Santana Comes Home

Nursing a freshly filled front tooth and numb mouth, Carlos Santana wasn't in any rush to be interviewed. Besides, he was enjoying looking at some of his photos and slides at manager Bill Graham's offices in San Francisco. Gazing over the shoulder of this vision in off-white-sweater, bellbottoms, socks and cream-soda-colored sandals, one found that many of the pictures told a story. For openers, there was Barbra Streisand smiling backstage at a stadium concert in Tempe, Arizona. Graham, who had been called in at the last minute to promote the day-long show (which was being staged for the movie remake of A Star Is Born), had brought Santana along. The band, in turn, had thrilled the 45,000 in attendance by playing a relentlessly energetic, hip-grinding set.

Next, Carlos paused over a photo of four shyly giggling Japanese girls, one offering a tentative peace sign: Santana recently ended a Far East tour with a one month swing through Japan, where their three-record, Japanese-recorded live album, Lotus, has sold about 30,000 copies — at up to $24 per. There was also an older photo of a French cathedral, which recalled Santana and Earth, Wind & Fire's 42-date knockout tour of Europe last fall.

Santana's international appeal doesn't stop in Japan and Western Europe. (Borboletta, the group's last studio album, was Number One for 14 weeks in Italy.) It also topped the charts in Yugoslavia . . . Australia . . . New Zealand . . . and sold consistently well throughout South America.

An interesting feat, considering that Borboletta barely edged into the U.S. Top 20 and, unlike Santana, Abraxis, Santana III, Caravanserai and Welcome, failed to win gold status.

But if Borboletta was a down in Santana's career, Amigos, the band's new album, will surely be an up. Carlos has eased his music from the spiritually propelled, jazz-influenced flights of Caravanserai, Welcome and Borboletta toward the earthier rhythms of the Latin Mission Street district he'd lived in as a youth, the rhythms that comprise such Santana standards as "Oye Como Va," "Black Magic Woman" and "Evil Ways." Columbia Records is so happy with Santana's redirection ("Everybody really went nuts over Amigos — it's terrifically commercial," one executive gushed), not to mention his unflagging worldwide popularity, that they recently re-signed him to a five-year, seven-album contract with the highest guarantees they've ever given an artist, according to Santana attorney Brian Rohan. The contract calls for "more than $400,000" per album plus an ascending scale of guarantees and the "highest" royalty rates. Said Rohan, proudly: "It's an enormous contract."

Santana sat down to check over some notes he'd written to friends; the notes would accompany copies of Amigos. The letter addressed to "dearest brother" Stevie Wonder read, in part: "It [Amigos] was a very intense, joyful creation of the band as we tried to tune our energies to humanity's cry."

The note to Earth, Wind & Fire was less cosmic: "We hope . . . it makes you dance!"

Santana uses a lot of energy when he talks. Sitting in a room adjoining Graham's warehouse, his left leg folded beneath him, he explained his musical redirection while his right hand acted out his words.

"Whatever type of music you play, whether it be Mexican folk music or rock & roll, if you're sincere, what you are projecting has life and joy. If it's not sincere, it's weak, wherever it's coming from. I was very sincere about Amigos; I think it is one of the most challenging things I've done in a long time, as far as reaching the people again. With the last three albums, as far as being commercial, we weren't that successful, but that's not what we wanted. I was looking to fulfill a vision, that vision being to remind everybody that we have a promise to reveal, manifest and fulfill God. But with spiritual music I couldn't do it all the way because the people who are already into some kind of religious path are there. So why not play music for the people who aren't . . . but who are almost on the verge of turning the leaf. I'm still not looking at Billboard. But I do care about people. Touring with Earth, Wind & Fire made me realize that a lot of people are still waiting for the band Santana, not for any other reason than to receive what Santana, at one time, was offering them — a different type of music.

"When I was in England during the tour, Eric [Clapton] took me to a discotheque, and they played 'Jingo.' People were dancing and it gave them so much joy. I'm looking at everybody, and I'm seeing this guy who doesn't even care how she moves or who she is, he just wants somebody to dance with. I said, obviously this cat doesn't have the capacity to create in the way that musicians create, so maybe this is the way for him to express himself. I said, man, you have to get into this kind of music, you have to make an effort to go beyond what you think is right or wrong to please the people. After that, it's up to God what they do with that energy you give them, whether they write a poem, make love to their lover or have an intense meditation."

Actually, Santana made his first move toward a more commercial direction several months before the European tour, when he asked Bill Graham to manage the group. Graham had been intimately involved with Santana at the very start, in the days when deals were closed with a handshake. He had hired Santana for their first gigs at Fillmore, had talked their way onto the Woodstock stage while they were still unknown and had gotten them their first national TV spot, booking them on the Ed Sullivan Show. But personal conflicts with the band's manager, Stan Marcum, got in the way and Graham was forced from the picture in 1972. He became reinvolved peripherally the next year, though, when Marcum was dismissed and then Graham associate Barry Imhoff became their manager. When Imhoff parted company with Santana and Graham in mid-'75, Carlos asked Ray Etzler, the band's road manager/confidant to manage them. Etzler declined, directing them instead to Graham, who he felt had more "weight." (Etzler remains Santana's right-hand man.) So Carlos found himself again tapping Graham's "dynamism" — after first taking note of his "mellowing" disposition. Graham, who lives down the hill from Carlos in peaceful Mill Valley, had, in Etzler's words, "come to have confidence in his own abilities; he didn't feel he had to prove himself anymore." Or, as Carlos put it: "He doesn't seem to have to scream as much to get things done."

Graham's musical tastes — "Latin music is my life" — dictated the particular direction he hoped to steer Santana. They had their first substantial meeting in Studio A of Studio Instrument Rentals after the band returned from Europe. Graham brought his old Tito Puente albums and they talked among the shipping crates for several hours about the band's future. Sitting in his office in front of a sign that read, "People who think they know it all are especially annoying to those of us who do," Graham recalled what he said that day: "I told them, 'You are a street band. Your success in the early days was never because you were just commercial. You had an ethnic, sweaty, street-tar quality that everybody liked. You got on the stage and you kicked ass, and people just loosened themselves. And you did something . . . . You continue to do it, but in a more restrained way. You became refined. I don't like this refinement; you can make beautiful statements with your shirt off. But you cannot do what too many artists do and go far from the maddening crowd.'"

Carlos Santana heard exactly what he wanted and needed to hear. He even agreed to consider Graham's suggestion of an outside producer, David Rubinson (Pointer Sisters, Herbie Hancock and Malo — with Santana's brother Jorge), so they could have the benefit of an extra ear — even though Carlos remembered unpleasant experiences with Rubinson.

Rubinson, a former associate of Graham's in their short-lived Fillmore Corporation, had also worked with Santana in the earliest days. As a Columbia staff producer he recorded their first studio tracks in 1968. They were never released; Rubinson felt that some of the arrangements could be improved and that the still green band needed time to overcome various "technical inefficiencies — the out-of-tuneness, dropping of time, the screwing up of charts." So the next thing Rubinson knew, Santana was in the studio recording their first album without him, with only the help of CBS engineer Brent Dangerfield.

"I don't think I was as sensitive to the insecurities of a new band going to record their first album as I could have been," recalled Rubinson, sitting in his tiny, deskless office on Market Street. "But I've changed. I've grown more tolerant of myself and other people."

Santana saw this when he and Rubinson had a feel-out meeting. "I realized then," said Carlos, "that David Rubinson made an about-face a long time ago. I made an about-face, Bill's making an about-face. I think they're listening more to the dictates of the soul, rather than the mind."

The three-way bond was completed, and the work began. Santana said the first thing Rubinson urged him to do was to open his ears to the AM-FM world outside of McLaughlin, George Benson, Pharoah Sanders, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane and Archie Shepp. "David told me, 'Devadip, I don't think you listen to the radio enough — if it's garbage to you, why are so many people buying it?' So I start to turn on the radio, go 'ehhhhh,' change the channel. But, hey, I hear this song, 'I'm Not in Love,' three times now. I don't care for the lyrics but the melody is pretty haunting. After a while, there's no room for criticism anymore, just room for absorbing. It's like seeing flowers. I might not like the color but I like the way it smells. That's what matters — is the perfume, the sincerity there?"

The Tubes are one group Santana has grown to like. "They were my favorite group for a while. I appreciate their imagination. They have a full sound, that American dynamism — they don't sound wishy-washy. ("Don't relate to the mascara and the stage thing, but I do relate to closing my eyes and listening to the music." The bass playing of Earth, Wind & Fire's Verdine White, meantime, has captivated him. "I think he's going to be the best player in the world in no time at all. Everything he has and what he is, he's offering to you." Santana also has kind words for Peter Frampton and his "simple conception of melodies, like what Donovan used to have. You hear it and you wanna keep hearing it."