By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer
"Take no prisoners — peacefully," Carlos Santana sometimes tells his bandmates before taking the stage.
"I don't like to coast. I don't like to rope-a-dope," Santana says. "I want to get in the middle of the ring and knock the sucker out. That way the referee can't steal the fight from me."
Santana, 75, can still whip a crowd into a frenzy like few others. He's been doing it since he stormed onto the San Francisco scene in the late '60s. He left the Woodstock audience dazed and stunned before the first Santana record came out.
The new documentary by Rudy Valdez, "Carlos," which 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. 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."
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. He's been in San Francisco since his family (his father played the violin in a mariachi band) moved from Mexico in the 1960s.
"The Bay Area definitely attracts characters, you know?" said Santana. "Like Minnesota Fats or Les Paul. Rascals. I call them Divine Rascals."
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.
"I have nothing but good memories," said Santana. "I have developed selective celestial amnesia."
How is it to watch a movie of your life?
It's strange. It's interesting to watch this person constantly strive and believe that he belongs. Ha ha! That he belongs on stage with these incredible musicians. 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. I learned a lot from African drummers. So I learned how to scramble the eggs differently. 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."
What was San Francisco like when you first arrived there in the '60s?
It was a it was a shock coming from Tijuana. In Tijuana, the people that I hung up hung around with were playing John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed and Lightnin Hopkins. We thought that B.B. King was sophisticated. Down and dirty, murky, simple but deadly, I think they call it cut and shoot crowd. Because if they didn't like you, they'd cut and shoot you. They didn't want you to get all clever or sophisticated. They wanted you to just play the guts. So when I got here, it was a challenge. I basically thought that everybody knew John Lee Hooker. And then I got here and they were like, "Who?" I had to start all over again. Fortunately when I got here, the Rolling Stones were coming out and they were listening to the same things I was listening to. Little Walter and Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. That's what saved me from getting frustrated and going back to Tijuana.
Was there a spiritual element to music for you early on?
Everybody in this world needs a heartfelt hug to be reassured that we're not going to be doomed hitting a brick wall, that we will go to the wall and we will succeed at becoming architects creating heaven on Earth. From Bob Marley to Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, Same Cooke, they all talk about the same thing. "One Love." "All You Need is Love." "What a Wonderful World." I make it a point to listen to certain songs that are like the new anthems of no church, but the new anthems of a galactic cathedral that transcends corrupt corporations and governments.
There are many enduring relationships you have in "Carlos" but how would you characterize your relationship to the guitar?
My guitar is my best lover, ever. Lovers come and go, but your relationship with the guitar — any brand or anything — stays. But it's your relationship with that sound. When you put your fingers on that note, you get chills. That's the best lover. You discover the sensation of getting the first French kiss. I'll stop there because this should be PG. But it all deals with the same thing. It all deals with "Oh my God." The big G-spot, which is God. When you hit that, they all go, "Oh my God." When you play music like that, it's more than just clever notes. It becomes emotion, feelings, passion. That's music to me. Music without emotion, passion or feelings is just clever noise. This is what's missing from the planet right now. People forgot how to feel. Stop, take a deep breathe and feel what your feeling.
