In nineteen eighty five, Carlos Sanbana played live Aid the historic benefit concert that was organized to raise aid money for the tragic Ethiopian famine.
Dubbed the Day rock and Roll Changed the World, the benefit raised over one hundred million for famine belief across the pond. Acts like Queen U two and David Bowie played legendary sets at Wembley Stadium.
On the American leg of the benefit in Philadelphia, Carlos Santana played the same stage as contemporaries from his heyday such as Joan Bias, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, and Eric Clapton, as well as younger artists of the day like Duran, Duran and Madonna.
Close to ninety thousand people attended the concert, and lively telecasts drew an estimated TV viewership of one point nine billion worldwide.
This is the second era defining live show Carlos Santana has played in his lifetime, and the organizer of the American leg of the tour is the same promoter who gave Carlo his start, Bill Graham.
Carlos is once again taking part in rock and roll history, but while Woodstock launched him to start him, Live Aid found him approaching the low point in his career.
I'll be honest, I didn't even know that he played Live Aid, Like it just skipped my mind because I only go to Queen.
I mean, honestly same. But I will say maybe we were just not listening to the sound, just more the words. I think I was just distracted by Queen all times.
Like if Queen's in the building, I'm not paying attention to anything else. It's just what's happening. But back to Santana. Santana's latest studio album at that point, nineteen eighty five is Beyond Appearances, was his worst performer yet, and his next three studio albums would only continue his slide down the charts.
With Live Aid, Carlos Santana was helping heal the world with his music, but the world, for the most part, wasn't hearing his music.
But little does he know that that will all change with patience and a bit of spiritual guidance. I'm your host Lilianavoscaz.
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.
Leuble Sit back and get comfortable.
Because we are going in the only way we know how, with Whenas, Buenasriesas and a lot of opinions as we relive their greatest achievements on our journey to find out what makes them so iconic.
Carlos Santana's work during the eighties may not have left much of an impression on audiences, but the projects that kept him busy were often personal to him.
Starting in nineteen seventy nine, Carlos worked on solo albums i e. Under the name Carlos Santana rather than simply Santana.
Working solo allowed him to freely collaborate with artists like Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Wayne Shorter. These albums saw Carlos delve even further into jazz fusion.
He also made an excursion into text mix with nineteen eighty three's Havannah Moon. The album even concludes with collaboration between Carlos and his father, Jose.
The song Veede Tropical is a lushly orchestrated serenade from an old Mexican film that Jose used to sing to Carlos's mother.
And in nineteen eighty seven, Carlos would record Blues Versalvabod, an album dedicated to his son, which would win him his first ever Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
So while it's easy to write off the eighties as a wash for Santana the band, for Carlos Santana, you could say it was a decade of healing and growth.
He became a father and continued to engage with his spirituality on his own terms, i e. Sans Guru, thank God.
But when it came to the band that had been the vessel for Carlos's fame, Carlos was frustrated.
He felt that he had spent the decade trying to appease his label, Columbia Records, by pursuing whichever artistic direction they deemed best.
The synth driven, feel good pop rock of beyond Appearances, the classic rock course correction on nineteen eighty seven's Freedom, It's an era of flailing and flops.
So he parted ways with his record label of more than twenty years and signed to Pollodor in nineteen ninety two.
But Carlos would have to say some more difficult goodbyes in the early nineties.
His first record for the new label, Milagro, features a number of tributes to the deceased.
The album features Bob Marley and Marvin Gay covers, both of whom had passed away the previous day, but.
The most strongly felt tributes came at the very beginning and the very end of the album.
Milago's first track opens with an early recording of Bill Graham, Santana's long time off and on manager, introducing the band on stage in the nineteen seventies. Graham had died the year before Milago's release in a tragic helicopter accident on the way back home from a concert.
The tracks that closes the album, Avios, is just a minute and twenty seconds long, closing out an otherwise lively album. It's some sad ass shit.
The lyrics are simply Avios, Misa, Milos, Avios Astamaniana, Goodbye, my friends, Goodbye until Tomorrow. It closes with the sample of Miles Davis playing the saxophone. Davis, another hero of Carlos's, had passed away within a month of Bill Graham.
I mean it was really sad. I felt like it just opens up very emotional and to take it all the way to the end. It's just kind of like turbulent or something. I don't know, it's it can speak to you if you're there mentally, and especially if you've had a little microdoser too. I love you. Unfortunately, Mila gru was Santana's first album to fail to crack the top one hundred on Billboard. After that blow, the band took a break from recording.
The next release, Sacred Fire, was a live album compiled from the group's live performances in Mexico. Released in nineteen ninety three. The album is dedicated to another hero of Carlos's, says IV Chavis, the agriculture workers rights leader who died earlier that year.
With his heroes falling all around him, Carlos looked for inspiration within and then the great beyond. Okay, Leana, question for the ask away, if you could pick one deceased, famous person, artist, whoever to have a conversation with for two hours, who would it be? Oh God, I know, Oh god, you're gonna be still, thought Jerry. I thought.
I'm not.
I'm not.
I'm not.
I'm not.
I'm not, I'm not. I'm really not. I actually would really love to speak with Carl Lagerfeld, whoa only because it's interesting how the people that have run Chanelle have
so much controversy around them, including Coco herself. There's a lot of fodder and and rumor, and I just find him so fascinating And he was always on my bucket list of people that I thought I would interview in my lifetime, just because I've had the opportunity to interview so many incredible designers and I never got a chance to interview Karl. And I think that if I got two hours with Carl, I'd probably never forget the two hours of the rest of my life.
For the rest of your life.
So that's just like a famous designer, less of like a you know, global icon luminary, but just somebody very niche to me, who I think is just fascinating and also quite scary. So it would be a really interesting challenge on a personal level as well. What about you?
I love that answer so much. Mine is just because this is the very first person that I you know, I never wanted to be a celebrity makeup artist. It just kind of happened. But someone that I really wanted to work with my whole life just because it's who I looked up to. It was Brittany Murphy.
Oh my god.
I wanted to be a celebrity makeup artist just so I can fucking do Brittany Murphy's makeup. That's all. That's all I wanted. I moved to New York and boom wow. I just want to chat with her. I just want to chat with her about her life, like I want to get to know her. And I have no idea, you know why. I was so so so drawn to her, And everyone's like, out of anyone, I've just what happened to Brittany Murphy?
Well, ansoy energetically, you're just attracted to who you were attracted to.
I mean, yeah, okay, Well, Leleana, what if I told you that on Carlos Santana's fifty second birthday he was visited by the coast of Miles Davis for two hours?
I would say, can ghosts actually play instruments? Like did Miles Davis have a little trumpet? Was there trumpet in the room? Like why is he showing up if there's not a trumpet?
But I think he was celebrating his fifty second birthday as Santana. Would you know what I'm saying.
I'm saying true, true, true.
Well, according to Carlos, the two of them just hung out and chatted.
Okay, gotcha. Yes, I believe in a way that Carlos could have spoken to Miles Davis for two hours on his birthday.
But do you believe it was actually Miles Davis?
I think that you know what, Let's just leave the dead bee and get back to telling the rest of the story with Santana.
Okay, good call. According to Carlos, Miles Davis isn't the only spirit from Beyond to have paid him a visit. He's also stated that spirits have win on offers he's received to play for popes and presidents.
For all we know, he asked John Lennon and Jimmy Hendrix whether he should play Live Aid. It's to say Carlos takes a ton of stock in his heroes, living or Dot.
And by the nineteen nineties, many of Carlos's biggest heroes had passed on, making the spirits his most trusted advisors.
At his home in San Rafael, California, Carlos Santana had developed a regular meditation practice and the little annex separate from the main house.
This annex, which he dubs the church, is where Carlos retreats to commune with the beyond and to play the guitar without disturbing the family.
And it's where on a quiet night in nineteen ninety four, Carlos enters a deep meditation and is visited by the angel Metatron.
Medatron is an angel mentioned in Jewish and Islamic scriptures, as well as in mystical practices such as Kabbala and Stuphism. There's even obscure text that named Metatron as an angel that led the Jews out of the.
Desert, and Metatron would just so happen to be the figure to lead Carlos Santana out of his own creative desert.
As Carlos tells it, the angel delivered him a message quote, you will be inside the radio frequency for the purpose of connecting the molecules with light.
With this news, the angel also instructed Carlos to be patient, gracious, and grateful.
To Carlos, Metatron's message is a clear one. He will record a new album that will once again bring his music to the radio for the purpose of connecting the masses to the spiritual message he had now received and invigorated.
Carlos shares the news with his wife, Deborah, whom Carlos credits as his most trusted business advisor at the time. She encourages him to meet with the president of aris To Records, Clive Davis.
Clive Davis just so happens to be the same executive who signed Santana to Columbia Records back in the sas seventies.
Carlos feels pregnant with a masterpiece of joy in his belly. That is a direct quote. I did not make that up.
I was like, wait, I know right.
Anyway, he cuts ties with Polydor Records and sets up that meeting with Davis.
Each night leading up to the meeting, during his nightly meditation, Carlos chance for Davis twenty seven times.
When they finally meet in a Los Angeles hotel room, Clive Davis gets very close to Carlos's face and asks, what does Carlos Santana want to do?
Carlos repeats the words of the Angel Metatron quote, I'd like to reconnect the molecules with light and instead of slamming the door in Carlos's face. Davis continues to talk to Carlos.
Carlos convinces Davis that he isn't stuck in the sixties, and Davis resolves to find hit songs that will put Santana back on the radio.
It's a little less cut and dry than that. There's competing interests from other labels and the always spandy Emi, But in the end, Santana signs with Arista Records, with Carlos feeling that he's in a safe hands with.
Davis and he's kind of right with Davis at the helm. On the label side, Carlos has access to Grammy winning hit makers like Casey Porter, The Dust Brothers, Dante Ross, and John Gamble.
The approach to this new album will be a bit similar to the hit making formula of the first Santana record, half instrumentals and half radio ready pop.
Sings, but the radio environment of the late nineties means that these songs need recognizable vocals to become hits.
Enter Matchbuck twenties, Rob Thomas, do you remember, first of all, I know you had it. Do you remember how big of a hit this was at the time? Smooth hit.
It's like there's lots of hits, you know what I mean, Like this thing not leave the airways. It was like a complete and total earworm, Like you couldn't stop singing it, you couldn't stop hearing it. Everyone was playing it. It's also timing wise, like for me, it was like what we needed at the time, like that fusion between rock and la. I don't know it was. It had been missing for me.
You know, it's funny you say that because I would hear it and I would change it just because I you know, I know, hold On, don't get kind of Santana. I love you, but I just didn't like how it started, Like I don't like the very loud, long beginnings of
those songs. But while that was going on, do you remember the timeframe I was listening to like No Scrubs, I was listening to the Heartbreak Hotel, Like I remember those songs being on at the same time that this song was on, and every time I would hear it, I would change it.
I mean, the late nineties for music were like such a mood like these kids today. I don't know what you call what you listen to, but like it was such it was such a vibes like we had no scrubs, we had like Janet Jackson, like OI match, but I don't know, it was just but yes, I very much remember hearing this song. I remember like driving. I think I graduated maybe the year before the song came out, so it was like a very transitional emotional year for me,
and I loved it. It's like it's I considered this song to be one of the songs of like the soundtrack to My Life.
Whoa whoa fuck Okay, whoa?
And not only was it everywhere, but it topped the charge for twelve consecutive weeks after being leaked on the radio on June first, nineteen ninety nine. This was Santana's very first number one single, and smooth.
Kicked off a parade of hit singles put Your Lights On, Maria, Maria Guarason, Espinavo, Love of My Life, and Prima Venna.
And While this collection of singles featured a revolving door of vocalists from Dave Matthews to White Club Show On, Carlos Santana's guitar was the instantly recognizable constant.
Santana had been one of the defining artists of the seventies and now he was helping to define the pop music that closed out the nights.
Carlos had come of age during the Summer of Love, but nineteen ninety nine was the Summer of Santana. And side note, nearly two decades later, we would flash back to the Summer of Santana with DJ Khaled and Rihanna's Wild Thoughts, which heavily sample Santana's Madia Maria.
All in all, Supernatural, the album we've been talking about this whole time, would reach number one in eleven countries.
In the US, it was number one for twelve weeks straight and as of today, is fifteen times platinum and.
Nat the Grammy's Santana broke a record held by Michael Jackson's Thriller for most awards won in a single night. Supernatural one nine honors, including Album of the.
Year, which Carlos Santana was the first Latino to ever win.
Supernatural is one of the best selling albums of all time worldwide full stop, at an estimated thirty million copies as of today. So, if Carlos's mission was to reconnect molecules with the light, and there are several trillion molecules in each human body, and Santana sold thirty million copies of super Natural.
That means that means wait, wait, wait, wait, what does it mean.
That our boy is eating honey?
I think what you're trying to say is that Santana had not only returned to stardom, but had multiplied his stardom several times over. If Woodstock brought him to the mountaintop, Supernatural sent him soaring over the Milky Way.
It's not for us to say whether these unfathomable heights were part of the vision that was beamed to him by the angel Metatron, but sufficed to say this renaissance had cemented Carlos Santana's icon status for good.
Santana had rocketed back to stardom off the back of Savvi production and collaborations with chart topping vocalists. Carlos went on to repeat this formula with his follow up to Supernatural two thousand and two's Chaman.
Santana again topped the charts with the singles Game of Love featuring Michelle Branch, We Love Her and why Don't You? And I featuring Chad Kroger.
In fact, the majority of the track lists on the album featured artists from Macy Gray to Palasi do Domingo. This approach would be the defining feature for Santana's catalog throughout the two thousands.
Ending with twenty fourteens Guarason, which features a more Latin pop oriented cast of featured artists such as Lories Stefan, Miguel Pipo, Romeo Santos and more.
As singles like Game of Love became radio mainstays, so too did Carlo says unmistakable guitar sound. True to his word, he had proven that he was not stuck in the sixties.
Instead, his guitar became one of the most characteristically distinctive aspects of pop in the yants.
That said, if you were a longtime Santana fan, this new iteration of the band may not have scratched a certain itch for you.
Right. Michelle Branch and Chad Kroeger are great and all, But think of the sweaty crowd of half a million half naked music fans during Woodstock and Carlos on stage with this electric snake.
Well, the longtimers would soon be in for a treat. In twenty sixteen, Carlos would reunite with the bandmates he had both Soared and Tumbled with Neil Sean, Greg Rowley, Michael Schreb and Michael Carabello.
The band had reunited once before, in nineteen ninety eight for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, the year before Supernatural was released.
The band played Black Magic Woman, and in his induction speech, Carlos thanked his family, his bandmates Bill Graham and Clive Davis, and he gave props to his Latino musical forebears, starting with Richie Vallens.
The band played well together, but they didn't entertain the idea of recording another album. However, in the following years, Neil Shown, the guitarist who joined the band as a teenager and then soon left to form a Journey, repeatedly ran into Carlos in the Bay Area.
Sean was keen on the idea of getting the band back together, and he mentioned it to Carlos each and every time he saw him.
Carlos said that everywhere he went, Shown was there, and that quote his eyes became very vulnerable, very egoists, every time he mentioned the reunion.
One day, perhaps moved by shown sincerity, Carlos invited Sewn to his rehearsal space in Las Vegas.
Shown thought he and Carlos were having a meeting to discuss the possible reunion, but instead he arrived to find the whole band warming up. Carlos said to him, this is the meeting the reunion was on.
Carlos says quote. It was magical. We didn't have to try to force the vibe. It was immense. The band essentially picked up right where they left off, as indicated by the title of the resulting album, Santana four.
The cover of Santana four features a psychedelic depiction of a growling tiger's face, a psyched out throwback to the band's debut album cover, which featured a snarling line.
The opening track puts us firmly in classic Santana territory with the pounding drum and a call to Yamaya, the mother of all Rishas.
The album even features a track named after the venue where these musicians found each other, Fillmore East.
In a review for All Music, Tom Jurek writes, there remains a real musical connection and share joy between these players. They may not sound young, radical, or reckless, but they do come off as if they've never stopped playing and discovering together. Here's the deal with going back to I hate to say an ex but it's effectively an X
right with a band. I do think that despite whatever drama happened or whatever shit went down, like, it does not diminish the greatness that existed, right, Like, I don't believe that. I feel like, yes, it could have been like a shitty end to something, or there might have been something really big that happened, but it doesn't take away of the greatness or in this case, like the incredible legacy that they left behind as a band. I think that because Santana is so spiritual. I think he
did a lot of work on himself. His bandmates probably did a lot of work on themselves, and ultimately, like if you have two people that both do the work and come back together and are like, hey, let's try again, I think that's okay, right, I mean, I think that's to me, that is the ultimate sign of growth.
No, well, I think it's because you just remember the life. I hate to be all psychedelics in sixties because it's antenna, but you just remember the love that you have for them, and that's kind of what brings you back again, especially when you've done the work, You've been able to let go of the old demons and just really be present and focus on why you guys love doing what you did,
and all egos and all that shit aside. It's just kind of like like, for me, I had a falling out with a hairstylist who was a really close friend of mine. Yet every time we would work together, I could drop the fact that we were upset with each other and just really work beautifully together and ping pong ideas where it would just be collaborative again. But because we love what we do.
Yeah, yeah, that makes I think that makes perfect sense. I think that you can always separate the ego from.
The projects so much time.
Yeah, we're still learning it, We're all still learning. But I think that's exactly what brought them together, and I think that's why they were able to kind of put all of the drama behind them. Thankfully they did, because we got them back.
Hello.
Carlos Santana had set out to reconnect the molecules with the light, and over the course of his journey, he reconnected and found healing with his former bandmates and reinvigorated himself as an artist.
But Santana's next album, twenty nineteen's Africa Speaks, would see Carlos again assembling a new lineup. This time around, Carlo's sense of purpose drove him to foreground the sounds of the African continent and let the album serve as a vehicle for black vocalists.
So he invited British singer Laura Mavola and Spanish singer Boyka. Produced by Rick Rubin, the album was a critical and commercial success.
Two years later, however, Santan would release a follow up that returned to the feature heavy formula of nineteen ninety nine's Supernatural.
Twenty twenty one's Blessings and Miracles featured performers such as Chris Stapleton, Fifth Harmony's Ally Brook and once again Matchbox two Rob Thomas.
When asked about the shift in direction, Carlos pointed to the global pandemic. He felt that people needed hope and courage.
He went on to say that the album title comes from his belief that we're born with heavenly powers that allow us to create blessings and miracles, and that music is one such heavenly power.
For Carlos, the album was quote mystical medicine music to heal an infected world of fear and darkness. He felt called upon to touch people's hearts. The other radio, the.
Guy believes so deeply in the transcendent healing power of music, and he sees his own musical voice as a kind of medicine or elixir.
The duality of Santana is jam band versus pop accompanist. You have instrumentally focused jazz like trippy odyssey sounds that are meant for tuning in, turning on, and dropping out.
But on the other hand, you have these like very you know, super accessible, easy to buy to pop right where the futured vocalist is the sugar and his guitar is the medicine.
Medicine for the soul rather than the body. Because remember we're talking about a man who communes with the spirits every noche right right.
And while we don't all get our music the way that Carlos did when he was growing up, we stream rather than turn on the actual radio, we can still have that experience of unexpectedly hearing sounds we've never heard before, things that change how we think about music, that open our minds, heal our souls.
I'll see it one last time. HiT's a groovy scene, man, And whether you're a kid in Tijuana in the sixties turning a knob on the radio and hearing Richie Allens, or a kid today digging up music from years gone by on a streaming platform or.
Your parents' old ass CD collection.
The song remains the same and for Carlos Santana, it's a song worth playing every time.
On the next Becoming an Icon, a reggathon origin story from San Juan, Puerto Rico, home of King of Regathon. Becoming an Icon is presented by Sonoo and Iheart's Michael Duda podcast network. Listen to Becoming an Icon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast