“Take no prisoners — peacefully,” Carlos Santana generally tells his bandmates earlier than taking the stage.
“I don’t like to coast. I don’t like to rope-a-dope,” Santana says. “I want to get in the middle of the ring and knock the sucker out. That way the referee can’t steal the fight from me.”
Santana, 75, can nonetheless whip a crowd right into a frenzy like few others. He’s been doing it since he stormed onto the San Francisco scene within the late ’60s. He left the Woodstock viewers dazed and shocked earlier than the primary Santana report got here out.
The new documentary by Rudy Valdez, “Carlos,” which is premiering on the Tribeca Film Festival and will probably be launched this fall in theaters by Sony Pictures Classics, chronicles the meteoric rise of some of the singular guitar gamers in rock historical past. The critic Robert Christgau as soon as wrote: “He is less a man of style than of sound, a clear, loud, fluent sound that cleanses with the same motion no matter how often that motion is repeated.”
Santana, who launches the nationwide 1001 Rainbows Tour in Newark, New Jersey, on June 21, not too long ago spoke by Zoom from his Bay Area house in California. He’s been in San Francisco since his household (his father performed the violin in a mariachi band) moved from Mexico within the Sixties.
“The Bay area definitely attracts characters, you know?” mentioned Santana. “Like Minnesota Fats or Les Paul. Rascals. I call them Divine Rascals.”
Santana, talking with a panoramic {photograph} of the Woodstock efficiency hanging on the wall behind him, mirrored on his journey, his sound and among the demons he’s confronted alongside the best way.
“I have nothing but good memories,” mentioned Santana. “I have developed selective celestial amnesia.”
AP: How was it to observe a film of your life?
SANTANA: It’s unusual. It’s fascinating to observe this individual consistently attempt and consider that he belongs. Ha ha! That he belongs on stage with these unimaginable musicians. Who would have thunk it that one minute I’m washing dishes at Tic Tock (Drive-In) and the subsequent I’m on stage with Jerry Garcia and Eric Clapton they usually’re taking a look at me like I positively obtained one thing they wish to study from? They’d all go, “Where did you get that?” And I’d say, “Well, when you were listening to this, I was listening to a Hungarian gypsy musician named Gábor Szabó.” And additionally drummers. I realized rather a lot from African drummers. So I realized how you can scramble the eggs in a different way. The guys from Creedence Clearwater used to say: “What is it you call that music you’re playing?” And I am going, “African rhythms with blues guitar.”
AP: There are many enduring relationships you’ve gotten in “Carlos” however how would you characterize your relationship to the guitar?
SANTANA: My guitar is my greatest lover, ever. Lovers come and go, however your relationship with the guitar — any model or something — stays. But it’s your relationship with that sound. When you place your fingers on that observe, you get chills. That’s one of the best lover. You uncover the feeling of getting the primary French kiss. I’ll cease there as a result of this ought to be PG. But all of it offers with the identical factor. It all offers with “Oh my God.” The large G-spot, which is God. When you hit that, all of them go, “Oh my God.” When you play music like that, it’s extra than simply intelligent notes. It turns into emotion, emotions, ardour. That’s music to me. Music with out emotion, ardour or emotions is simply intelligent noise.
AP: You have at all times had a definite, immediately recognizable guitar sound, like a voice. Where did your tone come from?
SANTANA: I used to lock myself in a closet at the hours of darkness and attempt to play like B.B. or Otis Rush, all of the people who I like. And it used to frustrate me that I could not sound like that. Then in the future I wakened and I am going, “Hey, stupid. You’re not supposed to sound like them. They sound like them. You’re supposed to sound like you.” Then you realized: “How do I play like me?” Just shut up and play. Right now, I’m solely listening to a few issues: Nina Simone, Etta James and Tina Turner. I need that sound that these ladies get in my guitar. I need my guitar to sound like a lady.
AP: In the movie, you recount how Jerry Garcia gave you mescaline shortly earlier than you took the stage at Woodstock, pondering you had hours earlier than you carried out. In arguably probably the most celebrated set of Woodstock, you had been tripping and praying…
SANTANA: “God, please let me stay on tune and in time.” I may have laid a giant egg in entrance of all people. It was scary to take a look at the viewers. But what got here by way of was my mom’s confidence: God is by your aspect. How are you able to go flawed?
AP: In the movie you speak about about being molested from the ages of 10 to 12. Did music convey some measure of therapeutic from that have?
SANTANA: All I can say with certainty and readability is: I’m not what occurred to me. I nonetheless am, as God created me, with purity and innocence. I’ve a behavior of sending folks to the sunshine as an alternative of the hell. I used to say, “Eat s—- and die.” But I don’t say that anymore. Now I am going: You know what? I’m going to take a look at you such as you’re seven years previous. And I’m going to ship you into the sunshine that’s behind you. If I ship you to hell, then I’m going to go there with you. And I don’t wish to go to hell. By doing that, I’m in a position to not be caught with the sufferer mentality. “I’m Santana and I was a victim of child molestation” — I don’t wish to try this. I don’t wish to suppose like that. I’m Carlos Santana and by grace I can create blessings and miracles.
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