Carlos Santana

• 1. Introduction

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  Carlos Santana has won 10 Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards, yet no single genre has ever held him. He is a Mexican and American guitarist, and Rolling Stone placed him at No. 20 among the 100 greatest guitarists in 2015. By 2023 the same magazine had moved him up to 11th among the greatest guitarists of all time.

  His band, which carried his surname, built a sound from blues-based guitar lines laid over timbales and congas. Those drums were rarely heard in rock at the time. The result mixed rock and roll with Latin American jazz in a way few listeners had met before.

  Three questions run through this documentary. How did a boy trained on violin by a mariachi father come to reshape rock guitar? Why would a star at the peak of his fame turn toward jazz, meditation and a spiritual teacher? And how did a veteran of the 1960s return to the top of the charts decades later?

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• 2. Border Roots

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  Autlán de Navarro, in the Mexican state of Jalisco, is where Carlos Santana was born on the 20th of July 1947. His father played in a mariachi group and taught him violin at age five. Three years later the boy switched to guitar. His younger brother, Jorge, would also become a professional guitarist.

  Tijuana, on the border with the United States, became the family's next home. Parque Teniente Guerrero, the city park, is where Carlos's mother took him to see Los TJ's, a pioneering Tijuana rock and roll band formed by Javier Bátiz. At age 12 he became a roadie for the group. He later joined as a bass player, because Bátiz himself played guitar.

  Blues reached him through Bátiz. T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf and James Brown all came into his ears this way. He left to play guitar in a different bar band and worked the clubs along the Tijuana Strip, where he began shaping a sound of his own.

  San Francisco was where his father found steady work, so the family moved north. Carlos lived in the Mission District, finished James Lick Middle School and left Mission High School in 1965. The same year he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Two California universities, California State University, Northridge and Humboldt State University, accepted him. He chose not to attend either.

  Tic Tock Drive-In No2 employed him as a dishwasher. He also played on the street to pay for a Gibson SG, which replaced a Gibson Melody Maker that had been destroyed. Once he had the new guitar he committed to music full time.

  His education came from other musicians. Santana later said that visiting friends' rooms felt like a university, with one listening to Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix, another to Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaría, and another to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. The jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó shaped him strongly. Szabó's composition "Gypsy Queen" became the second half of Santana's 1970 version of Peter Green's "Black Magic Woman", with guitar licks nearly identical to the original.

  Michael Bloomfield, whom Santana regarded as a direct mentor, left an equally deep mark. Santana wrote about a key meeting with Bloomfield in San Francisco in his foreword to the 2000 oral history Michael Bloomfield: If You Love These Blues. He also credited Hendrix, Hank Marvin and Green. In 2012 his album Shape Shifter included a tribute to Szabó called "Mr. Szabo". In 1966, though, an emergency at a famous San Francisco ballroom was about to give him his first real audience.

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• 3. Woodstock Breakthrough

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  Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium needed a band for a Sunday matinee in 1966, because Paul Butterfield was too intoxicated to play. Graham assembled substitutes from musicians he knew through the Butterfield Blues Band, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. Santana was among them, and his guitar playing caught the attention of both the audience and Graham.

  The Santana Blues Band formed that same year with fellow street musicians David Brown on bass, Marcus Malone on percussion and Gregg Rolie on lead vocals and Hammond B3 organ. Columbia Records later signed the group and shortened its name to Santana. Recording began in January 1969, and the tracks that became the first album were finished in May.

  Members disliked the result, so the band dismissed drummer Bob Livingston and added Mike Shrieve, who had a strong background in both jazz and rock. Then Malone was charged with involuntary manslaughter and left. Michael Carabello returned in his place and brought the experienced Nicaraguan percussionist José Chepito Areas.

  The 16th of August 1969 brought the Woodstock Music and Art Festival, where Graham arranged a slot for the band before its debut album had even been released. Graham, a Latin music enthusiast, had admired the group from its earliest days. Santana's set turned into one of the festival's surprises. It was anchored by an eleven-minute performance of the throbbing instrumental "Soul Sacrifice". The song appeared in both the Woodstock film and its soundtrack album, which greatly expanded the band's fame.

  Graham also urged the band to record Willie Bobo's "Evil Ways", sensing that radio would play it. The album Santana came out on the 22nd of August 1969 and reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200.

  Abraxas followed in September 1970 and blended rock, blues, jazz and salsa with more maturity than the debut. It carried "Oye Como Va" and the pairing "Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen". The record spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart at the end of 1970 and stayed on the charts for 88 weeks. It was certified 4x platinum in 1986. In 2003 Rolling Stone ranked it number 205 among the 500 greatest albums of all time.

  Neal Schon, a teenage guitar prodigy from the San Francisco Bay Area, joined in 1971 in time to finish the third album, Santana III. The band now had two lead guitarists and a tougher sound. Horns from Tower of Power, along with Luis Gasca of Malo, added energy. The album reached No. 1, sold two million copies and produced the hit "No One to Depend On". Behind the success, however, the group was already splitting apart.

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• 4. Cracks In The Band

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  Gregg Rolie and Santana wanted different things almost from the moment the band became famous. Rolie and some others preferred the basic hard rock that had built the group. Santana was drawn to more jazzy, ethereal textures, and he became fascinated with Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane, besides Szabó. He and Davis stayed friends for years but recorded together only once, in 1990.

  Chepito Areas then suffered a near-fatal brain hemorrhage. Santana hoped to carry on with temporary replacements, first Willie Bobo and then Coke Escovedo. Michael Carabello and others felt it was wrong to perform publicly without Areas. Cliques formed, and the band began to disintegrate.

  Drug use became a problem, and Santana worried that it was damaging the band's playing. Escovedo urged him to take more control of the musical direction, which dismayed members who saw the sound as a collective effort. Financial irregularities surfaced under manager Stan Marcum, whom Graham criticized as incompetent.

  Carabello and Santana clashed over lifestyle, and Carabello left on bad terms. James Mingo Lewis was hired at the last minute for a concert in New York City. David Brown later left over substance abuse. A South American tour ended early in Lima, Peru, because of unruly fans and student protests against U.S. government policies.

  In January 1972, at Diamond Head Crater in Hawaii, Santana, Schon, Escovedo and Lewis joined former Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles. That concert became the gold record Carlos Santana & Buddy Miles! Live!

  Caravanserai, the fourth album, was begun in early 1972 with Armando Peraza replacing Carabello and bassists Tom Rutley and Doug Rauch replacing Brown. Wendy Haas and Tom Coster played keyboards. Rolie and Schon, unsettled by the stream of new players, decided to leave once it was finished. They went on to become founding members of Journey.

  The album marked a sharp turn toward jazz fusion and drew critical praise. Clive Davis, an executive at CBS, warned that it would damage the band's standing as a Top 40 act. It eventually reached platinum status. Ben Fong-Torres chronicled the turmoil in a 1972 Rolling Stone cover story titled "The Resurrection of Carlos Santana". Santana's search for direction was leading him toward a new teacher.

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• 5. Guru And Jazz

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  John McLaughlin, guitarist of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, caught Santana's attention in 1972. Knowing Santana's interest in meditation, McLaughlin introduced Santana and his wife Deborah to his guru, Sri Chinmoy. Chinmoy accepted them as disciples in 1973 and gave Santana the name Devadip, meaning "The lamp, light and eye of God".

  Love, Devotion, Surrender, released in 1973, paired Santana and McLaughlin with members of both bands. Percussionist Don Alias and organist Larry Young also played. Both had appeared with McLaughlin on Miles Davis's 1970 album Bitches Brew.

  The same year Santana obtained the legal rights to the name Santana and formed a new version of the band. Armando Peraza and Chepito Areas played percussion, Doug Rauch bass, Michael Shrieve drums, with Tom Coster and Richard Kermode on keyboards. Jazz vocalist Leon Thomas later joined for a Japanese tour supporting Caravanserai. Concerts on the 3rd and the 4th of July 1973 were recorded for the sprawling 1974 triple vinyl album Lotus.

  CBS refused to release Lotus unless the material was condensed. Santana would not agree, so in the United States it was available only as an expensive imported three-record set. The studio album Welcome came out in 1973. Illuminations followed in 1974, a collaboration with John Coltrane's widow, Alice Coltrane, with ex-Miles Davis sidemen Jack DeJohnette and Dave Holland. It leaned into avant-garde free jazz and Eastern Indian and classical influences.

  Bill Graham's management company took over the band's affairs, and Graham criticized the jazz turn. He wanted Santana back on the charts with the edgy, streetwise sound that had made the group famous. Santana himself saw that the direction was alienating many fans. Critics in jazz circles gave the albums good reviews, but sales had plummeted.

  Amigos, released in 1976, answered with a strong funk and Latin sound, featuring "Dance, Sister, Dance" and "Let It Shine". FM stations played the instrumental "Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile)", and the band returned to the charts. Rolling Stone ran a second cover story that year, "Santana Comes Home". In February 1976, Australia presented him with fifteen gold discs for sales above 244,000. The 1977 double album Moonflower included a version of the Zombies' "She's Not There".

  Life inside Chinmoy's circle grew harder. The pressures of rock stardom clashed with the guru's demands, and Santana resented rules he thought unreasonable. Chinmoy's refusal to let Santana and Deborah start a family hurt most, and Santana felt his fame was being used to raise the guru's profile. They ended the relationship in 1982.

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• 6. Wilderness To Supernatural

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  Two top-twenty singles arrived just before the break with Chinmoy. "Winning", from Zebop!, hit in 1981, and "Hold On", a remake of a song by the Canadian artist Ian Thomas, followed in 1982. After the split Santana made the 1983 solo album Havana Moon with producers Keith Olson and Jerry Wexler. It revisited his Tijuana years with Chuck Berry's title song and Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love". Guests included Booker T. Jones, Willie Nelson, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and his father's mariachi orchestra.

  Ritchie Valens, the rock and roll legend whose life inspired the film La Bamba, received a tribute when Santana wrote the film's score. The band Santana came back in 1985 with Beyond Appearances and in 1987 with Freedom, with nine members including Buddy Miles as lead singer. Freedom returned to the group's original Latin rock after the pop-leaning previous record.

  Weary of making formulaic hits for record executives, Santana turned to jamming with others. His partners included Weather Report, McCoy Tyner, John Lee Hooker, Living Colour's Vernon Reid and the West African singer Salif Keita. With Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead he worked with Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji, who had conceived the 1960s drum jam "Jingo".

  In 1988 he reunited past members for concert dates, and CBS issued the 20-year retrospective Viva Santana! He also formed an all-instrumental group around saxophonist Wayne Shorter, which the music press compared to the Caravanserai era. His solo record Blues for Salvador won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

  Twenty-two years with Columbia Records ended in 1990, when he signed with Polygram. In 1992 the jam band Phish opened for him, and members often joined his headlining sets. They toured Europe with him in 1996. Albums such as Milagro in 1992 and Brothers in 1994, made with his brother Jorge and nephew Carlos Hernandez, sold relatively poorly. Eventually he had no recording contract at all.

  Clive Davis, who had worked with him at Columbia and was now at Arista Records, signed him and urged a star-studded album with mostly younger artists. The result, in 1999, was Supernatural, with guests including Everlast, Eric Clapton, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, CeeLo Green, Maná and Dave Matthews. Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty co-wrote and sang the lead single, "Smooth", a stop-start cha-cha. It spent twelve weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and became the last No. 1 single of the 1990s.

  "Maria Maria", featuring the duo the Product G&B, then spent ten weeks at number one in the spring of 2000. Supernatural shipped over 15 million copies in the United States. At the 2000 Grammys it won nine awards, eight of them going to Santana personally. They included Album of the Year, Record of the Year for "Smooth" and Song of the Year for its writers, Thomas and Itaal Shur. He also won three Latin Grammy Awards that year, including Record of the Year.

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• 7. Collaborations And Honors

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  Michael Jackson's 2001 song "Whatever Happens" opened a new run of guest appearances, with Santana's guitar featured on the Invincible album. In 2002 the album Shaman revisited the Supernatural formula with Citizen Cope, P.O.D. and Seal. It was no runaway success, but "The Game of Love", with Michelle Branch, reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. "Why Don't You & I", written by Chad Kroeger of Nickelback, peaked at No. 8.

  The 5th of August is not given in the record, but early August 2003 brought Rolling Stone's ranking of him fifteenth on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists. In 2004 the Latin Recording Academy named him its Person of the Year. On the 21st of April 2005 he became the first songwriter designated a BMI Icon at the BMI Latin Awards.

  Herbie Hancock approached him in 2005 for the album Possibilities, which used the Supernatural template. Shakira invited him to play on her ballad "Illegal" the same year. His own album All That I Am brought in Steven Tyler, Kirk Hammett of Metallica, will.i.am, Sean Paul and Joss Stone. In 2006 he toured Europe with his son Salvador's band as the opening act.

  In 2009, Santana played the American Idol finale and led a ten-member band across Europe, including a 2.5-hour concert before 20,000 people in Skopje. That set was branded "Supernatural Santana - A Trip through the Hits" and played through 2011 at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. He became a playable character in the video game Guitar Hero 5, released on the 1st of September 2009. In 2011 the Billboard Latin Music Lifetime Achievement Award recognized him.

  In 2014 he released Corazón, his first Spanish-language album. The 4th of November 2014 saw publication of his memoir, The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light. In 2016 Gregg Rolie, Michael Carabello, Michael Shrieve and Neal Schon rejoined him for Santana IV and a brief tour, filmed at the House of Blues in Las Vegas. The Isley Brothers collaborated with him on The Power of Peace, released on the 28th of July 2017.

  In 2018 he taught a guitar lesson for MasterClass. In 2019 he appeared on Tyga's song "Mamacita" with YG. COVID-19 cancelled his Miraculous World Tour in March 2020. In 2021 he signed a global deal with BMG and later performed in New York's Central Park with Rob Thomas and Wyclef Jean. The March 2025 compilation Sentient gathered collaborations with Michael Jackson, Smokey Robinson and Miles Davis, plus three unreleased tracks.

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• 8. Tools And Private Life

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  A red Gibson SG Special with P-90 pickups hung from Santana's shoulder at Woodstock in 1969. Between 1970 and 1972 he used several Gibson Les Pauls and a black SG Special. In 1974 he endorsed the Gibson L6-S Custom. By 1982 he had begun using a custom PRS Custom 24, and in 1988 PRS began making Santana signature models. He has played them ever since, with twelve listed models between 1988 and 2017.

  He uses few effects pedals. His signal chain has included a Mu-Tron wah pedal, later a Dunlop 535Q wah and a T-Rex Replica delay. An Electro-Harmonix Big Muff distortion gave his famous sustain. On "Stand Up", from the 1979 album Marathon, he used a Heil talk box in the solo.

  A Mesa Boogie Mark I, a Dumble Overdrive Reverb and, more recently, a Bludotone amplifier shape his tone. A three-way switcher blends them. He likens the amps to a singer's head tones, chest tones and belly tones. When he first tried a Mesa amp he exclaimed "That little thing really Boogies!", and he is credited with inspiring the name Mesa Boogie.

  The band Ween once recorded a guitar solo for Transdermal Celebration using Santana's equipment, illicitly, while it was being shipped for a tour in the New York area.

  Deborah King, daughter of blues musician Saunders King, was his wife from 1973 to 2007. They have three children, including Salvador, and co-founded the Milagro Foundation, a non-profit that provides financial aid for educational, medical and other needs. In 2000 Santana said he communicates with the angel Metatron. After discovering Chinmoy and Yogananda in 1972, he quit marijuana until 1981. In 2020 he launched a cannabis brand, Mirayo.

  In 2007 he opened the Maria Maria restaurant chain with chef Roberto Santibañez. Locations spanned Tempe, Arizona, Mill Valley, Walnut Creek, Danville, San Diego, Austin and Boca Raton, but as of 2021 only the Walnut Creek restaurant remained open.

  The 9th of July 2010 found him proposing to his touring drummer Cindy Blackman on stage at Tinley Park, Illinois. They married in December 2010 and live in Las Vegas.

  Heart surgery came in December 2021. On the 5th of July 2022, at Pine Knob Music Theatre in Michigan, he collapsed on stage, regained consciousness while being helped off, and was observed at a local hospital. His publicist attributed the episode to heat and dehydration, and six concerts were postponed on the 8th of July 2022.

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