Carlos Santana & Cindy Blackman

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist, which you can find a link to in the show notes for licensing reasons. Each time a song is referenced in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect all right. Enjoy the episode. Carlos Santana has always been out of this world. As a guitarist, his melodic style and tone is distinctive, and as a band leader, his decision to combine Latin and African rhythms with traditional rock helped to widen the breath of the genre. That's Paraisos Kamados from Santana's twenty nineteen album Africa Speaks, produced by Rick Rubin. Today, you'll hear Rick in conversation with Carlos and his wife, drummer sind Black Men. They talk about Carlos's plans to create what he calls miraculous music. Carlos also shared stories about Miles Davis, his LSD used in the sixties, and a dream where John Coltrane asked him the purpose of the divine. It might sound a little out there, but as Carlos tells Rick, being crazy just gives him more creative latitude. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Carlos Santana, Cindy Blackman, and Rick Rubin. What was the music he listened to growing up? My father, my father's played the violin, and his son and he had a brother, played cello. He had a piano player, guitar player and accordion and they basically play European music, you know. He didn't play mariachi music till we moved to Tijuana. In outline, it was basically I was steam Lada, who was like the call porter of Mexico, you know, and uh soon like Bess Muccio and all that kind of stuff. So I grew up watching him be enchanting and adored immediately by women, men and children. And I said, oh, you know, I want that played professionally. Yes, I didn't. He played violin professionally, and he's the one that taught me the value of one note, you know, but not too moved to Tijuana, you know, because he had to feed us. So he would play my actu music because that's what the tours wanted to hear. But that's what I learned about childie Hooker and Lightning Hopkins and Jimmy Reid and everybody else was listening to Elvison and Beach Boys. You know, I was attracted to I was listening to god Bucket music. I thought that even BB King was sophisticated, you know. Not too late, I learned about Tma Walker and New Calendar Man. It's like, oh shit, you know, or Monk. You know, here in the Monk for the first time place some blues. I was like, oh my god, this is the blues. You know, was Monk your way into jazz? Yes, Mink was way into jazz in the beginning, because when you're young, you're ignorant, and I thought that anything I had to do with jazz was boring, sophisticated music for old people. You know. Chuck Berry and Little Bow Didley and Little Richard, you know, that was like up front like what Metallica is because of his energy and a lot of things came from them. Any any guitar players that you would say influenced you early on, like who are the people? When you saw them play or heard them play, like felt like there's something here for me to follow or to practice or to learn. At the beginning, in d juana making making the transition from violin to guitar. I saw this guy named Heavier about these and in the park. My mom knew what she was doing because my father moved to San Francisco so he can make more money and send us money. He wasn't making money into juana anymore because everybody and their mom had my rache bend in there. So he moved to San Francisco and my mom. My mom saw that I wasn't playing anymore violed and I wasn't practicing. So she took me by the hand and she goes, you're coming with me, and says, well, where are we going? And he goes, you're coming with me. So she took me to the park and there was a band plane and this guy had a big mop like Little Richard. This guy is kabiet about this and he was a perfect combination of Little Richard, BB King and Ray Charles. That's what he was sent to. And he was probably made four or five years older than I am, and he was already in it. He had that sound like Michael Bloomfield, Peter Green or like that. You know. He because he got into bb King really got into it. So when I first heard that sound, it was like seeing a white whale or a lion size or something. Man hearing the guitar amplifier and everything resonate to the trees and the cars and the church across the street. I took my breath away. I was like, oh my god, what is this? You know? So he was the first one that initiated me into loving the electric guitar and that twang thing like you know, like Lenniemac. And I think the main person who turned me around was John McLachlin. When I saw them and slugs with Tony Williams and Larry Young, that put a whole other thing on me. Miles Miles, David's favorite guitar player. And there's a reason, his articulation and his imagination, and we became really good friends and brothers, and everybody fortunate and blessed. You know that I've been at the right place at the right time, and people adopt me, they trust me. Therefore, you know, except for one guy. I'm not gonna say who, but when when when he caught me looking at his hands see what he was doing, he immediately turn turned his back to me and he looked at me like, you know, like I was going to steal something from him, you know, And so that made me realize, Okay, you know, not everybody's going to be giving. You know, some people are gonna be really paranoided by you're stealing their stuff, you know, even though it's not their stuff. It's BB King where they're playing, you know. But yeah, I think when I come came to San Francisco because so Michael Shreeve is this rumor, he brought a lot of records of Caulturing and Miles Only, and he says, you need to listen to this, and I go, I do. He says, yeah, because this, this is this is human As we said, Okay, how old were you at that time, probably in nineteen eighteen nineteen, and you were ready, so you were steeped more in you'd say, at that point, more in rock music, and then at eighteen or nineteen you started getting into jazz. Yes, BB King was King Ray Charles, Yeah, that was that was said. And then once, like I said, once I discover a Monk and Coltrane and Miles it was it was like like they say, the genius out of the bottle. You know, you can't put it back in, you know, and it's the band that the band that we know you as was that your first San Francisco band, first San Francisco band was drummer and a bass player that they kind of took me in because I just came from Tijuana. They had instruments and I barely had a guitar, so they helped me get an amplifier. And but we were entering contests like the Battle of the Band sin San Francisco, Kaya and you know like that. And they had like a thousand bands in a gym, in a school gym, and it thin out because they wanted something original. They didn't want, you know, another Rolling Stones or the Who kind of clones and and we had this black lady name Joey's Dunne, and we were doing different interpretations of heat wave. We got it all the way to number three at the Kyle Palace, amongst all the other bands you know that were dusted. We were in the top three. And the only reason we lost, I think, is because my partner's got so scared. They got drunk, literally drunk drunk, you know, and I was like, oh man, you know, and I was so pissed off it embarrassed, you know, because they couldn't play, you know, but it was it was it was the beginning of giving me a confidence that I could fit where the Grateful Dead were and what Paul battlefield was and and and that's Bill graham Sali like, you know, everything that you do begets confidence, you know, in clarity. They're like, well, I can do this. You know. You see Cream or you see Hendricks. They're like, oh, even though a lot of people quit after they see Hendricks, I said, I said, it's got to be something that he ain't doing that I can do it, you know. So I discovered Gobor Sawo and Bola Sete and guitars with congas. Yeah, when did you first see Hendrix at the Fillmore? And that was a revelation because Jimi Hendris was probably the only guitar player that I knew or ever will ever know that could play in cinemascopes around around with feedback on one note, you know, without being wiped out by it. It was, you know, he's like a surfer that ride the big Kahuna and sound waves and knew what he was doing. It didn't control him, he controlled it. So that was a revelation. It's interesting when you say that, I never thought about this before. But but normally when you think of feedback, you think of it sort of exactly what you said of it, sort of taking over, and he was able to manage it. Never I never made the connection before, even though it's yes, it's time me. When you say it's like, of course, it's obvious, that's why he's Jimi Hendrix, but I never thought of it. It's a specific way like that before. It's a wave of sounding. It's a wave of sound like culturing, and they call him sheets of sound. But yeah, so being in San Francisco at the right time was a revelation from Robbie Shankar to Johnny Hooker and Jimmy and Coltrane. You know. San Francisco was the ultimate album mater U University, and you saw all these guys play, yeah, slide before they were you know, Robbie when they started Freddy, it was Freddie and the Stone Soles before it slide. And so I got I got a chance to see like someone sculpturing pottery, you know, like you can see that slide coming from Johnny guitar Watson and this and Dad, you know, and he's I can see where everybody got where they got, you know, because we all we all would come from somebody. Yeah, I didn't see it coming though when my house came out with bitches brew that was really different. And like you said, you said it to all of us. I can go where you go, you can't go where I go. But oh, and he said it to you know, it's a blanket statement because where he went, being with Charlie Parker and Coltrane was another realm of harmonic genius. And do you think do you think it was all intuition for him or do you think somehow there was learning involved. Probably intuition a lot, you know, through all the books that I read. Even though to some people it seemed like it was complex, if you really look at it from a divine point of view, it was absolutely predictable. You know, the only time that it was unpredictable is when he was not like Prince and Michael Jackson, the persona, when he was the spirit of Miles Davis, like Coltrane, you know, because the persona is the ego, and that starts mimicking what people say about him, like, oh, I'm the Prince of Darkness, and I'm supposed to, you know, be like that. You know, to this day, I don't understand how he could play the way he played under heroin or cocaine. I just hear my mother say this is not for you. And so since she put that in my head, anytime I try to do anything like that, I couldn't play. I had to go to the shower and stay there until I came back to now that I could touch my nose, both hands with my eyes closed and makes sense of balance. I couldn't balance anything under those chemical things because they're not medicine, they're chemical drugs. Have you had psychodolic experiences? Natural? Um? I started going to the film or and seeing Charles Floyd like that, and you know, and seeing Miles like that, and a lot of band sound rad you know, it opened it opened. That's opened up, um. And you understand why Jimmy's music sound Rods music and the doors music. In certain music, it had a different dimension of It's like watching Salvador Dolly paint, you know, with clocks melting and stuff. You know, I love it. To me being Mexican with the ayahuasca and the mescalan, I love brightening and expanding your imagination to the fullest without fear. I'm just thinking about San Francisco in those days. How many people might be at a nightclub. If you went out to a club and you got to see those artists, what would the typical scene be like, Well, you go to the Jazz Workshop and it would be West Montgomery with Miroslav Toes. And you go to Matador it would be Calciated with Mungo and Louis Bobo, Armando or Bola said there, you know. And you go to the Both Hand and visit Zadero and they'd be Miles or leam Oregan. And you go to the Fillmore and you see what was really prescious about Bill Graham that he said to the hippies, if you want to hear the Grateful Dead, you gotta hear Miles Davis first. And if you want to hear Santana, you gotta hear Roland Kirk, you know. So he made it a mandatory to the minds of the hippies. If you want to hear ten years after, you're gonna have to hear Buddy Rich first, you know. And he told me that the reason he put body Rich in front of him is because he was really annoyed by the drummer we ten years after. He was a little arrogant and cocky, and he says, I'm want to fix his ass man, I want to put so he so he went and got Buddy Rich to open up for the He made him listen, you know, and I was like, then, Bill, your crew, you know, but we need that more than ever now. You know, there's no cross pollenization of greatness with the youngsters, you know. So consequently everything everything sounds the same and terrible. What gave Bill the inspiration to put these people together and to want to share these different genres with people who might not have known that they wanted to hear it? Well? He grew up in the Caskills in New York, working as a waiter Maitre d and the waiter, but when he had free time he would go to uh Courso it was this place, and I bought a block two blocks from the Apollo and it was put Tito Pointe and so he wasn't he was totally dead dead out into Tito Pointe and Mongo. And he was incredible dancer, salsa dancer before they called it salts. So when you heard Santana. He says, you are the perfect baby. They came from Baby King and Tito Pointe. I said, I am yeah, and you and so he basically kind of like adopted me more than the band. He was like Miles. It would call me, you know, I'm not bragging it, but they call me, you know, people who love me call me John Leed and my phone would ring. And I mean I say this all the time for many, many, many years. I never got an award at the Grammys. But it didn't matter to me because my phone is ringing and it's Wayne or Miles or Jocko or Stevie, you know, like that, the greatest musicians are calling me and we're just checking on each other, you know. So that was a validation. So you need man. When Miles called you anytime of the night, you know, and he wants to know what you're into, that's a validation. You know. So beautiful, so great, so great that you got to know him any Do you have any funny stories related to Miles, I hear he's quite the character. Anything you want to talk about, well, there's so many, you know, some of them are like, um, what was really funny about him? Is that he was funnier than Richard Pryor. He really really west and I was just bust up, like, man, this guy is like I was just saying, because they're they're not PG at all, you know. But he was fun to be around. Oh. He was definitely if he loved if he liked you, it was really fun. If he didn't like you, he would just say, must you be here? Wow? That was his way to dismiss somebody, you know, like these you know, we'll be right back with Carlos, Cindy and Rick after a quick break. We're back with Carlos Santana and Cindy black Man. Tell me about leading up to making your first album. What were you playing in Clouds? Was there a regular a regular gig at that time. Yeah. Once we formed the band, Bill Graham saw that we were opening and then he he put a stamp on us. He goes, Okay, you're gonna open out for the Who, and you're gonna open out for money, Holly Wolf, and you're gonna happen out for a slide. You're gonna you know, creating us clear Water and we started Stepping Wolf. We opened out for everybody before we recorded, so We were basically playing this this material for about a year and a half before we went to the studio, and we knew it, We knew how to, we knew what we were what to do with Jingo. You know, Jingo was we just heard a bunch of congo players at Aquatic Park in San Francisco and Gary Dells where jing you know, bunch of twenty two congo players one flute and they're all chanting jingle. And I was like, oh my god, what the hell is Jingo? You know how didn't know? It's all about ten years ago. The jingle means go with God. Jingle jingle, go with go with God. So it's a it's a spiritual it's a spiritual idea from all the tunit. Yeah. Wow. So everybody was like, what do y'all call that music you're playing? Stephen and Koreans Clairware like okay, looking at it, especially because they're looking at us and looking at the audience and they're seeing the immediate marriage responds. You know. So by the time we got to the studio, everybody was fighting to get us in their in their record company, h Atlantic and Electra and Sony, so they CBS. They found this um producer at the time. The name is David Rubinson, and he had produce because if at least piano and and I'm as Santamaria, so I said, oh, he knows how to record, gone guess so he I don't know if he knows how to record like the guitars, We'll see. And we did an album in LA for about two weeks and it just didn't sound it or felt anything like we sounded like. So we said, so we told CBS, we'll pay for the sessions, but we're not going to be He's not our producer. We don't want him, with all respect to him. But it's like, but don't know, you know, I know that some people, being the first, you're not supposed to have a say song which which you know they choose for you, and I don't. We don't care. He says, well, who are you going to get? I said, we'll find somebody. We literally went to here to Ashbury and find one of the first hippies that we saw, and we heard that you could engineer a little bit as herd about it. You know, I forget the same and so that's what the album sound is so horrible. You know, when we first heard it in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one week before we played with Stuck. I would came out a week before we came out playing with Stuck, and we said, whoa us, but it sounds terrible. The cone gets in the drums, I'm so fan in the guitar, like, oh my god. You know, it's unusual that you were that you again, at that age, had the confidence to say this is not my this is not our album when you recorded that first one, because so many young bands in that position just go with it and feel like because they they have gone through the process that that's what it's supposed to be. It's funny how your confidence changes when you're able to play I wouldn't say under but over Murray one on LSD. You know, you either become a wimpy or you become really really treacherous in your convictions. Like give you an example when we when I heard on LSD on Friday night party time are any time you know this guy, this dig and he's playing Latin music and all kinds of music. Because at that time it was like you know, from A to C and radio and they were playing oh You're coming boy, and I said, man, this is a great Saturday night party song like Louie Louie or whatever. You know. I wanted to get those songs that that every time you play it's like Friday and Saturday after school, you know, you go to a play, somebody has a party and the guys some band were like, this ain't rock and roll. I was like, man, I don't care when we're playing this thing, you know. And so a lot of a lot, a lot can be said about conviction, not organs, but you have to have the conviction to go for your destiny. Sound. Yeah, I was reading about that this morning, coincidentally, about the Star people. Star people have They're like ascended beings that transformers of consciousness, bringing new ideas, visions, and solutions and inspire artists musicians to elevate, transform illuminate consciousness to a higher state. They serve as conduits, mediums, and channels. They have special gifts and heavenly powers. Everyone's imbued with that, but I think that if you're not careful, the world will program you to be less than that. Absolutely, absolutely, because everyone's got it, We're all born with it, and some of us just get get it beaten out of us. Unfortunately. Yeah, yeah, and where we are today. You know, with Cindy, it's a very special not even special, especially when something's on sale. This is divine when you find a person that matches the fervor of the vision. Yes, yeah, amazing. Well, when's the first time you guys played together. The first time we played together was when Carlos needed a drummer and Dennis Chambers was in the band at that time and had I guess something else booked on a gig that was off the schedule that Carlos Scott and he called me. I had met him just briefly. I was with Lenny Kravitz and it was a festival in Germany, and I know Dennis. I've known himselves like fourteen so we were hanging out in the back and I met Carlos really briefly, like hi, how are you, and went on to watch videos or whatever I was doing, so I didn't really interact or talk to him at that point. But then when he needed a sub for Dennis, they somebody called me and before they could finish the question of whether or not I would do it, of course I was saying yes, so cool. Yeah, it's it's amazing that I first met you when you were I guess auditioning to be in Lenny's band. Yes, in your house in my house in Los Angeles a long time ago. Yeah, nineteen ninety. It was in the nineteen ninety two because it was I went there right before, um, right after Christmas, and stayed through New Year's Yeah, and um that was the house that you had just purchased. So there was really like nothing in it because you weren't even living here. No, we were doing construction on it. And I remember Lenny saying, can I stay in your house. It's like, well, it's under construction. He's like, now, we'll stay in it anyway, and yeah, everybody and I basically he was staying upstairs and I was basically down in that basement. Yeah. I had the drums down there. I was, you know, after I played and in kind of audition. Then I just stayed down there and learned the songs. Um. I basically lived in there for two weeks and then we did the are you Gonna Go My Way? Video? Yeah, um, and then then I went home after that. But yeah, that was the first time we met as well. Amazing We're sitting setting our eyes towards the new frontier. It's natural to reinvent yourself at this point. For us, there's one word that is bringing it all together. That words called miraculous. Just this word. We are really going to call our tour miraculous. At twenty twenty, we haven't even played one song yet or even written. But I have total faith, you know, Rick, that that that this is the way to like, you know, people make the thing about a Love Supreme or Abbey Road or you know, we Supernatural was pretty mean. You know, I got to say perunatial. Supernatural was pretty mean. But I'm ready to create something that it reaches the four corners of the world with a different kind of consciousness that makes people cry, laugh, dance, especially, and remember their own light. Beautiful. How do you see the relationship between spirituality and music. It's like breathing in and breathing out is the same lungs. You know, the spirituality in music and sensuality is exactly the same thing. Because everyone says, oh my God at that point. Yea, even even atheists say oh my God, because you can't say oh me or whatever. Yeah, did you ever get to point they play? Oh yeah, we played many times together. He was my dad's favorite. I got to see him play as a kid several times. Yeah. He collegiator and Buddy Rich were awesome leaders who brought to the masses. I forgive music black music. They all play black music, you know. I mean they play all music, but you know the best part of Buddy Rich, you play black music. Did did Fiana music happen at a similar time to your music? Yeah? Yeah. They came in because they saw that it was working. They you know, they said, oh, who is this Mexican from San Francisco and Tijuana. It doesn't even know cloud it. And but it was Reberetto who said, ladies and gentlemen, there's a there's a musician in the house. And I went, oh, and he says, there's a musician in the house. Was taking our music to the four corners of the world. This is Santana, and I want you to give him a nice hand. That was Reberetto. Not everybody was so nice. Some people were really jealous, pissed off and insecure because we were taking so called their music. And I said, well, it's not your music, it's African music. Before Puerto Rico or Cuba was invented, they were already playing this music like like you know Wahita, you know so so I immediately would go, well, what do you mean, it's your O music? You know. Like for me it was easy to I'm just grateful to be in the center of it all. And if we to this day, man, if we play with Jimmy Hendrix, when we do play with Jimmy Hendrix and about Marley and Coltrane, they're going to open their arms to us because we're coming from exactly the same place, which is multi dimensional collective consciousness commonality. We'll be right back with Carlos, Cindy and Rick. After the break, we're back with Carlos Santana and Cindy Blackman. It was thrilling for me to be in the room when you were playing, because it really felt like there was a presence at the space beyond any of the people. There is that ability to call up that presence is that always been there for you pretty much pretty much. So, you know, I had this dream on my birthday, John Coltrane came to visit me. I had this visitation. I don't even call it a dream. I went to see in my dream and to hear John McLaughlin, the Catalyst, this funky club in Santa Cruz. And I was getting ready to get him close, as close as possible, to sit in front of the stage as much as possible while he was fixing his shoes and tuning his guitar, and I don't know where parting the crowd was John Coltrane and with his hand stretched out to me, and he grabbed my hand and looked at me in the eye, look at me in the eyes, and he says, Carlos, what's the purpose of divine intentionality? And I immediately said, to uplift those into the awareness of their own light. You know, when I woke up and I said, Sammy and I leave this energy season. You know, it's like, what is Sindy? And I'm telling her to dream in my phone rings? And as John Mclocklin from Monaco, and so I told John the dream and he says, wow, brother, that's really something else. He says, I had a dream too. I had a visitation too. My house came to visit me. I swear, you know, so for him and I and and Stevie Ray does that a lot to me? Baby, you know, Jocko, I'm okay with people thinking that I'm crazy because I have more latitude. You know, people people who are not crazy, they don't have any latitude at all, that their normality is like really boring. And you know, with a ceiling. You know, I don't have a ceiling. So this visitations, you know, Cindy has her own you know, and there's clues in there. Yeah, there there. It's like reading a book and you outline certain things that are like a love letter to yourself. And so I can see that this miraculous thing has a lot to do with possibly calling John to help us here and there. You know, maybe it's your career in certain plays. But I wanted so that a child can understand it. It's important that a child can, you know, just be mesmerized and be uplifted from herself or himself into a place of total wonderment. If it's if it's too complicated and you have to go to college to understand it, it's no good for me. But you do that when you when you when you play melodies, because your melodies are so uh intense and and and the tone is so beautiful that you you capture that. You know, um like Miles Davis, you know, he plays one note and everybody is yeahsteeing it, you know, so you have that with whatever you're playing. I am here in this planet disincarnation to bring healing and you raise the distance illusion between you and your high you beautiful. That's it. Yeah, to end this album miraculous. I want to end it with do do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do do do do do do do You know the rest life is but a dream. That's fantastic, you know, because that's that's I say. You gotta reach the children many of all ages. You know, you do everything that you do do do do do do do do do do. Sometimes I'll play something in the set, you know, in front of a lot of people, like when we play with the Dewey Brothers and uh let them I'll do that Doo doo doo do do do Do Do do the whole audience goes. Life is but a dream. Okay, see you later. You know at that point there's no republican or Democrat or disordaptment. It's just you know, that's what's happening. Beautiful, Thank you, No, so great to hear you, hear you speak. I always feel like I um, I always feel like I've grown when I get to spend time with you. Likewise, like was your signus is really profound man? But I really learned, Like damn, this kid, I learned so much. But hin that's saying nothing like my else, you know. Thank you thanks to Carlos Santana and Cindy Blackman for sharing their vision with Rick. You can hear our favorite Santana songs in the full Africa Speaks album by checking out our playlist at Broken Record podcast dot com, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find extended cuts of past episodes and also a new once. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and its executive produced by me rebel I. Theme musics by Kenny Beats. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries, and if you like Broken Record, please remember to share, rate, and review our show on your podcast apt. I'm justin Richmond, Peace,