Anyone who's heard Grace Bowers' incendiary debut album, Wine on Venus, can hear there's a bit of an old soul inside the 18-year-old wunderkind electric guitar player from Nashville (by way of her native Bay Area). And the 10 albums she identifies as changing her life display it.

All but two are of late-'60s and early '70s vintage, and five are from acts that performed at the first Woodstock Music and Music and Art Fair.

"I do tend to lean toward the older stuff," says Bowers, who began playing guitar when she was nine but got serious during her early teens, when she also started buying records. "I think what all these albums have in common is how real they are and how they capture the artists' spirit, or their originality. None of them are perfect, but they all have a unique sound. They all have great guitar on them, too, so that's a big draw for me. I can pick things from each record that have specifically influenced me."

The independently released Wine on Venus attests to that, as Bowers crafts songs and arrangements and plays in a manner that's at once retro and contemporary — timeless, as we like to say. It's helped her get plenty of notice, too, from a gamut of TV appearances and sharing stages with Bob Weir & Wolf Bros, Billy Idol and the Allman Betts Family Revival to accolades from the Recording Academy. Bowers played the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville on her 18th birthday, joined Dolly Parton on her Pet Gala TV special, performed at the NCAA Men's Final Four Tip-Off Tailgate and ushered in 2025 with Lainey Wilson on CBS's New Year's Eve Live.

So what's next? More touring with her band, the Hodge Podge, including bookings at Bonnaroo, Innings and other festivals, as well as trips to Europe and Japan. "All the while I'm still writing new music," Bowers adds, and she's contemplating a live release as well.

"I'm super happy with how everything's going," she says. "This is everything I wished I was doing a year or two ago, and now it's happening. I love being on the road and getting to see all the different places we're going."

These 10 albums, meanwhile, offer an insightful look at where Bowers comes from.

Maggot Brain — Funkadelic (1971)

"This is probably one of if not my favorite album of all time. I still remember hearing 'Hit It and Quit It' the first time — which, by the way, was just a year or two ago — and just being absolutely blown away. Because I was getting booked to play shows and was doing covers, I was trying to figure out what my sound was going to be. I didn't really have answer to that until I heard Maggot Brain.

"I love everything about it. My favorites are 'Can You Get to That' — which Mavis Staples also did a great version of — 'You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks' and, obviously, 'Hit It and Quit It.' I love everything about it. I definitely pull a lot of inspiration from that record specifically, and Funkadelic and Parliament as a whole."

Awaken, My Love — Childish Gambino (2016)

"This one's super cool, because at the time when he released it, it was different from the albums he had previously put out. It's very experimental and combines a lot of genres, but mainly R&B. Some songs lean kinda funky and some are maybe more rock, but, really, I would say it's an R&B record. And the way it's written and produced, it's so musical and all of the ideas are very unique. There's not a lot of people making music like he does. That's definitely my favorite album of his."

D&B Together — Delaney & Bonnie (1972)

"I think they're one of the most underrated groups of all time. I feel like they don't get brought up in conversation enough but they created some of these great songs that inspired people like Eric Clapton. He's on the album, which his awesome. And Bonnie Bramlett's singing voice and style remind me a lot of Susan Tedeschi.

"A lot of people know 'Comin' Home,' but every single song on the album is so good. When I first heard them I was going through a huge '60s and '70s classic rock phase. A lot of that's kind of hit and miss for me, 'cause it can all sound the same, but I feel like you can put on any song of their and enjoy it. It doesn't get old."

An Evening With Silk Sonic — Silk Sonic (Bruno Mars and Anderson.Paak) (2021)

"You could tell me this was made in the '70s and I would 100 percent believe you. It combines all the best elements of '70s frunk and R&B, and the music videos they made for it definitely drew from that era in music. But at the same time it's not a throwback; it's fresh and original, and it's their own take on it. I wish they would make another one, 'cause it's so good."

Climbing — Mountain (1970)

"Leslie West is probably my favorite guitar player of all time. This was Mountain's first-ever record, after they played Woodstock, and it had 'Theme From an Imaginary Western On It.' The solo that Leslie takes on that is one of the most perfectly crafted guitar solos ever. His tone — not even just on this album, his tone in general — was so good. He's one of those players you can recognize right away. It's that distinct.

"Leslie was just so inventive, and he wasn't a shredder. He didn't play really fast, but when he did play he meant it. He almost played with, like, punctuation if that makes sense — his phrasing was so unique and original. A lot of people try to imitate that now, but I feel like he was the first guy to really play like that. Obviously he drew from a lot of blues players, but he had his own way of doing it."

Fresh — Sly & the Family Stone (1973)

"They'd already been established for a while when they put this out. There's still lots of funk but so many R&B elements, too, especially in the bass playing. What I like about this album is that, while the songs cover a range of styles, they all have the same sound — they must have recorded it in the same room, in the same studio and with the same instruments.

"A lot of records today have many different sounds to them, but this one is consistent through and through. It's got an energy that makes it stand out from the rest of their albums. I wanted to capture a bit of that when I went into the studio, so we used the same instruments on every song, with the same settings and all that."

Rags to Rufus — Rufus (1974)

"This was definitely my favorite work Chaka Khan has ever done. The song 'Rags to Rufus' is a huge inspiration for my use of wah when I play rhythm guitar; it's an instrumental and it kind of stays the same the whole time, which is cool. It reminds me of Billy Preston's 'Outta Space,' but there's still a modern sound to it, like it was ahead of its time.

"And the songwriting on this album is incredible. 'Tell Me Something Good' is on it, but everything is really strong. Chaka Khan was really young — like 19 or 20 — when she recorded this, which is crazy. She has such a range in her voice and so many different sounds she could get, and her vibrato was really unique and something you would definitely pick out: 'Oh, that's Chaka Khan.' She left that mark on everything she recorded."

Santana — Santana (1969)

"This is their very first album, and it came out a couple weeks after they played Woodstock. When I first got it, I was listening to it every single day. I was obsessed with it. I would listen to it top to bottom, every time, in order, because the songs faded into one another. It was meant to be listened to like that. In 1969 you couldn't just go on Spotify and skip around songs. I also love Carlos Santana's guitar playing and the drums and the percussion. He brought so many elements together in rock and gave it a Latin influence that hadn't really been heard before. He changed the game a bit."

Deja Vu — Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1970)

"An absolute supergroup. I love all of those guys on their own, too, especially Neil Young. But seeing what they could write and what sounds they could get when they all come together was just insane, especially their vocal harmonies. There's nothing else like that. It's kind of haunting in a way. A song like 'Helplessly Hoping' is so beautiful. When you get musicians like that in a room together, it just creates something so special.

"I've heard people shit on Stephen Stills' guitar playing, and Neil's too. But it's the same thing as with Leslie West: When they played something, they meant it, and you can hear that in their playing. Some people say their tone sucked or they didn't know how to play, and maybe they weren't the best guitar players of all time, but that's the beauty of it. If there were mistakes, they left them in. That's what makes it sound so real. On these older records they didn't have the tools to go in and perfect everything so they had to leave the imperfections in, and that's what makes them so special."

Band of Gypsys — Band of Gypsys (1970)

"That has Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums. Buddy Miles is one of my favorites, too, and those three together were crazy. This was Hendrix's first time playing with these two, and it's the only record we have of them. And just to think how much more music we could've gotten if he hadn't passed away so young. Band of Gypsys is like a glimpse into what could have been. Those three meshed so well together, and they had a real chemistry, and that definitely comes out in the playing and the jams they went into.

"This album definitely had a huge influence on my guitar plying. I remember going back and learning all these songs as Hendrix played them and then kind of doing my own thing with it. It gave me a great base to build from. Being able to learn that stuff and see how Hendrix phrases things and how he wrote riffs and the way he structured songs really left a mark on me."

The following interview originally appeared in the August 1999 issue of Guitar Player.

“I had only one concern when making my new record,” says Carlos Santana. “Would Jimi Hendrix like it if he were here? Would there be enough guitar? It's important for me to appease Jimi and Wes Montgomery, because I play for them, too.”

We're sitting in Santana's large rehearsal hall in San Rafael, California. Surrounded by bright wall hangings depicting his musical heroes – John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Charlie Parker, and Bob Marley – Santana is describing the genesis of his latest album, Supernatural. 

Featuring collaborations with an intriguing assortment of musicians – including Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Dave Matthews, Everlast, Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, Eagle Eye Cherry, Ozomatli, and the Dust Brothers – this release is Santana's debut on Arista Records.

“We're still finishing some tracks,” Santana explains, as he cues up “Love of My Life,” a song he co-wrote with Dave Matthews. “In fact, right after this interview I'm going into the studio to put some guitar on 'The Calling,' which I wrote with Eric Clapton. It's time to put that one to bed.”

As the punchy intro to “Love of My Life” emerges from the boom box, Santana's head bobs with the music. “You know what? There is enough guitar in there!”

Santana holds passionate views on a variety of subjects, and whether discussing songwriting, tone, and soloing – or such hot-button topics as spirit guides, self-validation, synchronicity, senility, and suicide – he presents his thoughts calmly, without a hint of rock-star posturing. Santana's speech is as distinctive as his playing, and he weaves his colorful tales of music and mysticism with unguarded sincerity.

Even if you don't share all of his beliefs, his ideas will get you thinking about the guitar and its role in our lives. Santana has survived more than three decades in the fickle music business without losing an iota of his enthusiasm for the 6-string and its great players. We can all learn from that.

Your new record is a remarkably collaborative effort. How did this come about?

“Through meditations and dreams, I received these instructions: 'We want you to hook up with people at junior high schools, high schools, and universities. We're going to get you back into radio airplay.' I said, 'okay,' because a lot of young people are not happy unless they are miserable. You can tell by what's happening at the schools. The vibrations of this music and the resonance in the lyrics will present these people with new options. 

“I don't want them to feel like me or think like me – we're all individuals, and we're all unique. But with our music, we're presenting a new octave – a new menu. This menu says: 'We are multi-dimensional spirits dwelling in the flesh, solely for the purpose of evolution.'

“You see, if you take the time to crystallize your intentions, motives, and purpose, and direct them for the highest good of life and people on the planet – behold, you get synchronicity. I'll give you an example. Working with [Arista label head] Clive Davis, we got hooked up with Lauryn Hill. She said, 'Oh man, I love your music. Since I was a child, I listened to 'Samba Pa Ti' – I even wanted to put lyrics to it.' So, Lauryn invited me to play with her at the Grammy Awards. Playing with her was my first time there.”

And what a night – she won five Grammys.

“Yes, she cleaned up. Eric Clapton was in the audience, and he saw us perform. After the show, he called and said, 'Look man, I heard that people at Arista were trying to contact me to play on your new record. I've been going through some serious changes in my life, and I was at a really critical point, but things are better now. Do you still hear me on your album? Is there room for me?' To hear Eric say that! I grew up listening to him, Peter Green and Michael Bloomfield.”

Then what happened?

“Well, my spirits are Miles Davis and Bill Graham [the impresario, not the evangelist]. Even though they've left the physical world, they still come in my dreams and give me instructions. So when Eric asked if there was room for him on the record, I could hear Bill saying, 'No, you schmuck, you're too late!' So I'm on the phone having a conversation with Bill and Eric at the same time. 

“To Bill, I said, 'Wait. Maybe you can talk to him like that, but I can't.' And to Eric, I said, 'Yeah, but you know what? I wouldn't think of dipping you into something that has already been recorded. Why don't you come over, and we'll write something from scratch?

“And that's how we started. We went through a couple of things and settled on something I had written, but never recorded. It has a Prince bass groove, but it's very swampy – you could hear John Lee Hooker or the Staple Singers playing it.”

So that's synchronicity at work?

“Exactly. Here's another example: Last summer, I asked an artist named Michael Rios to create a poster for us. I marked some passages in a few books and asked him to start with those ideas and then continue with his own vision. Do you know what's really amazing? The images for lyrics that Dave Matthews, Everlast, Wyclef, Lauryn Hill, and Eagle Eye Cherry brought to the album are all in the poster! I didn't tell them to look at it or anything. So, I know there is something happening.

“It was like that from '69 until '73, and then it went somewhere else. Now it's happening again with this music. I'm in total awe of how fast and smooth things have been. Nobody has had a cow, nobody is bugged out – and there are a lot of producers, engineers, and artists involved with this record. They're putting their best foot forward and all being very gracious. I keep pinching myself. I feel very incidental – I just show up, we see each other's eyes, we hear the music, and we start recording.”

How do you describe your music?

“I don't see myself playing black music or white music or gray music. I play rainbow music. It's like diamonds – all the colors are there, but it's still clear.”

What's the process when you co-write a song with, say, Dave Matthews? Do you send tapes back and forth, or do you write in the studio?

“There's a story behind that one. When my father passed away two or three years ago, I didn't listen to music for four days – that's a long time for me. I was picking up my son from school, and I thought, okay, time to listen to some radio. I turned on a classical station, and the first thing I heard was this melody [gently sings a slow, six-note theme]. The melody just stayed with me. They didn't say who the composer was, but I thought it was Strauss.

“I wanted to find out what this was, so I went to the classical music section at Tower Records and said, 'All I have is this melody.' I sang it, and the guy goes, 'Oh yeah. Brahms' Concerto No. 2.' They get me the CD, and that's the song! I said, 'Damn, you guys are good!'

“So, I brought this melody to Dave Matthews in New York. I said, 'I hear this with a 1999 bass.' I also recited these lines:

You're the love of my life/You're the breath of my prayers/Take my hand, lead me there/ With you is where I want to be

“Dave sat down and – bam – wrote the song lyrics right there on the spot, and we recorded it.”

Your guitar melody swings a bit more than the Brahms theme.

“If Brahms were alive today, he would swing it, too, because it's what's happening. Listen to Dave's phrasing – he sang it like Billie Holiday or Frank Sinatra – way behind the beat. It's that human thing. Only squares sing in the middle.”

As always, your guitar sound is very vocal.

“When you listen to vocalists like Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick, you learn to phrase differently. For a long time, I wouldn't listen to guitar players – Joe Pass, Pat Martino, Jim Hall – because I felt that was another generation's music. I felt my music was blues and rock. But now, I'm discovering all this music by Jim Hall, Kenny Burrell, and Wes Montgomery, and it's like, 'Oh, this guy is burning just as hard, but with a different fire.' 

“I'm able to check out all the guitar players, take what I need, and still make those notes like Miles – you know, when you hit that note, you don't want to breathe until you finish with it. You go [exhales].

“Miles, Peter Green – there are very few people who make you hold your breath until that note is ended. You literally feel like you've got a colic in your stomach. You get goose bumps. I love musicians who make you want to cry and laugh at the same time. When they go for it, you go with them, and you don't come back until they come back. [Laughs.] There are not that many players who can consistently do that. Potentially, we all should be doing it.”

Were you listening to any particular musicians while working on this album?

“I was listening to Peter Green, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis.”

What were you listening for?

“Peter Green for his legato tones. I mean, the first four or five years of Peter Green, because lately he plays more like Pat Martino. Staccato notes – [like] John Coltrane. And from Miles, you get the alchemy of making 50,000 notes into five. But with those five, you shake the world. 

“That was Miles' supreme gift. He could play two or three notes and, man or woman, you'd just go, 'Oh, my God.' Listen to Sketches of Spain. Play your guitar and try to keep up with the notes, the way he holds them, the breath of it. That's the voice of angels, man.

“You see, great music comes not from thinking, but from pure emotion. As the Grateful Dead people say, 'it's when the music plays you.' You make the best music when you're not conscious of doing it. I've been saying these things since the beginning. 

“I remember getting in trouble with Frank Zappa – I'm pretty sure he coined the phrase, 'shut up and play your guitar' for people like me, because we talk a lot! But I am passionate about turning on massive amounts of kids and pulling them out of that miserable state. I want to turn them over.

“You don't have to be Jimi Hendrix or Charlie Parker – you can get it done in your own way. God made the world round so we can all have center stage. Everybody is important, as long as you're doing it from your heart. Frustration and depression lead to homicide and genocide, but inspiration and vision lead to a spiritual orgasm.”

Can you describe this?

“It's where you're constantly happy, and you don't have to feel weird when people say, 'Man, what are you laughing about?' I'm laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing. When I hit that note – if I hit it correctly – I'm just as important as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, or anybody. Because when I hit that note, I hit the umbilical cord of anybody who is listening.

“When you hit a note like that people say, 'What kind of guitar is that? What kind of speakers are you using? What kind of strings?' No, man. It's not all that – it's the note. Now when you explain this to kids, they say, 'Really? I can do that too?' Sure. We can teach you how to put five things into one note. [To illustrate, Santana holds out the karate edge of his hand, and then rotates it to reveal his palm and five fingers.] These are the ingredients for being a complete communicator: Soul, heart, mind, body, cojones. One note.

“I validated my existence before I got out of high school. People would ask, 'What are you going to do when you leave school?' I'd say, 'I'm going to play with Michael Bloomfield and B.B. King.' They thought I was crazy! I'd say, 'Why are you laughing?' They'd say, 'Man, you're tripping.' 'No, you're tripping because you don't know what you want to do. I know what I want to do, and I know who I'm going to be doing it with. And I'm going to play with those people.

“Once you learn to validate your existence, you have the wind in your sails – where do you want to go? – and you can never commit suicide. I would say that as great as Danny Gatton was, he never took the time to validate his existence. When you feel that the world is not appreciating your genius, you're already setting yourself up to be a victim. There are a lot of musicians like that: 'My manager ripped me off. My record company ripped me off. I'm going to eat beans, but I'm not going to play what they want me to play.'”

Which albums inspire you?

“Tell everybody to hear Spellbinder by Gabor Szabo. That is a must for anybody who plays guitar. He's the person who I credit with pulling me out of B.B. King. B.B. had us in a headlock – Michael Bloomfield, Peter Green – we were all under his spell. Gabor played like a Gypsy, but different from Paco de Lucia. I first heard Gabor with [drummer] Chico Hamilton. The band had no piano player. It was just congas, timbales, and drums with Gabor and [bassist] Ron Carter. It sounded unbelievable.”

So Spellbinder is one of those “Holy Grail” recordings?

“Exactly. Also 'The Supernatural' by Peter Green, Bola Sete's At the Monterey Jazz Festival, and Wes Montgomery's Goin' Out of My Head. Unplug the phone, sit down with these, and you're in for a real surprise.”

If someone was searching for essential Santana, which of your records would you recommend?

“For pure songs, Abraxas. For pure guitar, I would say Caravanserai. Neal Schon and I played really well on that album. At the time, the Allman Brothers had two guitar players. I remember Miles [Davis] was really upset with me because I had another guitarist, but I told him, 'I think Neal is a great guitar player, and that's what I hear right now.' I believe it worked.

“Later, Neal went to do his thing with Journey, and because I still craved to play with another guitarist, I played with John McLaughlin. Once I got that craving out of the way, I wanted to learn why I was so fascinated with Coltrane and that sky-church music, as Jimi called it. So I got together with [pianist and harpist] Alice Coltrane, and I found out why she writes, and how she writes those celestial strings. It's important for guitarists to listen to her and [tenor saxophonist] Pharoah Sanders.”

How do you write songs? Do you keep a tape recorder running to document your ideas?

“All the time. I play for two or three hours and keep flipping tapes. I mark them and then come in the next day and listen to them. After a half an hour, I might say, 'Ooh – right there. Let me transfer this.' I keep another tape recorder filled with little nuggets of all that rambling. That's what I present to Eric or Dave Matthews.”

So it's a two-stage process – first you capture inspiration, then later you organize those magic moments so you can play them for people.

“Right. That's what I've been doing since I can remember. It works for me. Late at night, if I want to check in with my internal internet, I load the tape recorder, get some nice tones, and play. And sometimes it's okay to watch TV with the sound off. Maybe you're playing music to a car chase, and the next day you go, 'What was I thinking?' Well, you were watching TV and putting music to it.”

I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about tone and how you got it on this record.

“I'm very honored to be working with René Martinez, who worked with Stevie Ray Vaughan. René can play the hell out of the Segovia guitar. I should be his roadie! He told me everything that Stevie Ray went through to get his tone on tape. Amps all over the place – in the kitchen, bathroom, halls, and everything. Everybody has to find out what works for them.”

What works for you?

“Well, I bring my amps and microphones to every studio, because I found out that when you position certain microphones in a certain way, the room doesn't matter after a while. I have one microphone placed at the amplifier and another one positioned farther back so you can hear [claps] the ghost sound. You can't get that with knobs. They just give you an emulation.”

As you recorded Supernatural in several different studios, was it difficult to get a consistent tone?

“Sometimes I would say, 'Look man, you're giving me a snapshot of me. Imagine I'm a singer – you're only giving me head tones, nose tones, and throat tones. I want the chest tones and belly tones – even toe tones! Give me the whole thing. That's why I've got a Marshall.' 

“The technician might say, 'I don't know what you mean.' I'd say, 'You want to know what I mean? Open the damn door.' As soon as he'd open the studio door, I'd say, 'Hear that sound coming in? I want that in the speakers. I don't want to sound compressed and chopped. I don't sound like that.' Sometimes, I'll help place the microphones – and now I even bring my own engineer, Jim Gaines.

“The only thing that I have is my tone. That's like my face. Your tone is your fingerprint and your personality. Don't mess with that. Otherwise, you can get anyone from L.A. who just does it with pedals and sounds like a beer commercial. That's okay for them, but I learned by listening to T-Bone Walker and Peter Green, so I have a tone.”

You mentioned Marshalls. What amps did you use for this record?

“I used Marshalls, Boogies, and Twins. I went through my six Marshalls and got rid of the ones that weren't consistent. Some you plug in and it's glorious. Some you have to baby-sit and change diapers and change tubes. I found the ones that are happening in the studio or a coliseum or anywhere, and I kept those. We mark them – these speakers go with this head. That way, you're not shooting in the dark. You know exactly what you're going for when you're recording.”

Are you still playing your signature PRS?

“Still the PRS, although with Eric, we both played Strats because I wanted to keep it even. It's such a pretty tone. Because of René, I finally played through a Tube Screamer. In the past I always said, 'I'll never use those things because I want to sound like me.' I would just mark the floor in the places where my guitar sustains. When I'm onstage, there are marks for this song, marks for that song....”

Do you mark the studio floor, too?

“Oh yes. At first I told René that I didn't want to play a Strat, because to make it sustain, I'd have to play so loud that I didn't know if I could have babies! So he goes, 'You don't have to play that loud. Try this Tube Screamer.' So we plug it in and – bam – it sustains right through a Twin or a Marshall. 

“You can still talk, but you're sustaining furiously. I said, 'Oh, I shouldn't have been so bullheaded. I'm so stubborn.' And he says, 'You didn't know. Stevie used pedals to sustain.' I went, 'No kidding? I thought he was just loud.'

“It has been a real education working with René. In fact, the entire process of making this album is new to me. Even though I've been recording since '67, all of a sudden I'm thrown into a whole new way of doing things. I really like it – it's fresh and very challenging.”

Any advice for fellow guitarists?

“The last thing I want to say is that whether you play blues, bluegrass, or jazz – whatever – realize that when you get older, you either get senile or become gracious. There's no in-between.

“You become senile when you think the world short-changed you, or everybody wakes up to screw you. You become gracious when you realize that you have something the world needs, and people are happy to see you when you come into the room. Your wrinkles either show that you're nasty, cranky, and senile, or that you're always smiling.

“That's why I hang around with Wayne Shorter, John Lee Hooker, Herbie Hancock – people who have passion. I've never seen them bored. I'm like a kid – I'm 51 years old, but I still feel like 17. I got the recent Guitar Player at my house yesterday, and I sat down and read it. It's the only magazine I read from beginning to end, nonstop.

“Most magazines are very biased into one octave. Your magazine covers women and men, the gifted and the beginners, brilliant and crazy garage bands – all of it – and I relate to that. Whether you've got a green mohawk or a suit and a tie, it's still the same: Are you saying something valid? Are you contributing, bringing new flowers that we haven't seen in the garden?

“I'm looking at the new guitars and new amplifiers like a painter discovering new brushes or mediums. That fascination with instruments and sound and texture hasn't gone yet. It's really fun.”

“When it comes to marriage or relationships, I’m a one-person person,” says Carlos Santana, who married his drummer, Cindy Blackman, after proposing to her onstage at a gig in Illinois. “But when it comes to guitars,” he adds, “I’m definitely not a one-guitar person.”

However, Carlos has been pretty brand-loyal over the course of his almost 50-year career. He was a staunch Gibson man in the years following his eponymous band’s debut at Woodstock. The SG he played at that historic 1969 festival didn’t last very long, but one magical Les Paul served him through Santana’s classic golden period, from 1970 to 1972, when he made Abraxas, Santana III and Caravanserai.

Carlos switched to Yamahas in the mid Seventies, designing his own model in collaboration with the Japanese guitar-making giant. But ever since the early Eighties, he has been one of the foremost advocates of Paul Reed Smith guitars.

He rode a PRS to fame on his phenomenal 1999 comeback album, Supernatural, and on many other outstanding recordings. Smith himself will tell you that Santana can be demanding when it comes to guitars. Much like the renowned guitar maker, Carlos has a great ear and can assess a guitar’s tonal virtues after playing just a few notes or chords on it.

“As soon as I hear it, I can tell if it’s gonna be a lamp or something that can go onstage,” he says, and laughs. “You can tell when a guitar sounds all nasal and weird. All you can do with it is wire it up for a light bulb and put a lampshade on it. That’s all it’s good for. It may look nice, but if it doesn’t have the tone I want, I’m not interested.

“Some people might add a lot of pedals to fix the tone, but that’s not for me. It’s gotta be straight from my fingers to the amplifier. If it don’t sound good like that, you’re not gonna fix it with a mixing board or computers.”

Still, Santana isn’t averse to picking up the occasional Strat or other guitar, as long as the tone is there. Pulling out some of his finest instruments, he just can’t resist plugging a few into an amp and letting rip. 

1968 Gibson Les Paul Custom

This instrument, a refinished maple-top Les Paul, is pretty much the holy grail of Santana guitars. Carlos purchased it at Prune Music in San Francisco in 1970, shortly after his group’s big breakthrough. It was a replacement for the red Gibson SG he played at Woodstock.

“That SG wouldn’t stay in tune, so I destroyed it,” he says. “At the time, if I wanted a new guitar, I had to ask the band, ’cause we were all paying for it. The band didn’t want to get me a new guitar, so I destroyed the SG. Then I had to get a new one. This guitar was my main workhorse for at least seven albums. It’s got the tone, the feel. You grab it and it’s ready to go.”

This is the guitar that generated the fiery leads on “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen,” “Oye Como Va,” and, indeed, just about everything else on the classic Abraxas album from 1970, as well as the inspired discs that followed in its wake.

PRS Santana Model Prototype

Master guitar builder Paul Reed Smith began showing Santana his guitars in 1976, just as Smith was launching his business. The instrument that hooked Santana was the legendary Paul Reed Smith Golden Eagle, the first maple-top guitar Smith ever built, owned by Heart’s Howard Leese.

Carlos borrowed the guitar to play the leads on his 1981 Zebop! album and fell in love with the instrument.

“It had a very rich, low, masculine tone,” he recalls. It was like, ‘Ooh, I’ve been playing a soprano, and this is a tenor.’”

Santana commissioned Smith to start building guitars for him. The guitars that Smith custom-built for Santana in the Eighties would eventually become the basis for the PRS Santana II model. The one guitar that particularly pleased Carlos was the model seen here, known in the Santana camp simply as Number Two.

PRS Santana II “Supernatural”

“This guitar really is supernatural. I played most of the Supernatural songs on it. There is the Woodstock guitar and there is the Supernatural guitar. Those are huge doors to walk through.”

Of the many guitars that Paul Reed Smith has made for Carlos, this one holds a very special place in the guitarist’s collection. It arrived just as Carlos was beginning work on Supernatural, which would usher in an exciting new phase of his career.

Carlos has often spoken of being divinely guided in creating Supernatural, and the guitar’s appearance seems providential.

Carlos calls it his Red Coral guitar. He knew there was something unique about it as soon as he picked it up. “It was the tonality, the weight of it, and the feel of it,” he says. “And the color: a beautiful orangey, salmon red. A lot of times, the color of a guitar changes the mood for me. And what can you do without the right mood?

1952/1953 Gibson Les Paul

Another historic Les Paul in Santana’s collection is this instrument that belonged to the late blues master Mike Bloomfield. “He was one of my first heroes,” Carlos says. “Before I heard Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix, I heard Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop in the Butterfield Blues Band in 1965. So I treasure this guitar.”

It was Bloomfield who gave Carlos his first shot at notoriety, inviting him onstage to jam at the Fillmore West. The event led to Santana’s discovery by Fillmore owner and entrepreneur Bill Graham.

Also notable is the fact that this Les Paul was originally a gold top and was subsequently refinished with a flame top. In addition to the refinish job, the original trapeze tailpiece has been replaced with a Tune-o-matic, and humbuckers have taken the place of the original P-90s.

1963 Fender Stratocaster

Carlos picked up this Strat at a Guitar Center sale several years ago. He recalls, “They told me, ‘Some guy in Ukiah [California] had this under his bed for years.’” He bought the guitar on the spot and used it to play his interpretation of “Little Wing” on Guitar Heaven.

Carlos has fond memories of a recent gig at which he played this Strat through Stevie Ray Vaughan’s legendary Dumble Steel String Singer amp.

“When I got this guitar, I had the same dream over and over, where Stevie Ray came to me,” he says. “In the dream, Stevie Ray said, ‘Listen, Carlos, you know where I am, man. I’m not in the body anymore. And where I am, I have no fingers. I’m just pure light. But I miss the sound and feel of my guitar. Please call my brother Jimmie and ask him to lend you my Steel String Singer. I need to feel your fingers through this amplifier.’

“A few nights later, I had the dream again. So I called Jimmie Vaughan and asked to borrow the amp, and he was like, ‘Hell no!’ But then René Martinez, who was Stevie Ray’s guitar tech, had the same dream too. He called Jimmie and told him. Next thing I knew, the amp arrived.

“The amp and the Strat came in time for a gig at Madison Square Garden. I plugged the guitar into the amp at soundcheck, and it was like...whoosssh! I said, ‘I wanna play the whole concert with this!’”

Happy birthday to Latin rock pioneer Carlos Santana!

In addition to being a great friend to Guitar Player over the years, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has endeavored to fire up the magazine’s creative juices by hipping the staff to noteworthy under-the-radar guitarists, as well as sending us music that has inspired him.

But his influence runs deeper still.

“I’d like to talk about intangibles,” he said when he spoke to us about a cover story back in 2008.

“I’d like to get beyond those physical things and think about the roles of the heart and mind in making music.”

Here are five great lessons from that inspirational interview…

1) Be of Service

There’s a part of me that loves learning from musicians such as John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, B.B. King, and Miles Davis. But there’s also a part of me that wants to invest – like Desmond Tutu or the Dalai Lama or Harry Belafonte – in the healing of the common man.

So it’s not enough for me to play music, learn from all these guys, and be recognized worldwide. I also want to serve – to be of service.

We are capable of creating miracles ourselves, and the greatest miracle is to create a masterpiece of joy out of your life with no excuses.

2) See the Connections 

When people have asked me to define “multi-dimensional,” I say that it’s not being stuck or stuck up. When you start thinking that you’re superior or inferior – that’s being stuck. Your fear has betrayed you.

Being free is seeing the beauty of you in everybody else. You say, “I can see myself in this guy and that guy. I want to phrase like Otis Redding and Nat King Cole and Wes Montgomery.”

You see the connections between what you do, and what all the musicians before you have done, and between what every musician is doing right now.

So I’m grateful that your magazine is here, because you remind people that we’re all in it together. Guitar Player is multi-dimensional.

3) Let Go

Everyone has a heart, of course, so it typically comes down to how much you are willing to let it come out. How fast can you get to your heart and not let anything get in the way – children, the rent, the set list, taxes…

How fast can you get to that place in your heart where you don’t even have to think about what to play, because the notes will play themselves? Those are the best notes.

Listen, carrying a melody is very difficult for a musician, because in order to carry a melody, you have to let go.

A lot of people carry chords and speed. Let them go. Let go of everything you have learned, and, in return, receive the thing that will be channeled through you.

4) Be Willing

What is this intangible world that Jimi Hendrix and Beethoven dipped into? You can call it hocus pocus or whatever, but this world exists. How often are you willing to dip into it? Do you dip into it at all?

…I love music that makes me feel like I’m seven years old, going to the movies for the first time and experiencing Panavision. That’s why we love Jimi Hendrix – he assaults all of our senses. His music has a wide circumference.

Hendrix is another name for a bridge to the unknown, because what he was playing, even he couldn’t reproduce sometimes. He couldn’t quantize it – as much as he might have tried to get back there by taking seven tabs of acid and a little bit of wine and some coke.

Sometimes, it’s nothing – just the willingness. The willingness to take a deep breath and take what was given to you. It’s inside you, as John Lee Hooker said, and it has to come out.

5) Use Your Imagination

I don’t need to take acid or mescaline to trip anymore, but I learned enough from that stuff to realize what Einstein meant when he said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Your imagination is your best equipment, and you cannot learn it or earn it – it was given to you. Take it. It’s yours.

You don’t have to go down to the crossroads, and wait for a black cat or the full moon. You don’t have to sell yourself to the devil. What for? You have God’s love, and what can be better than that?

Whether you’re Yngwie Malmsteen or Steve Vai or Joe Satriani or John Scofield, you just need to shut everything off and utilize the main television – your imagination.

You see, the ultimate destination for guitar players is to create heaven and wonderment for both themselves and the listeners.

If you’re not doing that, you’re just shucking and jiving.

Order Santana's Blessings and Miracles here.

Although it became one of the hottest guitar amps among pro players from the mid-1970s to the ’80s, the Mesa/Boogie seemed utterly designed to propel the singing, sustainful tone and playing style of Carlos Santana, who adopted it as his amp in the 1970s.

For that matter, Santana literally named the thing.

Mesa/Boogie founder Randall Smith was working as an amp repairman in 1969 in the small San Francisco shop Prune Music when he decided to play a trick on Barry Melton, lead guitarist with Country Joe and the Fish.

Smith gutted Melton’s Fender Princeton, installed a modified 50-watt Fender Bassman-style tube amp, squeezed in a 12-inch speaker and took it to the front of the shop, where Carlos Santana was hanging out.

“He just wailed through that little amp until people were blocking the sidewalk,” Smith later recalled.

“When he stopped playing he turned and said, ‘Shit man. That little thing really boogies!’”

As demand grew, Smith continued modifying Princetons. When the supply dried up, he began making the amps – eventually known as the Boogie Mark I – from the ground up.

The key to the wailing, saturated tone lay in Smith’s chaining together of several tube stages in the preamp, a technique known as “cascading gain,” and under Santana’s fingers the result was sustain that could last for days.

The ‘70s also proved fruitful for Santana on the gear front when he began a collaboration with Japanese guitar building titan Yamaha.

After a somewhat uncomfortable bedding in period (“I sat down with them and said, ‘Look, I can’t play the guitar, man,” Santana told Guitar Player in 1978) the team eventually settled on a design that was not only befitting for a guitarist of Santana's caliber but progressive also.

“I asked them to put a big chunk of metal right where the tailpiece is," recalled Santana. "You hit it and it’s like hitting a grand piano – it really resonates.”

Boasting fine tonewoods and a neck-through construction, along with the tone- and sustain-enhancing T-Cross System and brass Sustain Plate (the aforementioned “big chunk of metal,”) the new SG2000 model firmly established Yamaha as a bona fide pro level guitar builder.

Yamaha guitars were later played by the likes of John McGeoch who famously used an SG1000 with Siouxsie and the Banshees.

More recent proponents of the SG series include Ed O’Brien, Johnny Marr and John Frusciante.

In this 1977 clip, Santana is seen playing his custom built Yamaha with a Mesa/Boogie rig. Evidently, the guitarist is a great deal happier with his instrument by this stage.

“[Yamaha] go out of their way to make good instruments,” he told Guitar Player in the same 1978 interview. “You can feel it when you pick up that guitar.”

Oz Noy is that rare electric guitar player with full command of jazz harmony, mastery of pure and effected tones and an absolutely devastating sense of groove. He is renowned as a Strat cat with an unusual ability to utilize otherworldly effects in a sophisticated musical context.

Starting with his debut studio effort Ha! in 2005, Noy planted his freak flag in fusion territory and stood his ground.

Noy snagged the GP Readers Poll for Best Guitar Riff on a Record in 2007, earned Best New Talent in 2008 and then Best Out There Guitar Player in 2013.

Noy has been expanding into all sorts of different terrain lately. Last year he collaborated with drummer Tal Bergman (Joe Zawinul, B.B. King, Sammy Hagar) on the blues-rock cruiser Soul Stealer.

At the outset of 2022 he dropped Riverside featuring bassist Ugonna Okegwo (Clark Terry, Pharoah Sanders) and drummer Ray Marchica, a longstanding member of the Ed Palermo Big Band, which specializes in the music of Frank Zappa.

Riverside is a much more straight-ahead effort than we’ve ever heard from Noy, and it’s pretty wild to hear him cop traditional tones and tackle chestnuts such as “All the Things You Are.”

If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind that Noy’s twisted brain could straighten up and fly as high as the moon in a standard setting, Riverside is proof positive.

Oz Noy is a perennial GP Presents favorite.

Each event is completely different as Noy always brings a sense of adventure to his unique take on jazz, and with supernatural drummer Dennis Chambers (Santana, P-Funk) and bassist Jimmy Haslip (the Yellowjackets) in tow, the groove will surely be fathoms deep at Yoshi’s on Thursday, March 24.

We’ll be on site with free magazines and strings provided by Martin. 

Get tickets now here.

WIN TICKETS!

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to see GP Presents Oz Noy Trio, send an email to gp@jimmyleslie.com with “Oz” in the subject and simply include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go.

Phone contact greatly appreciated for confirmation.

Winner must provide their own transportation to Yoshi’s in Oakland, California on Thursday, March 24, and have his or her own accommodations in the Bay Area.

Here is COVID info.

Best of luck!

EVENT DETAILS

GP Presents Oz Noy Trio

Thursday, March 24

Yoshi’s Jack London Square
510 Embarcadero West
Oakland, CA.

7:30pm doors, 8:00pm show

Free GP magazines, Martin strings

Buy Tickets here.

We recently asked a handful of some of the guitar world's best-known players to recommend their favorite lesser-known solos.

Here’s what Metallica’s electric guitar whizz Kirk Hammett had to say…

1) UFO | “Rock Bottom” from ‘Strangers in the Night’

GUITARIST: Michael Schenker

“I love the version on Phenomenon, but on the live version from Strangers in the Night, Schenker shows the full breadth of his playing style. He plays melodically, he plays modally. He has this European sensibility in his note choices. He ups the intensity of the song slowly, and at one point he does a harmony line with the keyboards. The intensity builds as he plays with more and more energy, until the drum break in the middle. Then the chord change hits. He pushes the intensity dial up to 13, playing toward this crazy, emotional, dynamic conclusion. It’s wonderful and beautiful, and I have so much reverence for it.”

2) Judas Priest | “Beyond the Realms of Death” from ‘Stained Class’

GUITARIST: Glenn Tipton

“That middle solo by Glenn Tipton is amazing. His sense of melody is astounding, but it’s also his tone. It’s so great, and every single passage he plays makes sense melodically. It’s really catchy and hummable, and you can sing along to it.”

3) Santana | “She’s Not There” from ‘Moonflower’

GUITARIST: Carlos Santana

“His use of the wah pedal, his attack and energy across the three solos in the song... He uses a couple of techniques that are a little off the cuff – super-long delay time, and pressing on the string behind the bridge to give a whammy-bar effect. The phrasing and tone on these solos are amazing.”

Pick up Santana’s Moonflower here.

Get Stained Class by Judas Priest here.

Grab UFO’s live album Strangers in the Night here.

Santana's legendary Abraxas album – which took the band's one-of-a-kind, genre-fusing sound to dizzying heights, winning them legions of new fans in the process – celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.

To celebrate, PRS has unveiled a limited-edition electric guitar celebrating the album and its legacy, the SE Santana Abraxas 50th Anniversary model. 

Like its sibling, the stock SE Santana, the Abraxas model features a beveled maple top, plus a mahogany back and mahogany neck. The neck boasts a rosewood fretboard with a shorter 24.5” scale length and 24 frets with bird inlays.

Other similarities include the same two PRS Santana “S” pickups, with the same control set of individual volume and tone knobs plus a three-way toggle pickup switch. A molded PRS tremolo also, just as it is on the original SE Santana, is fitted to the guitar.

The main difference, of course, is the artwork, which – set against the guitar's otherwise black finish – pays tribute to the album's cover.

“It is an honor to co-join with PRS Guitars in celebrating the 50th anniversary of Abraxas with a new Santana SE Abraxas 50 guitar," Santana said in a press release.

"Abraxas represents beauty, power, grace and the mystical, and PRS allows you to access this vocabulary at your fingertips with the universal tone that delivers power and clarity, allowing you to find your own voice in your heart’s music. We invite you to spread your wings and find your voice with this beautiful instrument."

The PRS SE Santana Abraxas 50th Anniversary guitar is available now – in a limited run of 1,000 examples, and with a PRS SE gig bag included – for $829. 

For more info on the model, stop by prsguitars.com.

With guest spots from Vernon Reid, John McLaughlin, Kirk Hammett and Carlos Santana, drummer Cindy Blackman Santana’s latest album – Give the Drummer Some – has its focus firmly on guitarists.

It might surprise people that your wife, a drummer, created such a weighty electric guitar record.

Perhaps, but I can see it quite clearly because of the core principles of who she is. She’s Tony Williams Lifetime, so that’s John McLaughlin. But there’s also Cream and Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix. She’s all of that.

Is there any difference in how you two work when she’s playing in Santana or when you’re playing on her music?

You know, it’s different for me, because for the last 25 years I’ve been the director or the producer. Playing on Cindy’s album was very relaxing for me, because all I had to do was listen to the music and do my best to complement each song. I wanted to please my wife and the music, so that came easily. [laughs] It was a privilege. And I mean that with honor and with zest and joy. Cindy’s record was presented before me as a gift, and I liked being in a position to be directed or pointed toward something.

Your playing throughout is spectacular, particularly what you did on “Imagine.”

That track blew me away. I had no idea what was going to be coming out of the speakers when they played it for me. I had no preconceived thoughts about what I was going to do. So when they turned it up, I immediately felt like a kid who could jump up and down on a bed. I looked at it like, Okay, I’m in AC/DC or Led Zeppelin. I’m in Queen! I was given the chance to tear it up, and that’s what I did. I brought the energy. I mean, we have reverence for the Beatles and John Lennon, but I wasn’t thinking of those confinements

Can you talk a little bit about playing with Vernon Reid on “Black Pearl”?

Oh, that was great. I loved Vernon from the beginning. I think one of the main things that Vernon and I have in common, besides playing the guitar, is that we both love Dionne Warwick and Sonny Sharrock – Dionne for the way she carries a melody, and Sonny Sharrock for how he was this tornado, a force of nature.

One thing I’m looking to do is make an album that honors his music. I would have Sonny’s band but also invite different musicians – Vernon, Jeff Beck, Eric Johnson, Kirk Hammett – just playing nothing but Sonny Sharrock music. It’s a dream I have.

It’s interesting that John McLaughlin is on Cindy’s album. You guys go back a long way, to at least 1973, when you recorded Love Devotion Surrender together.

That’s true. I’d love to do something else with him in the future. Maybe I’ll invite him to participate in this Sonny Sharrock adventure. But I love what he did on Cindy’s record. Everybody played so beautifully.

And you know, something else I want to say: Thank you for having the passion to keep the six strings alive. Your spiritual frequency, the frequency of this magazine, is very much needed. We need to create a whole new army of guitar players – not guitar heroes, not that. We need real guitar players. I’m watching a new wave of youngsters, under 12 years old, coming out with some divine, mean intentions. So that’s encouraging.

Visit Cindy Blackman Santana's website to order Give the Drummer Some.

Happy birthday to Carlos Santana – the guitar legend who continues to blow the minds of fans well over half a century after he blew the minds of some 400,000 Woodstock festival goers back in the Summer of ’69. 

But it wasn’t just the fans’ minds that were blown on that fateful August afternoon. 

The “ocean of hair and teeth and arms” that was Woodstock was already looking pretty trippy to Carlos Santana when he touched down in the helicopter. And though he now had two feet on the ground, the following events were anything but down-to-earth.

Following a ‘brief exchange’ with Jerry Garcia, Carlos walked away full of the festival spirit and feeling safe in the knowledge that he had several hours to kill before the acid wore off. After all, it was to be the biggest performance of his career.

Any sense of serenity was short-lived, however, as he was soon informed, “If you don’t play now, you’re not going to play at all. You need to go on right now.” Alas, peaking on his trip, he made his way to the stage in trepidation, praying only to stay in tune and in time.

“Everything became another dimension,” he recalls.

In heroic fashion, Carlos went far beyond merely holding it together – even though the neck of his early ‘60s Gibson SG Special “felt like a snake” in his hands. But tame that 'snake' he did! 

While Carlos himself has often been quoted as finding this uncomfortable viewing (understandable) his masterful performance ultimately went down in history as one of Woodstock's most iconic moments.

Get the full Woodstock movie here.

You can’t lock Neal Schon down. Sure, his band, Journey – one of the highest-grossing rock groups of all time – has put touring on pause as the world struggles with its first major pandemic in a century. 

But as you can tell from the epic solos and backing-track jams Schon posts nearly every day on Instagram, nothing gets between him and quality time with his favorite guitars. 

“I love doing that, man,” Schon says. “Playing every day is something I need to do. And I think as a guitar player, the more you use your muscles in your hands and everything that is attached to them, the better they work. It frees you up. I believe playing everyday has helped me avoid joint problems, carpal-tunnel problems, and all that.” 

But if you think rocking out like a teenager on social media is all Schon has been doing since lockdown, think again. The San Francisco–based guitarist’s impressive career – a wild ride that earned him national renown in 1971, when, at age 17, he joined Santana – continues. And, pandemic or not, he’s been quite busy. 

First, Schon has partnered with the “augmented reality” scanning app StraxAR. “It’s a brand-new thing that reacts to images,” Schon says. “When you hold your phone up to the image of, say, one of my solo records or a Journey record, I appear in front of you, updating you on stuff happening that day, or playing something for you. 

"I think it’s going to be great for artists on tour, because it will be a cool way to fill people in on where you are, how things are going or what you’re working on.” Second, he’s has been making some exciting investments.

In addition to purchasing a residence in Nashville to complement his West Coast digs, he has added several vintage guitars to his stable, including Gibsons – “everything from Les Pauls to jazz boxes” – and various Fenders.

“One cool acquisition was getting back my late-’70s Les Paul Pro, the guitar I used in Journey all those years, from the guy I sold it to,” Schon says. “I’m so glad he still had it. I have a lot of fun picking up one of my old axes after I haven’t played it for a while. This one is a ’77 or ’78 model I got from Don Wehr’s Music City, and it had P-90s on it, but I had never paid much attention to its construction.

“Turns out that the neck, which I had always assumed was mahogany, is maple, and the fretboard is ebony. That’s the guitar on a lot of Frontiers, Escape, and other albums, and on solos like ‘Who’s Crying Now.’ It has a nice, natural compression to it.”

For guitar players, though, the most exciting Neal Schon news is that he opened up an arsenal of his favorite guitars – some of which are outfitted with guitar-solo-friendly accoutrements such as Floyd Rose locking tremolo systems and/or Fernandes Sustainer circuits – and released Universe, a new album comprising 15 blazing guitar-powered covers and original tunes.

Many of the songs were written and produced by one of Journey’s new members, famed drummer/producer Narada Michael Walden. Even if you casually keep up with the latest rock news, you probably know Schon announced last year that, going forward, Walden and former Journey member Randy Jackson will take over the drum and bass chairs, respectively.

This comes after lawyers for Schon and longtime Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain filed a lawsuit alleging that former drummer and bassist Steve Smith and Ross Valory attempted “a coup to assume control of one of the band’s corporate entities, Nightmare Productions, Inc.”

“The legal stuff has lasted a lot longer than I wished it would have, but I believe we’re very close to coming up with an amicable, fair resolution for all,” says Schon, who offers this free legal advice to anyone who’s in an up-and-coming band: “Make sure you meet up with a great trademark attorney and that everything is done correctly from the get-go, because people like to do handshake deals in these kind of situations,” he says. 

“Even going back to ’72 or ’73, our trademarks were never really done correctly. Get those things tied down.”

You’re known for your melodic, highly singable solos. But having been to a few of your soundchecks and watched you alone on big stages playing rhythm parts to songs such as “Lights,” “Don’t Stop Believin,’” and “Mother, Father,” I’m also amazed by your great pocket as a rhythm guitarist. Can groove that deep be consciously developed, or is it something you have to be born with? 

For me, I think the groove comes from playing with great drummers, and it goes all the way back to playing with Santana, which featured an army of great drums and percussion. The beauty of being on stage with that band is that the rhythm section was led by [José] Chepito Areas, the multitalented timbale player. He was the cat, man. 

Back then, lots of bands were using click tracks or machines to make the time sound perfect on records, but we had Chepito. He sounded like a metronome with soul. 

He was the one driving the groove for us, and we all had to fight to keep up with him. And though everybody was good in their own right, not everybody has the impeccable timing that he has, so there was magic in some of the discrepancies here and there between the different players. 

There was this whole energy that arose from that, and I started to see why it was working. Being in a group like that teaches you how to put people together in ways that will make musical sense. Sometimes you see cats try to put together superstar bands with famous players who all have chops beyond belief, but while the result doesn’t sound bad, it doesn’t make magic, you know?

It now seems only fitting that your new album is produced by a great drummer. Tell us about Narada Michael Walden. 

Narada was first known for being a great fusion drummer. I learned about him when he got the Mahavishnu Orchestra gig with John McLaughlin after Billy Cobham left. And back in the early days of Journey, we actually opened up for McLaughlin on a couple of dates when Narada was on drums. 

And of course, with both of us living in Marin County, Narada and I would run into each other over the years, whether it was Christmas time at the mall or at Starbucks, and we even jammed from time to time. And I watched his career bloom beyond drums into becoming a phenomenal songwriter. I knew he wrote well, but I had no clue what a great producer he was until I started working with him. 

He approached Universe differently from other records I’ve done in the sense that he treated me as a vocalist. Most of the original songs on the record are his, so he gave me demos to take home and learn. He’s a fantastic keyboardist, but as for the melodies he wanted me to play, he just sang those, and that’s how I learned them. 

At first, I took his vocal melodies to be just a roadmap for me to veer off of and do my own thing, and I started doing that almost immediately. That’s when he stopped the session and said, “What are you doing, man?” And I said, “Well, I’m playing.” 

He goes, “Where’s my melody?” And I go, “Well, I think it’s there.” He says, “No, no, man, we’re going to go back learn this melody exactly. Why do you think I sang it?” It was the first time anybody had done that to me, because usually I’m working on Journey material where there are songs with a vocalist.

Doing Universe, I learned a lot about how to simplify things and stay really tuned in to the melody. When I came in to do the first song, “Something in the Heart,” it wasn’t hard, but it wasn’t super easy, either, because there aren’t a lot of notes to it, which means you really have to stretch those notes out – you have to play everything in the right place phrasing- and intonation-wise, with the right vibrato and the right tone.

Of course, you’ve had a distinctly vocal style of lead guitar since the beginning, it seems. Did you actually sit down and learn to play vocal melodies when you were a teenager? 

Yeah, I did, but I was more trying to cop the vibrato of a vocalist – like Aretha [Franklin]. I’d sit there for hours trying to capture that soulful vibrato of hers and some of those blues turns she would do. She sings blues over the top of everything, you know, and I really love the blues. So she was really prominent in inspiring me. 

And when I was 12 or 13, I started going to see her at the old Fillmore West in San Francisco, and in her rhythm section would be Cornell Dupree, Bernard Purdie, and Chuck Rainey. I’d be like, “Wow, this is insane. This band is so good.” Of course, it wasn’t until much later that I learned how really good these guys were.

The covers on Universe are powerful, too – like your “Voodoo Child”/“Third Stone from the Sun” medley, which has a lot of wild feedback on it. Were you in the room with an amp? 

Actually, there are no guitar amps on the whole record. Aside from a mini pedalboard that pretty much just had a Dunlop Cry Baby wah and a Dunlop Fuzz Face on it, I did most of the album with the Fractal Axe-Fx – version II, I believe. And that feedback you’re talking about is the Fernandes Sustainer.

I think at the time I started using Sustainers, nobody else really was, and I was installing them in all kinds of different guitars. 

I love Fernandes. I’m fortunate that they’ve been cordial enough to keep making them for me like they did years ago. I know Satch and Vai and Phil Collen use the Sustainiac – which sounds great and does its own thing, but it’s completely different than the Fernandes. 

To me, the Sustainiac feels more like you’ve got an EBow right on the strings. I mean, when you turn it on, it really vibrates, as if there’s a motor on in there. But I can roll back the Fernandes with a tone knob – like if I want to barely turn it on.

I love that you did “Purple Rain” all the way through, including the psychedelic, floating-in-space end section.

For that song I played my Paul Reed Smith NS-15 – a beautiful semi-hollow guitar with a Floyd – into a Kemper. The inspiration for doing that song came from playing a Journey concert in the Twin Cities area, Prince’s hometown, in 2016, not long after he had passed.

Since I’m always creating loops on the fly in my solo sections and playing over them, I decided that night that I would lay down some “Purple Rain” chords and see what happened. The audience loved it, and I think they were really moved by it. The moment stuck with me, so I decided to record a version of it as a dedication to Prince. 

I contacted [Nashville producer] Gary Cirimelli, and said, “Can you please orchestrate this? Let’s do the long version.” Nowadays, I use my Fractal to do spur-of-the-moment loops onstage, but that night in St. Paul, I was using a Boss Loop Station pedal. 

It’s fun to do things like that live – like the “Hey Jude” bit, which is also on the new album – because audiences recognize what you’re playing and start singing along.

What stage are you, Narada, and the rest of the guys at in the creation of the next Journey record?

We’ve got three songs mixed and ready to go, and plan to gradually release them this year. And then, by the end of ’21, we plan on bringing the whole album out, followed by a worldwide tour in ’22. Even though we’re talking about my record today, I’m very excited about this new Journey record. It’s sounding very, very strong.

• Universe is out now via Neal Schon Music.

As Christopher Walken famously implored Blue Öyster Cult in a Saturday Night Live skit years ago, “I got a fever. And the only prescription is…more cowbell!”

Laugh if you will, but most jokes are funny because they bear a hint of truth. That distinctive clonk, thok, and/or tonk can mean the difference between a good rock song and a great one.

Here are 10 that belong in the latter category.

10. “Dance the Night Away” – Van Halen

Hands up: Has anyone ever danced to Van Halen? Sober? Neither have we. But Alex Van Halen did his best to flood discos with his limber wrist work here. Hard to tell, but I think he was expecting us to samba.

9. “Hair of the Dog” – Nazareth

“Now you’re messing with a …sonofabitch!” Whew, don’t tangle with that guy – he not only hates his mom but he’s brandishing a cowbell. Sweet falsetto on the chorus there, tough guy.

8. “We’re Not Gonna Take It” – Twisted Sister

Again, nothing says “Hasta la vista, baby” like cowbell. Which is why Arnold Schwarzenegger adopted this as his gubernatorial campaign song years ago. 

7. “Low Rider” – War

The one and only time you want to hear a clunking sound beneath the hood of your ride, low or otherwise.

6. “Working for the Weekend” – Loverboy

You know it’s quittin’ time when you hear the clang of a cowbell – at least in Canada, apparently. Perhaps these Albertans worked on a dairy farm before milking the big time. Just picture it: Mike Reno herding Betsy in his red leather trousers and headband...

5. “Evil Ways” – Santana

The cowbell has its musical origins in Latin percussion, so it’s no surprise that a Santana tune would feature one of the more musical applications of the instrument – as opposed to, say, using it to conceal a weak rhythm track.

4. “We’re an American Band” – Grand Funk Railroad

They said, “Come on, dudes, let’s get it on!” No time for a second take, then. Just throw on some cowbell. No one will notice.

3. “Mississippi Queen” – Mountain

The virtuoso cowbell performance on this composition provides a signature lead-in while retaining a certain stylistic verisimilitude that, in other words, rocks like a freaky Mississippi queen. You know what I mean?

2. “Honky Tonk Women” – The Rolling Stones

Tonk-tonk, t-tonk, tonk… Maybe Charlie Watts just conditioned us with this funky little rhythm. Like Pavlov’s dog, rock fans hear the ’bell and involuntarily begin to salivate. Nice one, Charlie.

1. “Don’t Fear the Reaper” – Blue Öyster Cult

Contrary to the SNL skit, it was guitarist Eric Bloom, not the fictional Gene Frenkle, who “explored the studio space” with his cowbell. 

The thinking man’s hard-rock group were doubtless making a clever literary allusion with their choice in percussion, as in, “Ask not for whom the [cow]bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Or maybe they just wanted to peg the kickass-ometer.

This is pretty much the holy grail of Santana guitars. It’s the one that generated the fiery leads on “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen,” “Oye Como Va,” and, indeed, just about everything else on Abraxas, as well as the inspired discs that followed in its wake. 

Carlos purchased this refinished maple-top Les Paul at Prune Music in San Francisco in 1970, shortly after his group’s breakthrough at Woodstock. It was a replacement for the red Gibson SG he played at the music festival.  

“That SG wouldn’t stay in tune, so I destroyed it,” Santana says. “At the time, if I wanted a new guitar, I had to ask the band, ’cause we were all paying for it. The band didn’t want to get me a new guitar, so I destroyed the SG. Then I had to get a new one.”

In 1975, Carlos began his relationship with Yamaha, and the Gibson saw less use. However, he notes, “this guitar was my main workhorse for at least seven albums. It’s got the tone, the feel. You grab it and it’s ready to go.”

”To me, there are two kinds of guitar players,” Carlos Santana says. “Some people go up and down, or left and right, and some people go deeper in a different way by bending the strings. 

"Because once you bend the strings, you’re messing with microtones. And microtones are the ones that give people chills. It brings tears to their eyes. There’s something about the sound of a microtone that reminds molecules to scream.  

“Once you bend the note a certain way, like Otis Rush, Ali Farka Touré, or B.B., Albert, or Freddie King, you get attention in a different way, because you start to sound more like a woman’s voice. So for me, playing guitar is beautiful in many ways, like a Segovia way or Paco de Lucía way.

“But when you stop and bend the notes – even when it’s just nylon strings – if you bend them a little bit, people go, ‘Oooooh.’ It gets sacred and sexy really quick.” Sacred and sexy is one way to describe the cover of Abraxas, the Santana group’s second album, released more than 50 years ago in 1970.

Its title refers to a deity associated with early Christians’ mystic practices, though the meaning of the word has been lost. It may be a reference to “the salvation of the cross.” And indeed, the painting on the album’s front presents a surreal and sensual interpretation of a sacred moment.

Titled Annunciation, and painted by German-French painter Mati Klarwein, it depicts the angel Gabriel as a winged, bright-red female form straddling a conga drum in a landscape filled with fruits, flowers, and other fertility symbols, pointing to the heavens as it reveals to a Black, naked Virgin Mary that she will conceive the son of God.

Meanwhile, the back cover carries a quotation from German author Herman Hesse, who called Abraxas “the god who was both god and devil.”

“We stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion,” it reads. “We questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it: We called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas...”

But sacred and sexy are also apt descriptions of the music on Abraxas, in which Santana took their blues-rock jazz fusion to exotic new realms that celebrate the spiritual and carnal. Among the tracks is the band’s hit Latin-rock cover of the Peter Green–penned Fleetwood Mac song “Black Magic Woman” and a hard-driving rendition of Tito Puente’s party favorite “Oye Como Va.”

Both songs would become hits, pushing the album to the top of the charts and securing Santana’s place in rock history following their breakout success at Woodstock. The band had played an electrifying set at the festival on August 16, 1969, giving them a massive career boost just two weeks before the release of their self-titled full-length debut.

The album’s second single, “Evil Ways,” became a Top 10 hit in the U.S. But as the demand for a follow-up rose, there was just one problem: After performing the same songs for the last three years, Santana was out of material.

The band went off to write and hunt for songs, and each member came back with very different contributions. Gregg Rolie, Santana’s keyboardist and lead singer, brought his own vocal-driven rock tunes, as well as “Black Magic Woman.”

Percussionist José “Chepito” Areas contributed two Afro-Caribbean pieces that showcased his timbale chops, while percussionist Michael Carabello created a meditative mood setter with elusive wind chimes, cymbal swells, and majestic piano chords. Carlos Santana took his wah pedal and set it to a half-open position to make his Gibson cry through the wistful instrumental “Samba Pa Ti.”

As much of a classic as that ballad is today, his bandmates were not convinced it belonged on the album.

He also teamed up with pianist Alberto Gianquito to co-write an epic jazz-rock ride through briskly shifting time and key signatures, and suggested that the band should cover Puente’s “Oye Como Va.” Bassist Dave Brown would serve as the album’s engineer together with John Fiore, while Michael Shrieve once again played drums.

Sessions for Abraxas took place at Wally Heider and Pacific Recording Studios in the Bay Area in April 1970, with Santana and Fred Catero co-producing.

Catero was a New York producer and engineer who’d relocated to San Francisco to work for Columbia, where he recorded albums with Sly & the Family Stone (Life), Big Brother & the Holding Company (Cheap Thrills), and Cuban percussionist and bandleader Mongo Santamaría (Stone Soul).

“We knew that Fred had recorded with Mongo Santamaría, so he knew how to record congas,” Santana says. “I think we were the only ones besides Motown and George Benson who had congas, electric guitars, and Hammond organ. But we brought a lot more street dirt.”

After a month in the studio, the band released Abraxas on September 23, 1970 to a mixed critical reception. Today, it’s widely regarded as their most essential album and a rock and roll masterpiece.

Carlos Santana took time to speak with Guitar Player about the song selection and recording process of Abraxas, the role of his guitar and the gear he used for different songs, and how he sees his band’s creation 50 years later.

After Woodstock, the band was in need of new songs. How did you pick the selection of tunes that appeared on Abraxas? Was there any debate among the band members about which ones should be included on the album? 

From what I remember, some things were very easy, because we trusted one another. Other things were a little challenging, because some people had a different idea of what was rock and roll and what was not. I had to put my foot down for “Oye Como Va” because I thought it was like “Louie Louie” – a forever Friday and Saturday party song. 

There are certain songs, like “Who Let the Dogs Out,” “Macarena,” or “La Bamba,” that go viral really quickly. I had a feeling that “Oye Como Va” was that kind of party song that makes people drop their sorrows or problems. The other song where I had to put my foot down was “Samba Pa Ti.” I said, “It’s going on the album! Otherwise you’ll have to get another guitar player!” 

Sometimes you have to fight for space on an album. It’s a healthy thing, because you’re letting people know. Plus we were all learning how to create within the compound of a band. We had developed our sound for three to four years before that album came out, because we were touring a lot. And for the first three or four albums, we did things as a band, and then, eventually, it became my band.

What was the mix of personalities like in that version of the band? 

You know, we were like San Francisco street mutts. [Concert promoter] Bill Graham was the one who told us that we were something that we had no idea we were. He thought we were really different from all the other bands in San Francisco. 

The beauty of that [version of] Santana was, although I never went to college, it was a bit like a dormitory: In this room you have a person who’s totally into the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, in here you have someone into Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix, and then you have another person who’s totally into Coltrane and Miles. 

And with every room that I go into, I’m learning something. I’m into Gábor Szabó, Baba Olatunji, and also Coltrane. Abraxas is an amalgamation of all those who we love. It’s just that when we played it, it sounded like us.

Who suggested the title? 

Michael Carabello was very instrumental in how the album looked and sounded. I believe he suggested the name, and he also brought the album cover. Michael and I are still very close. 

But I’m also really grateful to Michael Shrieve, Gregg Rolie, Chepito, and Dave Brown. Everybody – even the people like Alberto Gianquinto, the piano player who used to play with James Cotton, and [then–road manager] Ron Estrada and [personal manager] Stan Marcum, who found me playing in the streets, while I was still in Mission High School.

Abraxas is such an eclectic album. You’ve got psychedelic rock tunes with heavy riffs and Hammond organ, an upbeat Latin party hit, songs that sound like spiritual incantations with Afro-Caribbean percussion and group vocals, and a jazz-fusion instrumental where you’re all really stretching out. Did Fred Catero get what you were going for, or did you have to lead him?

He was very sweet and giving, to allow the musicians to accept and get past one another to create the music. Just like Teo Macero with Miles [producing Bitches Brew], he had to wait for the songs to enter and the musicians to get out of the way. But we were learning together.

What was your process for tracking guitars? 

We used three microphones for every instrument in order to also capture the room, because that’s what the ears hear. We never put microphones totally in front of the speakers. 

One was far in front of them, and one was way away in a corner by the ceiling. And I’d work with every microphone, spending five minutes with each one to open them up like an aperture on a camera, because you’re letting information come in. 

Otherwise it’ll sound very thin and annoying, like you’re playing through the mixing board or a pedal. I don’t use pedals, other than a wah-wah, because as soon as you use pedals, you sound like you’ve got a mask. 

When people ask me, “But how do you get your sound?” I say my sound is my heart, my fingers, and my emotions. It’s not like I need to have a package of ingredients. No, no, no, it’s not like that. You are the sound. Your emotions, your feeling, and your passion.

At this point were you still using the red Gibson SG Special that you’d played at Woodstock? 

No, by that time I had moved on to two other guitars. I had one that kind of looked like Bob Marley’s guitar [a mahogany Gibson Les Paul Special], and then I went and got a Les Paul Custom, cherry red with yellow. 

That’s because the one that I played at Woodstock, unfortunately, wouldn’t stay in tune. In the past I’ve said that guitar was like wrestling a snake, but really it was that the neck kept moving, and then the intonation changes drastically and pretty bad. So I got rid of that guitar.

What was your intention for your guitar tone? 

The intention was: What would a sound that’s combining Wes Montgomery, Otis Rush, and Gábor Szabó be like? Or a little bit of Jimi Hendrix with Paco de Lucía? And that’s what I was doing with “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen” and “Oye Como Va.” Eventually, though, I didn’t have to think like that anymore.

What kind of gear did you use to get the sound that you wanted? In your autobiography, The Universal Tone, you mention using a Boogie amp, but some say that you used a Fender Twin, possibly modified by Bob Gallien? 

It was before all that. I was using two to three Twins, because I was copying the sound of Michael Bloomfield, Peter Green, and some of B.B. It wasn’t until ’72 that Boogies were created. 

I also used a Marshall on “Hope You’re Feeling Better,” and that was a little different for me, because I wasn’t used to hearing the tone from my hands sound so brash and big. 

Even though I’d heard Jimi and Eric Clapton, it’s very daunting to handle a Marshall full on. It’s like wrestling with a big, electric gorilla. So on “Samba Pa Ti” and all of that, I was still using the Fender Twin.

You didn’t have a lot of guests on the album. It’s the band plus Alberto Gianquinto on piano [“Incident at Neshabur”] and Rico Reyes on backing vocals and percussion [“Oye Como Va,” “El Nicoya”].

Yeah, I think we were more guarded with just the band in the beginning. Bill Graham had told us, “You don’t even know what a song is. You guys play a bunch of ass jams with no beginning and no end!” And we were like, “Wha?” He invited us to his office and played “Evil Ways” [written by Clarence Henry] as he explained where the intro, verse, and chorus are. 

We weren’t used to dealing with songs like that. Gregg and I, we just jammed to stuff like the Jazz Crusaders. So it was Bill Graham and Alberto Gianquinto who made us make a song complete, and within three to four minutes instead of within 14 minutes. But it worked.

It would be great to hear stories behind some of the songs. Let’s start with the opening track, “Singing Winds, Crying Beasts.”

I remember quoting “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles, but not sounding like them. Gregg and Michael [Carabello] had created this mood, and I wanted to make my guitar sound like a violin and a lady crying in the night because she can’t find her baby. 

What about “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen”? 

“Black Magic Woman” was played for the first time at a sound check in Fresno at a parking lot. Gregg wanted to do this Peter Green song, and I had heard of him a lot, but not that song. So when we started it off, I thought I should try a little bit of Wes Montgomery with a bit of Otis Rush. And that was it. “Gypsy Queen” is pure Gábor Szabó with a little Jimi.

What do you remember from “Incident at Neshabur”?

That’s the beginning of me wanting to be and sound like Miles, bending notes and getting all inside your heart. See, the beginning of it [sings the guitar riff] came from Alberto. He and I wrote the song, but he had lyrics which went. “Can you dig, can you do, can you do the pimp thing?”

And the words at very end of the riff went, “Go ahead brother, right on.” When I heard that, I was like “Really? Okay.” The other part [sings the melody that takes the song into the second, meditative part] has two chords that are a bit like “Fool on the Hill.” I just took those two chords and played everything that I was hearing at the time.

It seems like it would be hard to release this type of album today and achieve the kind of commercial success you had. What do you think?

That’s a very good question. I think the times back then were a lot more expansive. Nowadays, people create words like alternative reality and artificial intelligence, and this generation maybe wouldn’t know what to do with an Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, or Miles Davis. In the ’60s, people were expanding their consciousness. Today, they don’t do that as much.

How do you see your creation 50 years later?

By the grace of God, I see this creation right out there with the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. Not on top, not below. Right with ’em.

• Abraxas is available now on all formats, including vinyl, via Sony Legacy.

In the Fall 2010 issue of our late sister magazine, Guitar Aficionado, we ran a feature on Carlos Santana's guitar collection. Here's one of the groovy instruments that we couldn't squeeze into the article!

In the mid Eighties, Santana began to work with the visual artist Michael Rios, whose hallucinogenic, “magical realist” style is almost telepathically in sync with the guitarist’s musical aesthetic and spiritual vision. 

Rios has created numerous posters, graphics, silk-screened t-shirts and album covers for Santana, notably the cover art for the multiplatinum Supernatural in 1999.

Rios also designed this guitar for Santana, painting the body of a Fernandes Strat-style guitar that was later retrofitted with a Fender neck. 

When Rios presented the instrument to Santana, the guitarist was struck by one image in particular - the disembodied hand on the upper body bout, with a glowing triangular shape resting in the palm.

“Every time I took LSD, I would lose all sense of everything,” Santana told GA at the time, “I always found a guitar pick in the middle of my hand. And I’d say, ‘This thing has something to do with who I am and what I do in this lifetime.’ 

"Whether I had lost all identity of being Carlos Santana or being Mexican or whatever, there was always a pick in my hand, and that somehow connected me with my purpose in life. 

"I never told Michael Rios about any of that. But look on that guitar, there’s a pick in the hand. See that? I don’t know how Michael knew that. But that was the only thing that brought me back out of LSD. Some people never came back.”

Luckily, Stevie Ray Vaughan got around in the Eighties, jamming with pretty much everyone from Jeff Beck to Eric Clapton to B.B. King to Albert King to ...

OK, maybe not everyone. But he certainly played with a host of blues and classic-rock legends, including Carlos Santana.

Above, check out some pro-shot - and just plain incredible - footage of Santana jamming with Stevie Ray Vaughan; Stevie's big brother, Jimmie Vaughan of the Fabulous Thunderbirds; and lefty guitarist Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos in early October 1988.

The show, which is available on a bootleg DVD (or so I'm told), took place at the Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa, California.

You'll want to jump ahead to the 14:23 mark in the top video, which is when Santana's guests take the stage. They kick things off with "Everybody's Everything," a rollicking track with blues changes from Santana's 1971 self-titled album, during which SRV goes to town on a doubleneck Danelectro (the bottom neck sounds like a baritone).

But it only gets better from there. We see Santana exchange solos with Stevie, Jimmie and Cesar, all of whom were in great form that night. 

The medley of songs continues into the second video, where there are more closeups of SRV and his (or someone's) doubleneck guitar in action. This is also some of the best late-Eighties playing by Jimmie that I've ever seen.

Enjoy!