(Reprinted from Circus magazine: August 1973)
On the surface, it seems like one of the most unlikely pairings in the
land of rock and roll. John McLaughlin was born in Yorkshire, England, and
raised in an upper-middle class home by a mother and father who loved
classical music. Carlos Santana was born in Mexico and raised in the San
Francisco slums by an uneducated mother and a father who played in Mexican
street bands. McLaughlin begins a concert by requesting his audience to
join him in a few minutes of silent meditation. Santana used to open
concerts by torturing his guitar strings into a demonic frenzy of high
volume sound. McLaughlin and his Mahavishnu Orchestra leap into music that
is contradictorily laced with total energy and tranquillity. His long,
searing guitar lines - with their references to cool jazz and Indian music
- are locked in a contrapuntal embrace with Jerry Goodman's electric
fiddle. Jan Hammer chimes in on keyboards; and Rick Laird on bass and Billy
Cobham on drums provide the foundations for the band's soaring flights. And
while the end product is exhilarating in the extreme, the audience is
disinclined to stand up and boogie in the aisles, partly due to
McLaughlin's religious attitude and partly because you could break an ankle
trying to dance to those complicated, fluid rhythms. Carlos Santana's band
races to the other extreme. Santana has had them dancing in the aisles
since the group made its first appearance five years ago.
Head hits concrete: As a consequence, a musical union between McLaughlin
and Santana seemed as likely as a marriage between Archie Bunker and Maude.
Yet the impossible union has just occurred. The street kid from San
Francisco and the religious devotee from Yorkshire have gone into the
studio together and emerged with a joint album - Love, Devotion and
Surrender (on Columbia Records). How did it happen?
Part of the answer lies in two life stories that for all their
dissimilarities have a strikingly similar undercurrent. John McLaughlin
started life as anything but a holy man. He may have trained in classical
piano and violin at the age of seven, but at sixteen he dropped out of high
school and a few years later joined the Graham Bond Organization with
future superstars Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. "He was getting very stoned
at the time," recalls Bruce, "he actually fell off the stage in Coventry
and played this death chord as he landedäkkkrrruuuuuunngg."
Wrenched by the spirit: Then one night in 1963, after reading about the
spiritual philosophy behind Tarot cards, McLaughlin was playing with Brian
Auger's band when "suddenly the spirit entered me and it was no longer me
playing." Six years later in New York, John made his commitment to the
spirit formal and became a follower of the Indian guru Sri Chinmoy. Like
John, the young Carlos was no saint. When his parents announced they were
going to leave Mexico, ten-year-old Carlos ran away from home, and the
family crossed the border without him. Six months later his mother came
back and found him wandering the streets of Tijuana on his own. By 1968,
when he gained success with the first Santana band, he continued his
renegade ways, sleeping with as many women as he could handle, dropping
acid and dabbling with other drugs. Yet slowly the discussions of kharma
and reincarnation he had with his friends began to move him into the realm
of the soul.
Backstage summit conference: On a recent stopover at his New York
apartment, Mahavishnu John McLaughlin told how the pair of prodigal sons
finally met. It happened one night a year ago when the Mahavishnu Orchestra
was performing at San Francisco's Winterland. The band played and the
audience grooved. One of those grooving was that unlikely fan, Carlos
Santana, who not only loved the music, but knew about Mahavishnu's
spiritual associations with Sri Chinmoy. Carlos himself had been doing some
spiritual investigations - meditating on Jesus and checking out Indian
philosophies. So when Santana introduced himself to McLaughlin, they had a
lot to talk about - music and spirituality.
They must have seemed a strange pair as they sat in the dressing room
talking - Carlos with his velvet shirt and long hair looking ultra-hip and
ultra-worldly; John with his peculiarly short haircut and inexpensive
sweater looking super-normal and super-subdued. But appearances did not
keep the two from seeing all they had in common. Santana invited McLaughlin
to his home to continue the conversation, but concert commitments kept the
British guitarist from accepting. However, the two met again soon in Los
Angeles, where the Mahavishnu Orchestra was continuing its tour, and talked
some more.
Santana swaps bands: While Mahavishnu was touring and recording, Santana
was going through major changes. Most of his original band had left, there
were hassles with managers, incompetent and sometimes corrupt lawyers and
accountants and the wrench that comes from changing musical directions as
he did in his latest album, Caravanserai. In the midst of all this Santana
continued his studies of various religions, removed himself entirely from
the drug scene, and generally turned his head around.
Months passed but Mahavishnu had not forgotten Santana. The next event in
their journey toward togetherness was a strong coincidence, or, if you are
a fatalist, a pre-destined act of the Gods. As McLaughlin described it, "it
was really strange the way it happened. No, it was really nice. I woke up
one morning with this idea for an album I wanted to do with Carlos. That
same day, my manager phoned me to say that he had been having meetings with
Clive (Davis, president of Columbia) and that Clive had this idea that I
should do an album with Carlos. I called Carlos right away, but he wasn't
home, so I left a message and he called me back."
The bowels of the church: With the blessings of all concerned, Carlos and
Mahavishnu talked by telephone several times about ideas for the impending
LP. Then McLaughlin made another trip to California to visit with Santana,
talk some more and rehearse. By November of 1972, both were ready for the
studio and made the trek back to New York where they checked into
Columbia's recording plant on East 36th Street. Appropriately enough, that
massive studio, home of original cast recordings and monster Christmas
parties, was located in a de-sanctified church and boasted some of the best
natural acoustics to be found anywhere. McLaughlin and Santana each brought
with them a very few people from their respective bands. For the first
sessions, McLaughlin had Jan Hammer from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, not
playing his usual piano but displaying his other talent as a percussionist.
"He's very good at it," McLaughlin noted admiringly.
Santana had three from his band - Doug Rauch on bass, Armando Perazo (a
veteran of the Latin music scene) on percussion and Mingo Lewis on congas.
Don Elias from the Lou Rawls band played drums and Kalid Yasim played
organ. Needless to say, McLaughlin and Santana played guitar.
Swept into oneness: One friend, admirer and observer of those November
sessions was very impressed with the goings on at East 36th Street. He
reported that "Everything was positive and the music just flowed. There was
no star ego. The two of them played so well together that often you
couldn't even hear which one was which." McLaughlin agrees. "We had a very
strong rapport. And neither of us dominates the music. Spiritual harmony
creates musical harmony. The result is different from the Mahavishnu
Orchestra and different from Santana. I think it's greater than them both."
The bond between the guitarists was phenomenal. And the other six
musicians found themselves swept hypnotically into the stream of a totally
unfamiliar breed of music. It seemed all the stranger since the two men's
styles are miles apart. As the friend pointed out, "Their musical
approaches are different, but at the same time they are driven by the same
force, so it works. It's like two colors that are put in the proper setting
so that they won't clash. Carlos' music was very sweet and flowing, while
Mahavishnu has more intensity and, of course, an incredible technique." The
combination seems to have produced remarkable results.
Santana strips away the old: But the sessions would do more than just
produce extraordinary music, they would lead to a drastic change in Carlos
Santana's life. When the first round of recording was over, Carlos and
McLaughlin continued to get together. And when Carlos expressed growing
interest in Mahavishnu's faith, he was taken to one of the meditation
meetings that Sri Chinmoy holds weekly for the U.N.'s staff members. It was
at that meeting that Santana received a blessing from Sri Chinmoy. The
experience moved him so much that he asked to come to another meeting at
Sri Chinmoy's headquarters near McLaughlin's home. Shortly thereafter,
Santana became a disciple of Sri Chinmoy. McLaughlin characteristically
refuses to take any credit. "I didn't do anything. Sri Chinmoy did it. But
it's really God who does everything."
By the time Santana returned from a European tour to join McLaughlin in
the studio a few months ago for the sessions that would complete the album,
the two were no longer the radically different men they had seemed six
months before. Carlos the street kid had traded his long hair, blue jeans
and work shirts for short hair and a dignified white suit. Like John
McLaughlin, he stepped onstage quietly when he performed and placed a photo
of Sri Chinmoy on his amplifier, then bowed his head in a moment of prayer.
For like McLaughlin - the man who once fell off a British stage in a stoned
stupor - Carlos Santana has been reborn in a new image through his faith in
a spiritual master. And the most unlikely pairing of musical personalities
this year has turned into the most unlikely transformation of a major
superstar.
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