The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (59 page)

Now we also have Tommy Anthony, who came to us from Gloria Estefan’s band and is a triple threat—a singer with a high, clear voice; a great rhythm guitarist with an amazing vocabulary of rock chords; and he’s one of Miami’s best guitar soloists. And we have David K. Mathews on keyboards, who was with Tower of Power and Etta James before us. He’s become imperative to the band because he’s got knowledge of everything from Otis Spann and McCoy Tyner to Randy Weston and Eddie Palmieri. He also has tattoos depicting piano legends Fats Waller and James Booker.

The two newest members are Paoli Mejias Ramos on congas and José Pepe Jiménez on drums. They both have Puerto Rican roots and have brought their own authenticity and commitment, which gives the music a new feel but keeps us in a band situation—it’s not just me up front with guys playing parts and wearing the Santana jacket. I’d rather hear us taking chances and trying out new songs and having a bad performance than have an okay performance that just rubber-stamps all the old hits.

Before every Santana concert I still meditate for fifteen to twenty minutes, and anyone in the band is welcome to join me—it’s not required, but just about everyone comes by and joins the circle at least once in a while. I tell them, “Nothing is mandatory except you being one hundred percent present and playing your ass off onstage.” After meditating, I’ll have a pre-show huddle to talk about the show and go over new tunes or new segues or a new part of a song that keeps the show fresh and moving. We might try out something that came to mind because of something somebody said or something I heard on my iPod. We were in Monaco recently, and I decided we should try an O’Jays song I know, “I Love Music”—which has words about coming together and helping each other out and has great gospel energy. A perfect message for a hoity-toity dinner theater in that part of the world, right? Maybe we should have done “Rich Get Richer.” Anyway, we worked on it through sound check and backstage before the show. We only did it once, but it was worth it.

There’s a lot of money in Vegas—a
lot
. I know that’s not news to anyone. For me, there’s a feeling of possibility in that desert atmosphere—a crystallization of intent that could reach people in all parts of the world—which is something you don’t feel in other places. It’s like the difference between millions and billions. It’s not difficult there to meet with people like the head of Mandalay Bay or other performers and spread ideas about how to put some of this money to work and really make a difference. It’s starting to happen—just look at Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf’s foundation and what they’re doing right there with kids and schools in Las Vegas.

One night not long ago, my lawyer, John Branca, Michael, Cindy, and I had dinner with some top casino executives and their wives, and they were asking about Santana and how we keep it fresh and hit with so much energy after all this time. I told them, but then I said, “Look, man, I’m happy to answer these questions,
but I need for you to know two things from my heart. The first is that consciousness can be very profitable. The second one is this: here in Las Vegas you have the means and money and the talent to get together and create a nightly talk-and-music TV show that would beat anything that comes out of New York or Los Angeles. Just find the right host, someone who can be funny and who’s not predictable and who can get the right message across about how we can all best serve the planet.”

They looked at me like they were wondering just how serious I was, and they saw I was very serious. After a moment I said, “There’s nothing that’s not possible when you have supreme determination and undeterred vision.”

I miss certain things about the West Coast, but it’s just a ninety-minute flight to get back there, and I have learned to love Las Vegas and share it with Cindy, the new queen of my heart—watching the sunrise and the sunset together, so beautiful in the desert, meditating, exercising, playing guitar, listening to my favorite music, then eating with her at a really great restaurant, where I’ve gotten to know the chef and the people working there. Then my favorite thing—waking up the next day with Cindy, who is so soft—not only her skin but her mind and her heart—and then starting it all over again.

In February of 2010 Salvador had come out with a new record and had a party in Los Angeles. Deborah was there and came to greet me when I arrived and gave me a courtesy hug. I could tell the kids were all watching. The next day I flew back to Las Vegas and received a card from her saying that it was nice to see me. I called her and thanked her for the card. We were still working out how to handle ourselves with each other, but our priority was to do what was best for our kids—to be open and positive and respectful.

At that point two things happened: I consciously let go of feeling guilty about Deborah, both emotionally and psychologically, and I quit smoking—really quit smoking this time, not part-time.
I continued with the inner work, but it was different, like a huge door was opening to a room that had been closed for a long time. When I stepped into the room I could hear a voice saying, “Take a deep breath, clean up the place, brush your teeth, open the door, open your heart, and be vulnerable again.” I took a deep breath, and the air was refreshing and tasted different in my lungs. Then I heard, “Now invite your queen.”

The first time Cindy Blackman and I met nothing really happened. I wish I could say it did, but we were both in different places in our lives, and part of the joy in life is not having everything handed to you all at once. Only when you look back do you see how the story makes sense. It was 2002, and she was playing drums with Lenny Kravitz, and we were all at a rock festival in Germany. Dennis Chambers had been telling me, “Man, wait till you see this lady play. She’s killer.” So I stuck around to see Lenny’s show, and maybe it was the two songs I heard, but I didn’t hear what he was talking about. I was thinking, “Okay, hmm. When is she going to play?” What she was doing was basically holding the beat steady, as if she were holding a tray for somebody—the music didn’t want to let her go. But the next night was a revelation. Cindy took some great solos and played some crazy fills. That’s when I knew she really could play.

The more I have listened the more I have changed my perception of Lenny and his music. I have to thank him from the center of my heart, because he made it possible for me to know that Cindy existed. A few years later, Cindy’s sister Tracy, who’s a singer and guitarist, saw me eating at a restaurant in the Bay Area called Comforts. Suddenly there was a woman with beautiful red hair and freckles standing next to me, and with supreme confidence she said, “You’re Carlos Santana.” I said, “Hello,” and I was thinking she wanted me to sign something or take a photo. But instead she had one message to give me. “You need to meet my sister—she plays drums.” And of course I recognized the name when she told me. I said, “Okay, I’m very grateful.”

It still didn’t mean anything to me—Cupid hadn’t shot any
arrows yet. Then in May, we played a private show for a German electronics company in Orlando, and Dennis couldn’t make it because he had been booked with someone else. I heard a voice say, “Call Cindy.”

“Cindy?”

“Remember Cindy Blackman, who played with Lenny?” So I asked my production manager to do that, and we had already confirmed her when Rashiki and I got around to downloading some of her albums and listening to them while driving around. I was going, “Uh-oh. That’s not the same person I heard that time in Germany!”

Cindy was playing music on a different level from what I expected—improvising and setting up highly evolved grooves—and she had people like Patrice Rushen and Buster Williams playing with her. I could tell she had a lot of Tony Williams and some Elvin Jones in her music collection—later I got to know that she had learned a lot from hanging out with Art Blakey. She left a voice mail on my phone to talk about the music for the show. I called her back, and we went over the set list, then I went into my story about hitting the “wah,” which I tell every new person who comes into the band.

This goes back to something I saw in Africa when we played there in 1971—a circle of six or seven women who started chanting together, going “Hey ya na na na…” faster and faster, their voices chanting different parts, until they brought it all together at the same moment with a huge
“Wah!!”
It was amazing—all that energy at once. After that I started noticing the “wah” in Buddy Rich’s and James Brown’s and Duke Ellington’s and Tito Puente’s music, and that each has his own way of hitting the “wah”—or the 1. But the band cannot hit it too hard or go over the top—they need to visit it just enough, at the right time, to give it a collective consciousness.

We were getting ready to do the sound check in Florida a day before the Orlando show when I noticed Cindy walking slowly to the stage through the house, and she smiled and waved. She had
come down to check out the band before she played with us, and she was carrying something with her. She was dressed very plain Jane, like she was going to yoga class—plain but funky, with no makeup, which for me can be ten times more magnetic than glamour. She listened to the band, and I kept watching her out of the corner of my eye. There was a spirit in her that I could feel. I knew she was very excited to be there and play with us, which is exactly what I hope any musician will bring.

We met backstage after the sound check, and she presented me with a book—the catalog of a Miles Davis exhibition in Montreal. So I reached into the shoulder bag I always have with me and gave her my iPod, which was filled with every bit of Miles music I had collected over the years, much of it very hard to find. She went back to her hotel room, listened to the iPod, and found Paolo Rustichelli’s “Capri,” a beautiful melody with Miles playing on it. It’s such a beautiful melody that, looking back on it now, I’m almost sure she wanted to marry me on the spot. I’m kidding, but really with music like that I don’t think she stood a chance.

We did the show together in Orlando, and it went great, and she killed it. She knew all the parts, and her drumming reminded me of a hummingbird or an angry bee. Cindy has great time, but she’s not just a timekeeper; she isn’t about finding the pocket and just parking it. Then the rest is kind of personal, but I will say this—we got together and talked for hours, and I found myself showing her what we were doing with Santana, the Milagro Foundation, and a website called Architects of a New Dawn, which has some of my favorite videos. I realize now that what I was doing was trying to show her who I am personally, who I am outside of that Santana guitar guy.

The next day Cindy told me she had to leave for a gig with a Native American rock guitarist and singer: “I’m going to Santa Fe to play with Micki Free and his band.” I didn’t try to hide my disappointment. “Really? Why do you have to—” I couldn’t believe I heard myself saying that to another musician. “Why don’t you just stick around?”

“No, really—I have to make this gig.”

So Cindy left, and I grabbed Chad and said, “We need to go to Disney World.”

“Disney World? What for?” I didn’t have time to explain the whole thing to him, but somehow Cindy and I had gotten to talking about Mickey and Minnie Mouse the night before, so told him, “I got to find those Minnie Mouse ears with glitter so I can send them to Cindy.” We walked around for two hours to every store in that place—and there were a lot of them. The sales clerks kept sending us “that way” and “over there,” but most of them didn’t know what we were talking about. Chad was ready to have them custom-made. Just before we gave up I found two salesladies who said, “Oh, you mean the ones for little girls? Those are the only ones with glitter. Here you go.”

I relaxed and had them specially wrapped and brought them home with me—somehow I had a feeling that once I gave them to Cindy, something really remarkable was going to happen. And it did.

I am a resident of Nevada, but I also have a house high up in the hills in Tiburon, with an incredible view of the North Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. I invited Cindy to come visit me there when we were both off the road in June, and she accepted. I remember watching how she walked into my home, with a smooth gait like a panther’s, looking all around her. The house has big windows, and the day could not have been more beautiful, with the sun shining through and the sky and the bay each an incredible shade of blue. She came up to me and gave me what I call a kitchen hug—not just because of where it took place but also because it was long and tender and filled with a pledge of domestic devotion. It was sealed right there—and then I put the Minnie Mouse ears on her. Man, it was like being seventeen and in high school again and feeling in one moment all the passion and emotion that you think you’ll ever feel in your life. Well, more like fourteen and junior high.

We sat down, and I remember holding her hands and looking into her eyes and then hearing my own voice saying very softly, “Cindy, would you be my wife?” She was like a little girl. Her eyes sparkled and opened wide, and she said yes.

Of course I had to ask her father, Daddy Dude—that’s what I call him—for his permission. Since I asked Cindy to come along with Santana that summer and sit in with us every night, we waited a few weeks until the tour brought us to Chicago, where he lived. We went out to a soul food restaurant, and I waited for his answer. He looked at me, then he looked at Cindy for a long time and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her more happy, Carlos.”

The next night I couldn’t keep it inside me any longer. Cindy’s dad and his lady were at the concert, along with Buddy Guy’s wife and Otis Rush’s wife, too. It all felt like family. After Cindy sat in and took a drum solo on “Corazón Espinado,” I went up to the microphone and took the chance and in front of the audience at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheater in Tinley Park, Illinois, I asked her one more time to be my wife. Her answer was the same as it was the first time.

Cindy traveled with Santana through the end of 2010, sitting in almost every night—in fact, that’s never stopped happening. She’ll come out on tour with us or sit in at the House of Blues in Las Vegas even while she continues to make her own music happen—including her Tony Williams Lifetime tribute band, with Vernon Reid, organist John Medeski, and bassist Jack Bruce. At home I’ll watch her play drums—I mean really play—and look at her face, and I’ll say to myself, “This is what she was born to do with or without me,” and that’s absolutely okay. I feel sorry for anyone who would try to put himself between someone like her and what she loves, saying, “It’s either me or the music.” Excuse me? Well, you know how I feel about that.