at a young age to a church in Oakland, and when you go to a black, no-nonsense church like that you go a certain way and you sit a certain way. You learn a code of behavior. Sal’s got that church in him—so do his sisters, but about Sal the British might say, “He’s
proper
.” I remember all three kids always acted that way when we went out—they’d say thank you in restaurants, too. When you’re a parent, you start to watch what other families do in public, and I’d sometimes see kids out of control—extreme, like the kid in
The Exorcist
—and I’d be glad not to be embarrassed that way when we’d go out of the house.

I think Deborah is a great mother and I’m a great father and that a lot of our success was about communicating honestly and clearly with all three kids so they understood what was expected of them. In everything we did with them, we maintained a consistent system of ethics, moral compass, and integrity. We never spanked our kids, but there were words and looks that got across the message that they needed to be quiet and be respectful. When they got older I would
tell them that if we didn’t see eye to eye on something, they could raise their hands and we’d go for a hike and break it down. “You have that option to walk and talk it out,” we’d tell them.

Of course, the older they got, the more they’d test the limits. I remember having to say to one of them, “You know, I’ve spent a lot of time meditating and reading spiritual books to learn to be peaceful and compassionate, but all that stuff is going to go out the window the next time you disrespect your mother in front of me!”

Deborah had what she called a pow-pow stick that she kept on top of the refrigerator. It was there, and the kids knew that if they ever went too far she was ready to get it. I really can’t remember it ever being used, though she did pull it down a few times. Deborah and I were a good team, because the kids would come up to me and say, “Mom said this was okay.”

Parents are going to make mistakes, like everyone else. But we learned and got better at being parents, and they learned that the usual play-one-against-the-other stuff wouldn’t work with us. “Really? Let’s go and ask Mom to tell me herself.” They tested us, we set the limits, and although there was a lot of room in between, some things were not for bargaining.

Nobody said being a dad wasn’t going to be challenging, but I can tell you that it was and that it’s been fun, too. I’ve learned from my children, and one of the most important things I learned was how to laugh with them and sometimes how to laugh at myself, too. I remember Stella wanted a little Chihuahua dog—please, please, please—so she got one. Of course it was not only her dog, it was the family’s dog, but who’s going to feed and train it? One night I came home from a concert, and Stella was on the sofa watching TV with her friend. Jelli was there, too. I settled down and started to get comfortable, but all of a sudden there was something warm and weird between my toes, and the smell hit me. Everyone was looking at me. “Stella, it’s dog poo!” She was just looking at me. “And it’s
your
dog!”

Nothing. So now it’s really stinking and I’m up and cleaning it and cleaning my toes and wiping the carpet and I can’t believe it
and suddenly it comes out of me. “Man, I am
not
supposed to be cleaning dog poo!
I’m a rock star!
”

Of course I wasn’t being 100 percent serious, but at the same time it was just the kind of thing you would hear from a rock star, so it was funny both because of what I meant and also because of what I didn’t mean. There was a moment of stunned silence, then suddenly Jelli started busting up, rolling on the couch with tears in her eyes. Then Stella and her friend and I started laughing, too, and soon we were all laughing hard at what I said and the way it came out.

I want for my children the same things I want for everyone I love in my life—health, happiness, and peace of mind. At the same time those are the three things I cannot give them. I can show my kids what those things look like and maybe how to achieve them, but I also say that they have to get them, sustain them, and, most of all, appreciate them for themselves.

The music continued, the children grew, and the spiritual discipline was there, too—that never left. One thing Deborah decided when we left Sri Chinmoy was that we would not fall short in our spiritual race—we were runners, and we would not slow the pace of aspiration. Aspiration is the flame—the desire for divinity. Deborah and I decided to not lose our love of God or abandon our principles and practices—meditating in the morning, eating healthful food, and reading spiritual books.

On the road in every hotel room I would stay in I would light incense and burn a candle and close my eyes and go inside. Backstage in every dressing room before we went onstage, I would do the same. If anyone in the band wanted to join me, they were welcome to. Most of the time the spiritual discipline was self-discipline. There was no more guru, but I still did a lot of reading and got a lot of guidance from books.

I had found
The Urantia Book
before I met Sri Chinmoy and was still reading it after I left him. I would always be looking for books that brought me a tangible sensation of being. I keep moving
up by selecting books that help me broaden my view of myself. I found I would be thinking of something in the airport, and I’d pull out a bunch of books I had stuck in my bag and one title would stand out. “Oh, this is exactly what I need.” I’d get on the plane, and in some chapter in the middle I’d read something that was exactly what I needed to visit and identify with right then. “Let me take this message and live with it for a week.”

I still find those kinds of books today. This is my strategy: set forward your intentionality like an arrow, and the bull’s-eye appears. You attract who you are. That’s how I found
A Course in Miracles
and
The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch
by J. J. and Desiree Hurtak.

For Deborah, the spiritual path meant going back to church. After a while she left the church in Oakland and discovered Unity in Marin, a church with a progressive, universal attitude. It wasn’t about doing things only one way, but I still couldn’t see myself going to church unless there were congas there, and because there weren’t, I didn’t go too often. Sometimes I did go with Deborah and the kids, but usually when she’d be at church I would be with her dad talking about things like spiritual traction.

SK was the one who said that: we are all here to dig in and make some spiritual traction, not to slip and slide and shuck and jive and make excuses. When he said that, I was like, “Right on.” I love the idea of explaining spiritual discipline in a street kind of language so people don’t have to say, “What the hell is he talking about?” I like the idea of spreading a spiritual virus that instead of making people sick makes them totally alive. The virus can spread from one person to another until they and their neighbors see a decrease in violence in their community.

The spiritual path was presented to our children very naturally, normally, and organically. They understood that we read spiritual books, which were there for them to read, too, if they wanted. But there’s nothing like living a spiritual path so your children can see the light in you. When you wear it every day, that does more than anything else to encourage them to live it, too. They saw us meditating
and went with Deborah to Unity in Marin. When they started to get older and I would present something to them—a principle or some way of looking at something spiritually—they’d resist, as kids tend to do with everything their parents present them with. But they’d retain it. Maybe a week or month later I’d hear one of them on the phone with a friend quoting almost exactly what I said: “I don’t want to invest emotionally in something negative.” “I don’t want to wear that like a badge of honor—that’s not who I am.”

I still speak to them on that level—I’m constantly asking Jelli, Stella, and Salvador not to be afraid to let people know about their intentions and be clear about what they mean to say. It’s their daily spiritual reality check. Stella was in the studio for the first time not long ago, making some music, and I texted her, “Ask God to help your music connect with all hearts on this glorious planet and remind them of their own divinity.” And to this day, anyone who’s been to a Salvador Santana concert will hear him say, “It’s a blessing to be in your presence, and it’s a blessing to play for you.” I love that. By the end of every tour, the groups opening for him all start expressing their gratitude to the audience, acknowledging their presence and thanking them for being there.

In 1987, when Sal was just four, I was jamming in the studio with CT when one of those magic moments happened. But the engineers were still messing with calibrating something, and we wanted to record what we were doing right then. “Hit
RECORD
right now! Get this on tape, man—I don’t care how you do it!” So we got it on a two-track reel-to-reel—one track for CT, one for me. Just as I played the last note and it faded, the tape ran out—
flub, flub, flub.
Years later I found out that one of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s blues was recorded exactly the same way—suddenly, on the spot, on a two-track reel-to-reel. And just as he played the last lick, the same thing happened—the tape ran out. The really weird thing? It was the same engineer both times—Jim Gaines.

I have to say a word about Jim and the other engineers Santana
has been blessed to have in the studio and sometimes on the road. Fred Catero, Glen Kolotkin, Dave Rubinson, Jim Reitzel—they’ve all been instrumental in our success through the years, and I feel they all need to be honored. Jim Gaines worked with so many great artists, from Tower of Power to Steve Miller to Stevie Ray Vaughan, before he came to us. He brought a really earthy quality to the sound and did what he did without any ego—he was a pleasure to work with. He was with Santana just as things were going from analog to digital, so he helped with that transition and was as great with the computer as he was with the knobs. Recording technology was up to thirty-six tracks at that time, before Pro Tools came around, but he was really patient and knew what to say and when to say it in a very gentle way that would help make the music a lot more flowing.