

I want my guitar to sound like a woman.ĪP: In the film, you recount how Jerry Garcia gave you mescaline shortly before you took the stage at Woodstock, thinking you had hours before you performed. I want that sound that those women get in my guitar.

Right now, I’m only listening to three things: Nina Simone, Etta James and Tina Turner. You’re supposed to sound like you.” Then you realized: “How do I play like me?” Just shut up and play. Then one day I woke up and I go, “Hey, stupid. And it used to frustrate me that I couldn’t sound like that. or Otis Rush, all the people that I love. SANTANA: I used to lock myself in a closet in the dark and try to play like B.B. Music without emotion, passion or feelings is just clever noise.ĪP: You have always had a distinct, instantly recognizable guitar sound, like a voice. When you hit that, they all go, “Oh my God.” When you play music like that, it’s more than just clever notes. It all deals with “Oh my God.” The big G-spot, which is God. I’ll stop there because this should be PG. You discover the sensation of getting the first French kiss.

When you put your fingers on that note, you get chills. But it’s your relationship with that sound. Lovers come and go, but your relationship with the guitar - any brand or anything - stays. SANTANA: My guitar is my best lover, ever. The guys from Creedence Clearwater used to say: “What is it you call that music you’re playing?” And I go, “African rhythms with blues guitar.”ĪP: There are many enduring relationships you have in “Carlos” but how would you characterize your relationship to the guitar?
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So I learned how to scramble the eggs differently. Who would have thunk it that one minute I’m washing dishes at Tic Tock (Drive-In) and the next I’m on stage with Jerry Garcia and Eric Clapton and they’re looking at me like I definitely got something they want to learn 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 also drummers. Ha ha! That he belongs on stage with these incredible musicians. It’s interesting to watch this person constantly strive and believe that he belongs.
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“I have developed selective celestial amnesia.”ĪP: How was it to watch a movie of your life? “I have nothing but good memories,” said Santana. Santana, speaking with a panoramic photograph of the Woodstock performance hanging on the wall behind him, reflected on his journey, his sound and some of the demons he’s faced along the way. “The Bay area definitely attracts characters, you know?” said Santana. He’s been in San Francisco since his family (his father played the violin in a mariachi band) moved from Mexico in the 1960s. Santana, who launches the nationwide 1001 Rainbows Tour in Newark, New Jersey, on June 21, recently spoke by Zoom from his Bay Area home in California. The critic Robert Christgau once 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.” The new documentary by Rudy Valdez, “Carlos,” which is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival and will be released this fall in theaters by Sony Pictures Classics, chronicles the meteoric rise of one of the most singular guitar players in rock history. He left the Woodstock audience dazed and stunned before the first Santana record came out. He’s been doing it since he stormed onto the San Francisco scene in the late ’60s. Santana, 75, can still whip a crowd into a frenzy like few others. That way the referee can’t steal the fight from me.” “I want to get in the middle of the ring and knock the sucker out. I don’t like to rope-a-dope,” Santana says. NEW YORK - “Take no prisoners - peacefully,” Carlos Santana sometimes tells his bandmates before taking the stage.
