Santana To Cut Album With The Original Santana Band

I always wondered why a mayor Santana member like Carabello, never showed up on any more Santana lps

 

Am I the only one that prefers Santana before Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett quit?

 

What would they call the band?... SansSantana?...

 

Yeah, I also don't like the sound of the PRS. Bring back the Les Paul!

 

Why did Carlos want Michael Carabello fired so bad for John?

 

Carlos Santana did not like it because Carabello and Stan Marcum were supposedly supplying the band with heavier drugs and Carlos thought it was causing their playing to suffer. Carlos has stated that he was using psychedelic drugs at the time but nothing else. Rolie who was relatively straight did not like the band using drugs either, psychedelic or otherwise.

 

In my opinion your correct about the song being "Mother's Daughter," but there is no definitive proof Neal Schon ever played on this? Now this Quad release is from 1971 it's possible Neal did a alternate take on "Mother's Daughter," in 1971 for the Quad release but I highly doubt it. Just my two cents. Maybe Carlos meant that Neal Schon first played with the band on "Hope You're Feeling Better." That makes more sense to me.

 

Left to Right: Neal Schon (g), Michael Shrieve (ds), David Brown (b), Carlos Santana (g/perc/vo), Gregg Rolie (kbd/vo), Jose “Chepito” Areas (perc), Michael Carabello (perc)
Note: A second guitarist joins the band, Neal Schon. He accepts to be the 7th official member of Santana after declining an offer to be part of Eric Clapton’s Derek And The Dominos.
Quote from Carlos Santana (The Universal Tone 2014): By the end of 1970, Neal Schon had been hanging around for a while, jamming with us. (…) I liked Neal’s dexterity, and he brought a lot of fire for someone so young, yet in a humble way. (…) It was my decision to ask him to join us, after I spoke with the rest of the band. Neal said yes, and by December he was part of Santana. (…) I asked Neal to join not because I was thinking about who played which parts or that it would free me up---it was much more about adding more flames to the band, the sound and energy we had together. The fire that Neal brought was a white, white heat. (p264-265)
Quote from Neal Schon (When did you officially join Santana?): The night after I played with Derek and the Dominos at the Berkeley Community Theater (Nov 19, 1970), and Eric Clapton asked me to join that band. The Santana guys found out about it, and asked me to join them right after that so I wouldn’t join Eric's band. I was really excited about playing with Eric, because he’d taught me so much through his records about improvising. I’d spent hours listening to the live record in Wheels of Fire, learning how he’d twist rhythms and play cross-rhythms over the top of drum, it completely openend my mind up to the possibilities of improvisational guitar-playing. I first played on Santana’s third album, after Abraxas. The Tower of Power horns were on there. I also played on Caravanserai, and the last project I did with Carlos was the live album with Buddy Miles recorded in Hawaii at the Crater Festival.

 

would love to hear that D&D show along with a remastered CS/BM live release and an official pre-perry release!!
caravanserai is transcendent

 

I am inclined to think you have some kind of strange bias against it.
It sounds just like the first couple of Santana albums except it has much better production and engineering.
Unless of course it is Santana the guy that plays guitar you like rather than Santana the band.

 

Yes and No. In Santana the band he was the guitar player. Again, Gregg Rollie was the front man. He might have tried to get more power ( which would have been absurd, the great talent in the rest of the band far outweighed his) but until the band split up everyone shined.
I can imagine there being more tensions with Mr Schon in the band, it probably frustrated Mr Santana to have another guitarist in the band who played circles around him. Especially considering Neal Schon wasn't even an adult yet.

 

The best sound he got was from the Yamaha SG series he played originally and the later SG s, I think he also had a 2000 and custom 3000 one.
Killer guitars, best mass production 2 humbuck guitars ever made. LPs couldn't hold a candle to them.
I had one. Perfect workmanship.

 

Yes, Gregg Rolie was the vocalist but he wasn't really the leader of the band. Santana gradually assumed power behind the scenes with the management and had input with them on personnel decisions within the band.

You are also not giving Santana enough credit for his talent and vision. It was his vision to take the band in a more jazz oriented direction after Santana III.

 

I have no bias against it. I bought it when it came out with an open mind and was very disappointed in it. It's missing the fire of the early Santana albums and it sounds too polished and modern. It sounds like a band trying to sound like Santana and failing to me.

If anything, I think you are biased in favor of it because you like Neal Schon.

 

The leap from III to Caravanserai is one of the most daring in Rock. From fans to business advisers to band mates Carlos' leap ahead to a much more jazzier and spiritual musical approach (via Coltrane and with the assistance of Shrieve) was largely derided and dismissed. However, the many albums that he produced following this muse are some of the best in what could be called progressive music.
He deserves way more credit for placing commercialism far behind adventure and exploration.
It also places his latter day, supposed, cash grab collaborations with current popular artists coordinated by Clive Davis in a more understandable light.
He derailed his successful rock career to go for his love of jazz, one of the very few superstar guitarists to do so.

 

As usual there's lots of negativity and bitching around here. I love them all in variyng degrees... the original Santana band, the jazz-rock Santana, the AOR Santana, the Supernatural Santana, Abraxas Pool and early Journey. I wouldn't want to miss any of them.
Rollie, Schon and Carlos, they are all great musicians...who cares who was the bandleader and who had more influence on one album or another.
Some people should just put on some Santana music and chill out.

 

OT: Has anyone heard the new Japanese Blue Spec2 versions of Santana and Abraxas? I was wondering about the sound quality.

 

How come there was no Abraxas Legacy edition...?

 

Sometimes you have set the record straight. When people make up stories that are baseless.

 

But can he ever top this...

 

I have wondered that myself. There are many bootleg soundboards from the period that are around. I am not sure if they have the tapes for some of these in the vaults or not. I'm not sure if any studio outtakes exist from the album.

 

I gave it a try and I feel like it gives the illusion of being like those albums except the songs aren't as good. I listened to it a couple times and haven't given it another thought since.

 

You'd have thought the obvious solution would be to use the full tape of the RAH show from 1970 that they handpicked songs from, on the expanded single disc CD.

 

That would certainly seem logical.

 

That's like Johnny Ramone doing an album with Eddie Van Halen. The gap is that wide. Still, a fairly decent album with Santana and McLaughlin.