Carlos Santana: From the Mountain to the Desert

Do you remember your first ever music festival?

I do, because I think it was the only one that I ever went to. It was it was Gloria Trevi's La Rossa Blue and it was at Western Playland where Celina and I random with them because I was obsessed with Gloriat Revi for like a brief. Well I still I'm obsessed with her. But what was I know that you love music festivals, and also what was your first one?

Okay, first of all, I don't love music festivals. Like, who what are you talking?

Oh?

Okay, okay, you're right, you're you're a concert girl.

I'm a concert girl. I love music.

I am not like a big music festival person only because listen, I'm gonna just tell it like it is.

I'm a little bougie, Okay. I don't like Kraus.

I don't like to be hot and uncomfortable, and oftentimes at music festivals you're like side all day, You're like super sweaty.

There's a corda potties.

Okay, like you you catch what I'm saying here, right, Okay, So I haven't been to like a ton of music festivals.

I don't even remember.

It was probably something like super local and very lame in like Dallas.

When I was in high school. I'm trying to remember.

I think there was one that had like a lot of like local bands, kind of like almost kind of like a battle of the bands.

That was probably my very first music festival.

I didn't go to like what kids go to now, which is the equivalent like Coachella or Bonnerou, Like, I didn't grow up going to music festivals like that.

What would you say as a first music festival?

Do you think it was here in the history of festivals? Yeah, I mean it has to do Woodstock.

No, I don't know, no for sure, because Woodstock is like what you think of when you hear the word music festival, and Woodstock in nineteen sixty nine would define the popular image of an American music festival for decades. The endless crowds, the peace and love hippie vibes, legendary performances of course, and lots and lots of drugs.

But that's not to say Woodstock was a first music festival, since, at least earlier in the sixties, jazz and blues festivals had gone up in Europe and Stateside. Woodstock was preceded by rock festivals like Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival in northern California.

There was also the Monterey International Pop Festival just outside San Francisco, where Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin's Unforgettable sets launched their careers on a wave of hype.

Those earlier festivals drew crowds in the tens of thousands. Woodstock, on the other hand, took the festival organizers completely by surprise and drew about half a million festival lowers.

To give you guys some perspective in present day terms, Coachella's capacity is about half of that.

Imagine Carlos Santana staring out over a crowd of five hundred thousand people. He just turned twenty two a little under a month ago, and the band around him has only been playing together for a couple.

Of months, and Carlos himself, as an instrumentalist, had seen little more than the CD bars at Tijuana, the bohemian streets of Payde Ashbury, and the moodlit stage at the Fillmore this was beyond his imagination.

In more ways than one.

When Carlos stepped on stage, he was fully tripping on psychedelics he had taken earlier that day courtesy of The Grateful Dead as Jerry Garcia, under the impression that their set.

Would be later.

I mean has that.

I've been there, done that, but I diago.

Rest Carlos would describe watching the neck of his guitar turn into an electric snake. Still he went on stage. What stands out to you the most, besides the trippy electric snake being on the neck of his guitar, what stands out to you most from Carlos's Woodstock performance?

Okay, well two things. One, that crowd is is massive. It's like it's there's so many people. They they look like nothing. I've never seen that, Like, there's so many people. It looks just kind of like.

It's distorted there. They look naked.

But number two, back to the snake on the guitar, is his eyes are kind of closed the whole time. He's probably like nervous to look like as he's playing, he's like, eyes are really like tight.

He's not here, Joseph, Yes, he's in another way.

He's in like in a place of his zuch.

Yeah, what did you notice?

I just think the sheer level of raw talent that's coming out of him and spilling out of him like it's unstoppable. It's like, you know, there's people that are meant to do something right, Like certain people are meant to, like, you know, like be an amazing chef, Like certain people are meant to, like, you know, be a designer. This man was put on this earth to play the guitar.

Like how crazy.

It's just because if you just know it, like that is your purpose, and that is someone's You're seeing someone's purpose in front of you. It's really amazing. It's it's incredible. He's literally a child, like he's like twenty years old.

He literally just looks so little on that stage.

And I also, I can't.

Even imagine what he was fucking thinking.

Being in that crowd is my worst nightmare come to life.

Yeah, Like, and I imagine thinking that your guitar is a snake.

Well, I'm sure people were thinking all kinds of things. That was not a sober festival. Let's just let's just say what is I imagine that for people that attended Woodstock And I've interviewed people about this before, it's like a life defining moment, right, Like it changed the trajectory of like who they are as human beings, like everything. It's like it's a life changing thing that only happens

So we're not going to go back in time and do our research.

There is what you're saying.

We were not Unless there's a VIP box, I'm not going to Woodstock. Santana didn't get what you'd call top billing at Woodstock. The biggest draws at the festival were, of course, artists like Hendrix and Joplin, but for the crowd that got to hear the band, Santana was a revelation, and in a stroke.

Of legendary timing, Santana's debut album would drop.

The friday after the festival concluded.

Santana, the band's self titled debut spent two years on the Billboard two hundred Pop chart, peaking at number four three months after its release.

By the time the band closed out nineteen sixty nine by playing The Ed Sullivan Show, Santana had become a household name.

This is the very definition of overnight success. Fortune had completely changed Carlos's world on the world of his bandmates, but.

This title way those success would just as quickly be followed by rough waters and sinking tides.

I'm your host, Lilianavosquez and I'm Joseph Carrio and this is Becoming an icon a weekly podcast where we give you the rundown on how today's most famous latinv stars have shaped pop culture.

And given the world some extra level.

Sit back and get comfortable.

Because we are going in the only way we know how, with buenas bras, unasriesas, some cheesemay, and a lot of opinions as we relive their greatest achievements on our journey to find out what makes them so iconic.

Let's rewind a bit after Carlos Santana's fateful Sunday matinee filling in for Paul Butterfield at the Fillmore the Santana blues band became a hype worthy act.

A couple years before their historic set at Woodstock, the band got the opportunity to open for the British rock act The Who.

But most of the band showed up late.

Bill Graham, founder of the Filmore and eventual manager for Santana, shouted at Carlos, who had arrived earlier than the others. Santana would say, these other cats were just blowing it, putting Colonna on themselves and all this shit.

Just weeks earlier, Carlos had been hospitalized for tuberculosis. He spent in his hospital stay having a series of bad trips thanks to his psychedelics, his friends and mates would sneak in for him.

In other words, he was dying to get back on stage and this is the situation that greeted him when he did.

Probably thanks to nerves, Carlos kept breaking his guitar strings on stage. The set would saved when The Who's drummer, Keith Moon, who had shown up earlier, passed him a guitar.

Midway through Santana's set.

It was Pete Townsend's guitar.

The lead guitars of The Who, Carlos made damn sure not to break any strings this time.

Afterwards, Santana's drummer, percussionists, and bassists were swiftly fired from the band. Carlos and keyboardist vocalist Greg Raley remained, while Carlos brought in replacements for the rhythm section.

This opening gig was two years before Woodstock, but it would foreshadow just as much about the band's trajectory as that fateful festival set.

We mentioned that the band that played Woodstock had only been playing together for a few months. That's because during the recording sessions for Santana's self titled debut album, there was another line up.

Chain Damn, he changed his mind more than I do when I'm getting dressed. Okay, Carlos and Greg Rowley were disappointed with the recordings that came out of the initial sessions, leading them to once again shuffle the rhythm section.

Thus the classic Santana lineup was formed.

Okay, so here's the band.

Carlos on guitar, Greg Rowley on keys and vocals, David Brown on bass, Michael Strevan drums, and Michael Carabello and Jose Cipito Adias on percussion.

Side note, we know, it's a lot of names.

Oh my god, so many names.

Remember we're in the almost famous part of the story, so there's as many names as there are substances, big egos and dramatic gigs.

Flash cards are encouraged, but we digress.

All in all, the self titled record was the culmination of a total of three attempts to record a debut.

Bill Graham, the scene promoter who had screamed at Carlos for his absentee bandmates during the gig opening for the who came on as the band's manager for the debut.

Graham advised the band to record songs, not long instrumental gems, resulting in hit singles.

Like evil Ways, You've got to change your evil Ways, bab something like that.

Are you trying to tell me something.

Early on nothing I haven't already told you at Happy Hour?

Well you're going to get an earful at the next one. Moving right along.

Santana, the record was a collection of punch your singles and free flowing yet self contained instrumentals.

The band rocketed to success, but by the time the band had recorded their follow up Abraxas, Carlos had come.

To find that success wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

Abraxas gave us two more stone Cold Santana classics, black Magic Woman and the Tite cover Oyava. Listening to those now, you'd hardly know the band behind them was circling the drain.

Carlos would reflect on the time, say saying I would turn on the radio and ABD Access would be on every station just about and I found myself more and more depressed, and I'd found myself crying. The band was deteriorating, and my friends who I grew up with were total strangers to me.

We started sounding like crap.

What is sitough? I hate when the friend group starts to fizzle.

Well, the band did more than fizzle, as certain members of the band got more and more into harder drugs and Carlos continued to use psychedelics. There are Once legendary live shows started to deteriorate.

Carlos would share that he would wake up screaming from recurring nightmares about his manager shouting at him saying quote, You're nothing, You're unprofessional, You're a piece of shit. He would walk around in a cold sweat.

I gotta say it sounds like that opening gig for the who definitely left a bigger impression on him than Wouldstock.

And yet the band is on record as saying Carlos's head had gotten quote as big as Humpty Dumpty, and Carlos agrees. So it's not like Carlos was the only non diva in the room. It was to borrow the hippie parlance a bad scene.

Man.

I've seen enough movies about rock bands in the nineteen sixties and seventies to know that the toxic cocktail of drugs, egos and record deals is like puts a nail in your coffin, Like that is it that you're done?

Right, especially because there's just so many cooks in the kitchen and everyone thinks that they're like important. You know.

Well, obviously personalities I think play a huge role in that conflict. But I really think it was the rock star lifestyle that dominated the music scene in the sixties and seventies. I mean it's not like that today, like it is. It's just first of all, it can't be.

Well, but there's also not really bands.

There are what are you talking good yet? What there are bands?

Like?

Like?

Who named five bands right now?

The White Stripes okay, I mean that's a band. Okay, okay, okay, Mumford and Sons.

Name good band?

No, but you know what I mean, Like, I feel like there's just not a lot of bands circulating like there used to be, like everyone was in a band. There wasn't really like a lot of of solos. So like now I feel like there's.

Mus is it muses a band? I don't know.

I mean, are these people even relevant? Still? Bands don't exist? Who is a band now?

Form about the Strokes are a band?

Like?

Oh yeah, okay, okay, Green Day's a band?

Yeah yeah, okay, I don't know.

Are you modest mouse? I'm like trying to think of like old bands.

Oh, you're right, but those are kind of old bands. But I'm saying, you know, you're still talking about like you know, Matchbox twenty, like you're still there. I'm talking about now, who's a band now? What new band has performed? They're all kind of individuals. Like a new band.

Like Kirvana, not Pearl Jams.

No, no, no, a new band like this time imagine Dragons.

That's like a new band, isn't it.

Gosh? Yeah, that's still like true.

That's two thousands so I feel like Top forty used to have a lot more bands back in the day, and now it's.

Just even like solo case.

Now it's more single people.

Yeah, right, Like nobody's like, Oh I love like the artists band's song.

That is exactly what I'm talking about. More like that where you know, then the bands would break up.

The band, I really do. I love a band. I love a duo. You know, I love Hollan Oakes.

Oh there is a lot of drugs and there's massive ego.

They just broke up. Saddest day of my life. I know, I know, no what.

Wow, finally you're right, there's no more bands.

I told you ends up being right. You're always right.

And recorded one last album with the classic Santana lineup, Santana three. The album saw seventeen year old guitarist Neil Sewan joined the band and gave us the single No One to Depend.

On, Oh Cut Steep.

Santana three reached number one on the Billboard two hundred, a first for the band, but amid the band's peak success came peak pressure, and by the time the tour for Santana three was set to kick off, Carlos staged an ultimatum.

He insisted that Carabello, the band's percussionist, leave the band or else Carlos.

Would walk, and the band sided with Carabello.

Bay started the tour without Carlos.

Okay, I don't know what the beef was. You might have to hear about it from your local aging hippie. But when the namesake member of your band threatens to walk, how do you think the shows are going to go?

I mean, your band is literally named Santana.

It's you, it's your band.

Too many drugs, bro, too many drugs, and the show's were terrible. Santana played several shows without Santana. La crowd understandably was pissed and shouted for the band to bring out Carlos.

When Carlos finally returned to the band, he found that the two percussionists had quit, along with their manager at the time, Stan Martin.

The rock band that put Afro Cuban rhythms on the map for American rock fans, found itself without a percussion section.

But in a stroke of luck, not unlike Heath Moon, handing Carlos a new guitar. A percussionist who had recently seen the band live offered his services. The band would play another.

Day until December nineteen seventy one, the group arrived in Lima, Peru for a much anticipated gig at a university, only to be detained by the police.

During Prue's military dictatorship of the seventies, rock music was cast as an alienating and Yankee art form, leading the police to crack down.

On the show, so the band's equipment was confiscated and they were banned from the country.

Band in Peru would be a sick album title for a different group, but.

For Carlos, the experience was a wake up call. He began to take more and more ownership over the band in its creative direction, beginning with nineteen seventy three's Caravan Sarai.

More on that in a bit, but for now, suffice it to say it's a stranger, more experimental album than the record Santanna had put out until then.

And Greg Rowley, the last remaining classic member of the band other than Carlos, decided that this new direction wasn't for him.

Along with recently added guitarist Neil Shown, he took his leave and the two of them went on to form a Journey Don't stop believe.

Like that's fucking crazy.

I think they left the band and then went on to start journey. Like there's like certain cities that I want to go back to at certain times. I want to be in San Francisco during this era, like what is this nineteen seventy three, Like I want to be there.

I also want to be in New York City at Studio fifty four, and so take me, let's go together.

And Carlos didn't stop believing, but he and the rest of the band didn't forget either. The bad blood from the implosion of the classic Santana lineup would linger for years.

Obviously, no one likes getting fired, but this was deeper than that.

For some of Carlos's bandmates.

This confirmed a sneaking suspicion they'd had all along that Carlos thought the band was his and his alone.

I mean it's right there in the name Santana and.

Two self titled albums to boot.

All in all, the original lineup wouldn't reunite for another recording until four decades later.

For the moment Carlos was alone before the break, we mentioned Santana's last album with the remaining members of the classic lineup Cara van Sarat.

Starting with this album, Carlos began to embrace more free form jazz, fusion and the tradition of heroes like John Coltrane.

He also let his spiritual flag fly.

The inner cover of the vinyl album carried a poem from Hindu American monk Para Mahansa Yogananda, reading.

The body melts into the universe, The universe melts into the soundless voice, The sound melts into an all shining light, and the light enters the bosom of infinite joy.

Career Suicide.

That's what the Columbia Records president told Carlos Santana upon hearing the record.

Okay, this feedback was a bit harsh and not totally accurate.

The album reached number eight on the Billboard two hundred, a step down from the chart topping success of Santana three, but not quite Career Suicide.

Still, Santana's complete departure from pop rock soundcraft did put him in a lower rung than before.

But hey, maybe that's okay, right. The band got way too big, way too fast. A smaller spotlight can be a good thing. Sometimes, you know, you don't need the spotlight on you because you just feel like you also just are alienated and it's okay, I take a step yeah, but there's more even light on other people.

I think for somebody who has that like big first brush with fame, it can almost like get in your head, right, and it can create some like roadblocks.

And I also think just some like Foster syndrome moments for you. And I think that taking.

A step back and kind of being like wait, as I let me figure my shit out, let me like try and like go back to what I love and who I am. Let me like let me center, right. So I think that's all it is. Like taking a step back isn't back. It's like lateral, right, because they're like, oh, they took a step back, Like nobody went back, like you have the success that you're going to have, like you have the raw gifts that God gave you, Like

Does that make sense totally?

And also yeah, and I think that at that time, you know, he didn't have anybody to kind of talk to remind him of the greatness that.

He could just kind of abandon by.

Really level out and start again.

He was he was literally.

Well for probably for a reason. You don't leave that.

Not everybody is going to fucking leave you, you know, like everybody, So he needs this time to start.

Everyone does.

As a famous figure, Carlos had been to the mountaintop, but emotionally and spiritually he had been under the ocean.

He was ready for that to change.

In the early seventies, he began to practice a fasting and praying. He read every book about Eastern mysticism and philosophy he could.

Get his hands on, and around the same time he would meet the woman he'd call his wife, Deborah King.

The daughter of blues musician Sanders King.

Debra spotted Carlos from across the room at Tower of Power concert.

Carlos would say that the first time she came to his house, she smelled like something he wanted to wake up next to for the rest of his life.

Wait, that's all get cute.

A lot of people tell me that I'm serious.

Well wait, but Deborah wasn't the only person Carlos would meet who would leave an impact on his life.

In nineteen seventy two, Carlos and Deborah together embraced the teachings of a Guru three chin Mooi.

Under Chinoy's regimen, Carlos and Deborah cut their hair, took on spiritual names Deva Deep and Urmila, respectively, and followed a strict regimen of vegetarianism and abstinence from drugs.

Carlos would describe it as a West Point approach to spirituality. Followers of gin Mooi would wake up at five o'clock in the morning to meditate on a picture of the Guru.

Debora and Carlos would compete with each other to prove their devotion, seeing who could run longer, who could sleep the least and still function.

If this sounds a bit alarming.

Well, I mean yeah no, that's a call.

Yo, That's like a Netflix special ready to play, right? And what's more, when Carlos volunteered his guitar playing to help with meditation sessions, Ginoy's group would promote the sessions as Santana performances.

Despite all this, Carlos considered Chimoy to be a divine figure, literally at the seat of God.

His words, Carlos and De would remain a part of Chinmoy's following for nine years.

Until one day the Guru said something Carlos couldn't abide. In the middle of preaching, CHINOI went on a homophobic tirade about champion tennis player Billy Jean King.

You know those gurus are always trouble hating.

Avoid them always, and that's not.

Carlos right out of it, He and Deborah left Chinmoy behind.

Then Chinmoi forbid all of Carlos's friends within the following from contacting him. The Guru said that Carlos quote was to drown in the dark sea of ignorance for leaving him.

Okay, coming out of a non toxic person's mouth, that would be a hell of a breakup.

Line death, saving that one for next time, Damien.

Having been excommunicated from the cult of Chinmoy, Carlos was again alone.

He had released a number of studio albums under the Santana Moniker following the exit of his classic lineup. The first four records, Welcome, Barboletta, Amigos and Festival, expanded on the more experimental jazz fusion sounds of nineteen seventy two's Cara Mount Serai.

Despite the more modest commercial success, these four were well praised by critics. Then came nineteen seventy eight's Inner Secrets, which was a return to rock.

It did a bit better on the radio than its predecessors, but as Santana entered the eighties, Carlos saw the group's relevance fading.

Santana's album slid farther and farther down the charts. Come eighty five, the group attempted to emulate the popular synth driven rock of the time with the album Beyond Appearances. When I listened to the first track off this album, I was so confused.

It was like, this can't be Santana.

If I wasn't doing research for the show and listening for that purpose, i'd have been like, Oh, that's some like long forgotten about eighties band that no one cares.

Yeah, that's what exactly it's giving.

You know, It's just that I hear it.

But it just goes to show you, like authenticity is so important and central to your success, Like, don't be Santana trying to cover eighties scynth, Like, just be Santana.

The people will find you.

They you know, because your sound is unique and people want you for you, and I feel like this, this does not.

Do him service. It's like a just service.

You know.

If he would have made this, I hate you if he would have made this for like the Olympics, almost right, like the Olympics commercial.

It just sounds so sporty, don't you think?

It's just definitely not what I think of when I think of the classic Santana sound like.

It's just this should have been on Rocky or some like weird cheesy.

Movie, some eighties cheeseball movies.

He totally.

Unfortunately, beyond appearances, was Santana's worst performing album yet. On the next album, nineteen eighty seven's Freedom, Santana attempted a course correction and returned to the original Latin rock sound, but the public wasn't interested.

Carlos Santana was once on the mountaintop. Now he was wandering the desert.

And it would take a mystical vision to show him the way out.

On the next Becoming an Icon, Santana gets supernatural and re enters the charts. Becoming an Icon is presented by Sonoo and Iheart's Michael Durda. Podcast Network Listen to becoming an icon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple

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