Santana charts a revolution

By Russell Baillie

In a year of career-reviving albums - Blondie, Tom Jones, the Eurythmics, among others - the prize for the biggest goes to someone who never went away and has outsold them all.

Step on down, Carlos Santana, comeback king of 1999.

The veteran Mexican-American guitarist's album Supernatural is not only one of the biggest of the year (after four weeks at No 1 it's sold four million in the United States and it's gone gold here), it's the biggest in his career.

Wow, like cosmic.

Any prodding you try down the phone to his Californian home to get him to relish his success comes strained through Santana's unreconstructed hippiness.

But yes, he was startled.

"I was very surprised but I feel very clear about it," he said. "When we became No 1 in 1970 with Abraxas it was very different ... it was a very hazy and very painful and very angry and tortuous time.

"Now things are clear. So more than anything I am very grateful."

The most obvious reason for Supernatural's success is its guest list, with writing and singing contributions from Lauryn Hill (Santana played on her album The Miseducation of ...) and fellow Fugee Wyclef Jean. Likewise, it features Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas (the resulting Smooth was a six-week No 1 American single) Dave Matthews, Eagle-Eye Cherry and blues-rapper Everlast.

Santana also got someone more his own age, Eric Clapton, for album finale The Calling. It's a track that stands out to Santana personally.

"I said to him, 'I'm sure you know that people expect for us to be doing the duelling banjos here, like two heavyweight fighters fighting it into the ground, but I would rather like it was two Apaches at the Grand Canyon calling up the spirit.' And he said, 'Yeah, that sounds better, that sounds good.'"

Also there's been 1999's Latin pop wave led by Ricky Martin.

"A lot of people seem to think there is a big wave of Latin music or Spanish music, but it is really African music that we've played since the beginning and I am still playing African music. The real truth of it is it's a sensual album and a real spiritual album.Those things don't go out of style."

If Supernatural has made Santana as popular as he was in the 70s, there's another parallel. He was originally signed to Columbia Records in 1968 by now legendary producer and record mogul Clive Davis. Early Santana albums had ready-made hits in canny covers, such as She's Not There (the Zombies), Black Magic Woman (Fleetwood Mac), Well All Right (Buddy Holly) and One Chain Don't Make No Prison (the Four Tops).

Supernatural is another project by Davis, now president of Arista records. It's Santana's first album for Davis' label.

"Basically, he just wanted to make sure that I was open to today's times, that I wasn't just interested in being an antique or a relic from the 60s. So I said, 'I don't live in nostalgia, I live in the moment. I am totally open to what is happening today as long as it is sincere, honest and soulful. I can hang with that.'"

But Santana, who, with wife Deborah, helms their own children's charity, the Milagro Foundation, says he's proud to have maintained his 60s idealism.

"We are teenagers of the 60s and we used to say you are part of the problem or part of the solution. It is still true. Some hippies sold out and became yuppies or greedy people, they became the system. There are a lot of bands - you know who they are - who were anti-system. Now they are the system.

"We still believe in the same principles as the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley. We still believe it's a consciousness revolution, not a violent revolution."

Some might say that sort of talk is time-capsule stuff.

"This is true, but I'd rather stay with my reality than their meat and potatoes reality. Look what my reality has given me - I am number one."

And now, with the trans-generational album, he's a family entertainer too. "It's wonderful to walk into a concert with little children and teenagers and grandparents and parents. Everybody pretty much likes the CD, which is pretty rare. America has this unwritten thing that says the radio and TV only belong to 17 to 27-year-olds, and for some reason this has broken those boundaries."

Santana laughs at what the original Woodstock generation might be saying to their offspring down row 63 of his last show: "Yeah, they tell their children 'I told you for a long time but you wouldn't listen.'"