Santana & Isley
Carlos Santana and the Isley Brothers reflect on their magical pairing on new album Power Of Peace
We join two giants of American guitar to talk about Hendrix, LSD, a new collaborative project and the art of playing from the heart
Carlos Santana has shared with Guitarist the secret to his longevity as a world-renowned platinumselling artist: “It’s playing from your heart. It’s being gut-bucket honest for real. No shucking and jiving, no slippin’ and slidin’, no making excuses. Give it all you got from the centre of your heart and be true to every note you play. That you offer. That is basically the requirement for cooking this kind of food. That’s the ingredient: sincerity and trueness, and playing with intense intensity and with intention. That’s how I play my guitar. You cannot fail with that, because all of a sudden it’s not a profession, it’s a way of life.”
Santana is sitting next to his wife and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana in the lounge of the Electric Lady Studios in New York City. They are here to promote his new album Power Of Peace, a collaboration with Isley Brothers Ron and Ernie, but the occasion of being in the ‘Church of Jimi’, as Santana calls the studio designed and built by his friend and hero Jimi Hendrix, is not lost on him.
He’s reflective and humble, happy to talk about not only his new album, but also about what it takes to sustain a career as a guitarist still seemingly at the peak of his powers for almost five decades now. He’s also not afraid to speak his mind about what made Hendrix’s and his own forays on the guitar possible – especially seeing as, at the time, it was uncharted territory.
“Jimi was Leonardo da Vinci on the guitar,” Santana says. “He created a spectacular dimension for electric guitar that was all round – quadraphonic before quadraphonic existed. When I first heard his sound in San Francisco around the house, well, I’d loved the blues – Jimmy Reed and all – but when I heard Jimi, I heard everybody that I loved, all the kings, plus Curtis Mayfield and a lot of other players. I could trace all the people his sound came from. But I’d never heard anybody painting in surround sound with just one note. My heart just stopped.
“But it was the sound of mescaline and LSD. You cannot arrive on a plane like that without that. It ain’t for the faint of heart to take LSD in New York City, because if you’re not in the right mind or spirit it’s going to scare the hell out of you, and you’re going to scare the hell out of yourself because there is no place to hide. But that was what Jimi was doing. So when I heard his sound I said, ‘Oh, I see what’s happening. He’s the shaman of another order and dimension.’ Because you cannot play music the way he created music by just turning the guitar from left to right and turning up loud. You have to go somewhere else. For me, and for him, that was through LSD.”
Profit In Peace
With the world at a political crossroads, the message Santana and the Isleys are peddling is a powerful one – that peace, love and understanding are the answer. And, on Power Of Peace, they’re putting their own distinctive mark on some of the most powerful songs about peace and love ever written. They cover Stevie Wonder’s Higher Ground, Marvin Gaye’s Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), Curtis Mayfield’s Gypsy Woman, The Chambers Brothers’ Are You Ready? and Love, Peace, Happiness, Swamp Dogg’s Total Destruction To Your Mind, Billie Holiday’s God Bless The Child and Eddie Kendricks’ Body Talk. There are also songs made famous by Dionne Warwick and Jackie DeShannon (What The World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love) and Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon (I Just Want To Make Love To You), as well as a great new song, I Remember, penned and sung by Santana’s wife, Cindy.
While Power Of Peace bears all the hallmarks of Santana’s virtuoso guitar talents, it also has some great fretwork from Ernie Isley. After all, his own contribution to developing an otherworldly sound on the guitar in the late 60s and early 70s is equally remarkable, also his playing against Santana on the album is a masterclass in sympathetic interplay. For his part, Isley has his own, perhaps more down to earth, memories of Hendrix.
“Jimi Hendrix was a houseguest and employee to the Isley Brothers and the Isley family between 1963 and 65,” he recalls, standing in the control room of Studio A of Electric Lady. “I was 11 years old in ’63
and I’d heard a lot of good guitarists, but I’d never heard anybody play guitar like that. His guitar really did not have a wrong note on it. I’d sit at the kitchen table with my social studies homework while he was practising in our kitchen and I’d just listen.
“My younger brother Marvin would occasionally ask something like, ‘Hey, Jimi, how do you know when to change strings?’ What he really wanted to know was how to get notes like the ones Jimi was playing, but he was only 10. So Jimi would stop and explain it as best he could. But I never heard anybody play like that. It was amazing to be rubbing elbows with him, much less to have him be related to the Isley Brothers. He was and he’ll always be an amazing player that made an unfathomable contribution to music, so those are really special memories.”
Gear Up
Isley played his own custom-designed white Zeal Fender Stratocaster with gold hardware and scroll work through Mesa Boogie and Fender amps on Power Of Peace. He also used two Pro-Co ‘Rat’ distortion/ fuzz pedals, Boss Flanger, Chorus and Tuner pedals, as well as a Roger Mayer Octavia and Dunlop Crybaby Wah, Univibe and Rotovibe. His instantly recognisable sound is all over the album, but it’s probably most noticeable in the chugging rhythms he provides on their cover of Marvin Gaye.
“What you lay out on the floor may help me sound like me,” Isley explains, “but once I tune up and I plug in and say ‘What song are we doing?’ and I’m playing and he’s playing… Wow! So you have to hear it. To say ‘the Isley Brothers and Carlos Santana on the same recording project’ isn’t enough. You have to hear it to begin to get an understanding of what we did, because I don’t think it’s what anyone would expect. There’s a sense of discovery for the listener, for the music lover, and especially for guitar players, and that’s what makes it so amazing.”
As for Santana, he stuck with the tried and true. He played a Paul Reed Smith 24-fret single cutaway gold leaf and a yellow Fender Stratocaster relic through Mesa Boogie Snakeskin and Kingsnake and Bludotone amps, via a Dictator 4x12 and a Tone Tubby 4 x 12 speaker cabinet through a Pete Cornish amp splitter. His favorite pedal on the project was his Geoffrey Teese RMC 10 Wah.
But whatever the gear, Santana says that it’s his ears that he relies on most, especially on a collaborative project like this.
“I could hear what I wanted to accomplish with this project in my head even before we got in the studio,” he says. “I could feel first the spirit, and second the African music I grew up listening to. But I have to credit the spirit who some might say has given me a very short leash. I stay really, really close to obeying my inner instructions, and that is to complement, complement and complement. And the only way to do that is to always listen.
“I learned a word from Magic Johnson,” Santana continues, referring to his friend, the basketball legend. “He said, ‘When I came to the Lakers, I deferred to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s a really, really high word.’ Defer. It means that you have learned honour and respect for those who came here before you. So I learned to defer to the vocalist, to the other guitarist, and to the drums. Then, when it’s my turn, I just get in there with all I’ve got. But I love deferring, too, because that space means I’m not afraid to bring my spirit into a situation.”
“I defer to the vocalist, the other guitarist, the drums. Then, when it’s my turn, I just get in there with all I’ve got” Carlos santana
As a result, Santana says he didn’t change anything about his approach to the guitar when playing with Isley.
“You know, I didn’t even look over my shoulder or anything like that, I just trusted that his frequency and my frequency were the same,” Santana says. “We both listen to singers. Once you listen to singers, you know how to honour them and not get in the way, whether it’s Billie Holiday or Mahalia Jackson or Ron Isley. It’s about when to come in and when to be quiet. It’s about don’t step on their note. So no, I never even looked at changing my approach. I knew Ernie had spent a lot of quality time with Jimi, but I’ve also never been especially into competing with guitar players. I complement whatever elements are there. I may come in a little bit like a marathon runner or a Jamaican sprint runner, depending on the occasion, but I make it a point not to go into competition with any musician, but rather to support the singer and to make them centre stage, and I could tell right away that Ernie’s attitude was the same.”
Still, Santana wasn’t afraid to find the moments when the guitar could take over.
“When Ronnie was not singing, Ernie and I would become the singer,” he explains. “With all due respect, I don’t listen to guitar players that much unless they are Wes Montgomery or Kenny Burrell – certain musicians that, when they play they sing. They don’t play notes or scales or chords. They don’t play that, they play life. That’s what singers do, singers just express life and they tell you stories. So that’s the kind of guitar players I do listen to, people who tell the story and tell it very well, and that’s where Ernie and I both come from.”
Dream Gig
For his part, even with all the career highs and accolades he’s collected over the years, Isley couldn’t help be in awe of Santana.
“I’d seen Carlos at Woodstock in August of ’69 when I’d been playing the guitar for less than a year,” Ernie recalls. “So, in that way, I’m looking at somebody who’s already there, you know, so to be playing with him now was really a joy. It’s like, ‘Man, that is Carlos Santana.’ He is a phenomenal musician. He’s a phenomenal player. So it was a joy to be able to do it.”
When we remind Isley of his own accomplishments, and of the kudos Santana had heaped on him when we’d spoken just a few minutes earlier, he laughs.
“Yeah, well, more than anything else, it was just a happy thing I think on both of our parts, then,” he says with a broad smile.
“It was very silky, it was amazing for me to watch back there from the drum kit,” Cindy says, when we ask her of the remarkable interplay between her husband and Isley. “I don’t think those two had ever played together, so it was amazing that there was such an incredible flow. It was so fluid and so smooth that sometimes I really struggled to stay in the moment while we were recording because I was so blown away. But the whole band reacted the same way. We all raised our game just a little bit playing with these two guys.”
Ronnie Isley agrees, and says that while the songs they chose all conveyed a spiritual message, it was the guitar playing his brother and Carlos Santana brought to the sessions that pushed him and everyone else involved to give all they had.
“You almost can’t go wrong with those songs,” Ron Isley says. “They’re just great, great songs. But listening to these two guys play made me work even harder, especially because we all felt strongly that we were spreading a message that people really need to hear these days.”
“This is medicine music to alleviate the frequency of fake, phony baloney arrogance, fear, division, separation and a feeling of superiority that’s out there,” Santana says.
“It’s like, ‘Man, that is Carlos Santana.’ He is a phenomenal musician. He’s a phenomenal player” ernie isley
“This is music to bring everyone to the level of realising we’re all significant and meaningful, so we can all carry ourselves in that way.”
Santana also says that, while the truly unique guitar playing on the record was obviously essential to making the record what it is, Ronnie Isley’s voice was ultimately the key to the project.
“Ronnie sculpts notes with his voice,” he explains. That’s important – to think about sculpting glass, because you’ve got to have something hot – like really hot, you know – to turn sand into something beautiful. Well, he’s got this hot spirit and he can turn his voice into a blue flame or a white flame or red flame right in front of you, every time.”
When we ask Ernie Isley if there was one moment in the sessions that stood out for him, he stops us.
“The peak was all of us just doing what we do,” he says. “You know, I was just listening to the song – to the guitar part – because if I’m not doing the lead, and it’s Carlos Santana, I’m marvelling at seeing a man with his instrument doing it right there in front of me, and that really pushed me. It was an amazing thing, because I’d look when I was soloing, and he’d have that same grin on his face that I know I had when he was playing.”
Mutual Praise
Santana, too, admits the pairing with the Isleys was a dream come true. “It goes back to 1962 for me,” he says. “When I first came from Tijuana, the Isley Brothers were untouchable to me. It was galactic music that went around the world, before Michael Jackson or The Beatles. Twist and Shout felt to me like I was with the singer on an extraterrestrial galactic adventure that was beyond Earth. I would hear them on the jukebox, and the speakers would be blowing up. You know, like, ‘Damn, what is that?’ It sounded like a galactic church jumping out of the jukebox telling me, ‘We need you to join us in creating medicine music to heal the planet with a sound vibration that can invite people to arrive at accepting their own divinity.”
More than 50 years on, Power Of Peace is the fulfilment of the path Santana set out on after hearing the Isley Brothers’ hit.
“God gave me light and I can create miracles and blessings with my guitar,” he continues. “You know, people still talk about Woodstock for a reason. Because Woodstock represented something beyond organised politics or religion. It represented spirituality. And spirituality is not religion. With all respect to religion, spirituality is rain from heaven and religion is Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola. So it’s a miracle and a blessing to be sharing this music with these gimongus musicians. And if it helps us to assimilate a new frequency on this planet – to bring spirituality through music to people – then we’ve done what we set out to do.”
He also has some advice for guitarists, whether they’re learning the ropes at home, or treading the boards at clubs or stadiums.
“Musicians need to remember they need genuine sincerity, trueness that is authentic and honest,” he says as we say our goodbyes. “But more than anything, it’s important that you tap inside your heart to the frequency of being gut-bucket honest for real.”