(...Story Continued from Previous Page)
I'm very grateful that I have the intuitive power to complement them and not
step on them, not impose.
I've been blessed with celestial amnesia since I was born. I don't know how
to play the guitar as soon as I stop playing it. So when I pick it up, it's
virgin territory again. I don't practice the guitar a lot. I notice that when I
do, I start playing stuff that's mindless and corny, just clever and cute, and I
don't like that. At least for me, it works better when I approach everything
like the first French kiss -- very awkward, your palms are sweaty, and you don't
know if she's going to slap you or if she's going to hold you closer.
What's different working on these one-off collaborations rather than
working with an ongoing band?
What's different is that I'm able to play with Cher or Tina Turner or Lauryn Hill -- especially the women -- and I'm
invited back. I adapt to the situations like a shape shifter, man. So I have
confidence -- not arrogance, but confidence. I'm able to fit in any situation,
with anyone from Wayne Shorter to Yo-Yo Ma to Metallica, and the greatest honor is when they invite you
back and say, "Let's do it again, that was fun."
The blues is still the first root of what I love, because it deals with
emotions, it deals with something that even cynical intellectuals are affected
by. It's like when somebody licks your face, even if you're cold blooded, your
skin responds, your hair stands up. To me, there's nothing more immediate in
music than when someone like Tina Turner makes you laugh and cry at the same
time with just one note. That's something that the brain or a computer can't
quantify. You can't measure joy, and you can't measure a tear. And those things
have to go inside that one note. Once you achieve that, they'll call you back.
You mentioned the distinctiveness of your tone. You are the very rare
musician that a listener can identify in a single note. Was that an intentional
ambition or just something that happened? How do you achieve something as hard
to describe as that?
It's a gift, you know? I tried and tried to sound like B.B. King and Kenny Burrell and Grant Green and Wes Montgomery. And as hard as I tried, I couldn't. I always
sounded like me, so I gave up. At the same time, there's something about me that
people identify -- grandparents, little kids and everyone in between. It's
almost like I'm incidental and they hear their own families, and that's what
makes it, strangely enough, so identifiable.
In this world, you can be extremely famous, but that doesn't mean people like
you. There's a difference. I think people like you because they identify their
own struggles and their pain and their discoveries in you, so when they hear
that sound, they go, "I know that's Santana, but that's me."
Is there a song that crystallizes that phenomenon for you, one that
you know you can go to and find that essence of your sound?
The instrumental ones, definitely -- "Europa," "Samba Pa Ti," "I Love You
Much Too Much," which is a very Yiddish song that Bill Graham taught me. I
remember I was on tour with Mr. Bob Dylan in 1984, and I was sitting with Bob, and
waiters and waitresses and people would come up to me and say, "Man, I got
married to 'Samba Pa Ti,' or "See my daughter Sophia? She was conceived to
'Samba Pa Ti.'" So there's something about "Samba Pa Ti," and "Europa," too --
people play them at weddings or baptisms, or they make love to them, because
they have no need for English or Spanish or Italian vocabularies. They go
straight to the heart in a universal language that people don't need a
translation. Melodies speak louder and more eloquently than any language on this
planet.
You've mentioned Bill Graham and Bob Dylan and John Coltrane and
Peter Fonda ... What do you think is most misunderstood about the '60s
generation and its legacy?
The biggest misconception is that it didn't amount to anything. But the
hippies gave birth to Tiananmen Square. There's something that happened in San
Francisco -- and part of Los Angeles, with the Doors -- that gave birth to consciousness. It started off
with LSD or peyote or mescaline, and it gave birth to the Black Panther
movement. It gave birth to a new way of questioning authority, religion and
politics. And people resented it, because they wanted us to be like sheep and
just follow.
We got people out of Vietnam, we exposed Nixon, we don't believe Ronald
Reagan brought the Berlin Wall down -- he took the credit, but it was Bob Marley
and a lot of musicians who made people on the other side of the world say,
"We're missing out, let's just bring this stuff down." And I also give credit to
Mikhail Gorbachev.
The hippies are still alive in a lot of places. Some became yuppies --
greedy, unconscious people -- but there's a lot of hippies alive today who truly
want to implement the principles of the American Indians, which is whatever you
do to the pond, you do to yourself, like Chief Seattle said. The real hippies,
not the ones who came in with the fake mustaches and wigs to get free love and
free food, we're still around. And we intend to create a new movement and make a
difference. And you can't shut us out.
I'll quote the ultimate hippie thing, from Princess Leia -- the harder you
squeeze to crush us, the faster we will slip through your fingers. (Laughs.) You
like that? George Lucas -- he's a hippie, too!
Alan Light is the former editor-in-chief of Spin, Vibe and Tracks
magazines and a former senior writer at Rolling Stone. His writing has also
appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, GQ and Entertainment Weekly. His
book "The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys" was published
in 2006. Alan is a two-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for
excellence in music writing.
Discuss this interview | Send us an e-mail | More features |
Hotmail
