The first Woodstock (and only one that really mattered) featured so many names and personalities that would become household names and icons of the rock and roll revolution. Richie Havens’ finger-picked folk. Ravi Shankar’s rainy meditation. Jerry Garcia leading the Grateful Dead through a nearly two-hour, five-song trip. There was also Janis, Sly & the Family Stone, Joe Cocker, and of course Jimi Hendrix’s generation-defining, 15-song guitar freakout.
Save for Havens and Sly Stone, every one of those aforementioned big, bright lights has since literally burned out. And that leads us to Carlos Santana, who spent that Saturday in ‘69 dropping a little acid and leading his band through an eight-song, 45-minute set that would change the course of Latin music forever.
On Friday, and in front of nearly 8,000 fans at Tampa’s Amalie Arena, the now 70-year-old guitar icon delivered a two-hour performance that felt painfully short while managing to still be a spiritual exercise that fell somewhere between baptism and full on cosmic conversion therapy.
“We can feel some beauty in here,” Santana — draped in a Tampa Bay Lightning jersey — told the crowd. “Remember, this spirit cannot be corrupted — it will not yield to stupid shit.”
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And watching Santana — plus a band that included three percussionists (including Santana’s wife Cindy Blackman), two singers, horns, guitar bass and keys, — work through pretty much any of the original music in his catalog is nothing short of stupidly good. Sure, a medley featuring “Dancing In the Street” and CCR’s “Proud Mary” felt like a ploy to placate a crowd ripe with boomers who wanted to hear hits, but Santana and his band were ready to let the assembled be anointed the oils of all of Carlos influences, and if one person went home and put on A Love Supreme, then you’ve got to feel like the set was a success.
Santana is admittedly a man who channels others in his own pursuit of musical enlightenment.
“Reaching out into John Coltrane, and Miles and Charlie Parker, and Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter, and Tony Williams and all that, you know, that's what you dip yourself into because when you dip yourself with them it's like hanging around with Einstein and Hawking,” he recently told CL. “You're hanging around with Picasso and Salvador Dalí, and DiVinci, you know? And here's a secret — you are them, and they are you. So all you have to do is immerse yourself in something that you want to research, and next thing you know you are articulating this language with the same principles as John Lennon's ‘Imagine,’ or the same principles as ‘One Love,’ Bob Marley.”
Trying to channel Santana would be quite the task to take.
“Incident at Neshabur” — from 1970’s Abraxas — was a jazzy, multi-tempo mindfuck complete with more than a few siren screams from the guitar, and other cuts from the album (Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va,” and the simmering “Samba Pa Ti”) were open invitations to watch Karl Perazzo, Paoli Mejías and Blackman all lock in before a heated, extended take on “Guajira” from 1971’s Santana (III) album.
For this Santana-virgin, getting lost in steady, tempo-defying conga, Dave Matthews’ syncopated piano riffs and the thousands of percussive strokes by singer/horn player Ray Greene and vocalist Andy Varga was the surprise. Santana is a guitar god (and he showed that off so many times throughout the night with signature solos accompanied by that open-mouthed look and a proto-crabcore stance), but the everlasting, age and time defying rhythms were the real black magic. And I’ll never forget being under their spell.
Have a look at more photos, and listen to a playlist featuring songs from the setlist below.
