The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (66 page)

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Authors: Carlos Santana

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts, #Biography & Autobiography / Composers & Musicians, #Biography & Autobiography / Rich & Famous

BOOK: The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light

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Me, Cindy, and Claude Nobs, 2011. (© Michael Vrionis)

Dolores Huerta, me, Angelica, Cindy, and Juana Chavez, December 2012. (© Santana Archives)

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greet Kennedy Center Honoree Carlos Santana and family in the Blue Room during the Kennedy Center Honors reception, December 8, 2013. (© Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

Santana Band, 2014: (L to R) Pepe Jiménez, Tony Lindsay, Benny Rietveld, Karl Perazzo, Tommy Anthony, me, Jeff Cressman, Paoli Mejias Ramos, Bill Ortiz, David K. Mathews, and Andy Vargas. (© Libby Fabro)

(L to R) Hal Miller, me, and Ashley Kahn in Woodstock, New York, June 15, 2014. (© Benny Rietveld)

Acknowledgments

There were a number of people who were supremely instrumental in assisting me in presenting this book. Ashley Kahn brought his writing skills and his consciousness to capture my voice and take the moments and memories and erect them into a building that feels like home to me and is an open invitation for anyone to learn and discover and experience a forever joy. Hal Miller sat and traveled with me, recording my stories and preserving the details and names and dates, and kept an overview of it all to make sure it was on a high road and maintained a balance of the different parts of my life—the domestic, the music, and the tried-and-true funky street psychology. I am grateful to the team that made this all possible—my book agent, Jillian Manus; public relations manager Michael Jensen; and Michael Pietsch and John Parsley at Little, Brown. They all believed in this book from the very beginning. My heart goes out to my two old friends from high school, Michael Carabello and Linda Houston, for sharing what they remembered about us back in my earliest days in America. I’m eternally grateful to my sister Maria and her husband, Michael Vrionis, for looking over my shoulder during all this, and to my wife, Cindy, for reading through every word and being at the center of my inner and outer support systems.

With Santana, I am now the head of a fast-rolling train, and I’m
responsible for many things that happen as we keep moving—concerts and recordings and products and now this book. Even if my A-Team of music and production professionals were not directly involved with the words on these pages, they are all in here in spirit. I like to remind them that if people don’t notice anything of what they do or their combination of experience, daring, and sheer focus, that’s because they’re doing a perfect job. I must give thanks to this team for their divine dedication and mention them by name.

Skip Rickert, our tour manager, formerly worked with Stevie Ray Vaughan throughout his whole career and also with major acts like Barbra Streisand, Guns N’ Roses, ZZ Top, and the Backstreet Boys. He makes sure the road is as clear as possible and has expanded our touring world by introducing us to new venues in Africa, India, and Europe. Assistant tour manager Libby “Mr. Thousand Rainbows” Fabro works with a quiet and efficient elegance and intention, always trying to make life on the road as comfortable and predictable as possible. Our production manager, Michael “Hoss” Keifer, takes care of everything we need onstage no matter the country or the situation and oversees the technical guys, making sure all the sound, lights, and video are at the same high level of presentation as the music. The Santana crew is the envy of many other touring bands—I’ve heard this again and again over the years—and a big reason for this is Hoss. Chris “Stubby” McNair does almost anything a stage tech can be asked to do and gets it done immediately—he’s Mr. Super Dependable, the guy responsible for maintaining and securing our equipment all year round. My guitar tech, Ed Adair, has been with Santana since the 1980s, and between the two of them I know every instrument’s going to be ready to grab and play. No matter where the gig is, Ed’s the one guy I know who will always be right by my side keeping everything in tune. I know that the Santana sound is going to hit the audience in the best way possible because of our sound engineers—Rob Mailman in the house and Brian Montgomery onstage. They are super important in making sure Santana is supremely present
and powerful in consistency, every night. Bob Higgins is the director in charge of our in-concert videos, which we added to our show after
Supernatural.
He does a great job of connecting the visuals with the spiritual center and rhythm of each song, including putting the audience themselves into the show.

The people at Universal Tone Management have been with Santana for decades now and are loyal and invaluable. I must thank Adam Fells, who’s been with us since before
Supernatural
and started out on the road and now touches almost everything we do. He’s our day-to-day, get-things-done man who knows the Santana history almost better than anyone. Rita Gentry, our link to Bill Graham and our incredible make-it-happen resource, knows how to deal with any challenge or any person. Micki Alboff’s been our office manager for over twelve years—she has the amazing talent of knowing exactly what’s happening with everything we’re doing at any time. My daughter Jelli runs the Santana archives and is doing a valuable job preserving the band’s history. There are many others in the office, and I cannot see how Santana or I could do what we do without them—all the concerts, the recordings, the business, and the travel. Even this book.

Finally, I am eternally grateful for the fans of Santana—so many of them have become family. After all these years on the road, they are the ones who still excite me and make me eager to get to sound check and rehearse new songs and show them that Santana still has it. I know many of them by name—like Kristin, Phillipine, Lisa, and Natalie, the four girls I first met in Vienna in 1989 and who’ve grown up with Santana’s music, faithfully coming out to hear us every year, and who are now adult women with families of their own. And Sara, the woman in Montreux who always gets up and dances so beautifully, as long as we’re playing a
guajira,
so we make sure we do that every time we are there.

I dedicated this book to my mom, but I could not have done that or had the stories to tell without the fans who have supported Santana since our beginning days in San Francisco and who are now everywhere around the world. Their supreme love and steady
support is why we continue to do what we do—this book stands in appreciation of them.

Ashley Kahn would like to personally amplify the gratitude expressed to John Parsley, Michael Jensen, Jillian Manus, and Michael and Maria Vrionis, and include thanks to his literary agent, Dave Dunton at Harvey Klinger, Inc., as well as to Adam Fells, Chad Wilson, Cynthia Colonna, Abigail Royle, Sonny Schneidau, Laurent Masson, and especially Hal Miller—his sparring partner on this literary and spiritual journey. He reserves his deepest appreciation for Carlos himself, with thanks for the opportunity to listen, to learn, and to know what it’s like to be unafraid to dream of the infinite.

About the Authors

C
ARLOS
S
ANTANA
was born in Autlán de Navarro, Mexico, in 1947. He is a guitarist, songwriter, and founding member of Santana. He has recorded or appeared on more than ninety albums. He lives in Las Vegas with his wife, the drummer Cindy Blackman.

A
SHLEY
K
AHN
was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1960. He is an author, journalist, educator, and production manager who has been in the music business since the 1980s. His books include
A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album.
He lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

H
AL
M
ILLER
was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1941. He is a jazz drummer, a writer, a frequent lecturer at music institutions, and one of the world’s foremost collectors of jazz videos. He has been a close friend of Carlos Santana for almost thirty years. He lives in Albany, New York.

Photograph Credits

Introduction
: © Santana Archives

Chapter 1
: © Santana Archives

Chapter 2
: © Santana Archives

Chapter 3
: © Santana Archives

Chapter 4
: © Harry Crosby / University of California, San Diego

Chapter 5
: © Santana Archives

Chapter 6
: © Santana Archives

Chapter 7
: © Jim Marshall Photography LLC

Chapter 8
: © Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images

Chapter 9
: © Bill Eppridge / Time Life Pictures / Getty Images

Chapter 10
: © Sony Music Entertainment