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• Mr. Santana's official site
• "Rocker Carlos Santana will trip through his hits in Vegas"
• "Santana, Daddy Yankee To Be Honored At Billboard Latin Music Awards"
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Music icon tells Tavis how he plans to get to a place that is new for everyone at his shows. (2:07)
 

Full interview. (22:07)
 

Tavis: Pleased to welcome Carlos Santana back to this program. the multiple Grammy winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer made a major announcement yesterday regarding a two-year residency at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas starting May 27th. He'll christen the newly renovated theater there for more than 70 shows.

The show is called Supernatural Santana: A Trip Through the Hits -- of course, what else would you call it? The show, of course, will feature so many of his classic songs, including this one -- "Smooth."

[Video clip of Santana and band performing live.]

Tavis: You were grooving to that. Were you liking what you heard?

Carlos Santana: Oh, totally. It's a surge, it still feels like when you're a child and they let you ride that water slide, only we're going up instead of down. (Laughter.)

Tavis: No matter how many times you play a classic like "Smooth" you find something different, the presentation is different every time you play it?

Santana: Yes, because we found a way to understand why Marvin Gaye or Coltrane or Bob Marley, they enter a place of eternity when they go into this -- for basketball players it's the zone, the groove. We have a beautiful saying; it says "When eternity nears, time disappears." And when you catch that groove, then you enter into that place where like I said, Marvin Gaye or Miles or Coltrane, they're here. They're really, really here.

And so when I hear music and I go in it, that's where I bring my band and myself, into that place where time disappears, gravity disappears, illusions disappear, and you go right into the center of your light. And that's the only place to really hang out.

Tavis: Yeah, I like that. Maybe I'll get there one day.

Santana: Oh, you're there already, man.

Tavis: It sounds like a great place to hang out. (Laughter.)

Santana: I can tell by the light in your eyes you're there already.

Tavis: It sounds like a nice place to hang out. You mentioned Marvin a couple of times already. Yesterday, of course, 25th anniversary of Marvin's death. You mention his name a couple times. What do you make of Marvin's stuff 25 years after his death?

Santana: He's more relevant than ever, him and Coltrane and Bob Marley. If it was mandatory to listen to Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" morning, noon and night, it's what Barack Obama needs to hear right now. Bring the boys home from Vietnam, war is not the answer. Legalize marijuana, give all that money to teachers and schools.

There's so much of Marvin Gaye's music from beginning to an end just in that CD alone that it helps us reach an insight in how we can go into the future with more clarity instead of disruptive fear. With more clarity, because every time I listen to his music -- and I do it all the time -- he knew that there was a better way for us as human beings.

And so there's no secret that Berry Gordy tried to block it or he was trying to tell him, like, hey, man, this is too deep or whatever. It's a career suicide. I've been accused of doing career suicide many times. (Laughter.) But people -- it's like Carter said to people, man -- Ronald Reagan's telling you what you want to hear; I'm telling you what you need to hear.

And Marvin Gaye was telling us what we needed to hear with "What's Going On." In fact, the new album should be called "What's Really Happening" instead of "What's Going On. What's really happening today.

And I would invite my brother Barack Obama to listen to Marvin Gaye, "What's Going On," and John Coltrane, and then he can follow his voice and not constantly be in fear of, like, trying to please people who are living with fear. Because clearly, we trust in him. That's our love for him. When you love someone, you trust.

And we trust. We love him, we trust him because we believe that he is anointed to take us to the place where Martin Luther King used to say -- the Promised Land. Obama in the Promised Land. The only way to get there is to go with the only reality. The only reality that exists on this planet is god's love. Everything else is an illusion. You can see it 24 hours on every channel -- cable or satellite -- is fear.

And for me, where I am today, it's like this is why I'm doing -- my New Year's resolution was, like, to do everything that I said that I would never do, and I probably said it because I was with fear. Like play with Kenny G or Michael Bolton or Elvis Costello. (Laughter.) But there's nothing wrong with those brothers because we're all children of god.

I'm the one that needs to go there, and really, if I am invited with Elton John or all these incredible brothers, know that I can bring a certain light and things that I learn from B. B. King or Tito Puente or Miles to compliment what's in front of me and not come in with superiority or inferiority.

To be able to look at Kenny G and Michael Bolton, all those brothers, the same way that I look at Desmond Tutu and Mother Theresa, then you really arrived because you're looking at the same light. And so for me, this is where I made my New Year's resolution, where I said I have to change the way I've been perceiving things.

I think the things that I learned from the '60s, from doing benefits for the Black Panthers to working with Desmond Tutu, Brother Desmond Tutu, Rev Desmond Tutu, and it's really allowed me to see that the reason I love Coltrane so much, "A Love Supreme," and Bob Marley, "One Love," is because I really have to live it. I can't just, like, sing it and talk about it.

And to live it is to see the same light -- to see Christ in everybody. It's challenging only because we have a split mind. When we don't have a split mind then we can really, really see what god sees when you shave and in other people.

Tavis: I feel everything you've just said, and I couldn't agree more that -- and my words, not yours -- love is the easiest thing to say and the hardest thing in the world to do. It is so difficult to love people, and because you love people doesn't mean you have to like people.

But that love thing is hard to get over. I talk about it all the time so I know exactly what you're talking about. But what you've just said -- I didn't want to interrupt while you were saying it, Carlos; you were in that zone. You were channeling, and I didn't want to interrupt.

But I want to ask now what brought that about. For you to say that my New Year's resolution was to do those things that I said I would not do, those things I said I wouldn't do because I felt superior or those things I said I wouldn't do because I felt inferior, I'm going to move beyond that and do those things I said I wouldn't do. That's what you just told me.

I want to know what the back story to that is. What brought that on?

Santana: Well, when you (unintelligible) Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, because Malcolm didn't see eye-to-eye; he was calling the brother Uncle Tom and all kinds of names. And then when he dropped the fear, the illusion, and he really went to Mecca and he really saw what Allah was about -- and by the way, Allah and Buddha and Christ Jesus, most of the brothers went, before they were who they are now, they went through the 40 days and 40 nights of, like, the darkest night of the soul.

And so they went over there to drop the luggage, you know what I mean? And when you drop the luggage you realize that you claimed your inheritance. Heaven is not a destination or a condition. It's not something you can learn or earn. It was already given to you, and the only way you can take it -- I love to quote Curtis Mayfield: all you have to do is get on board, man.

You don't need a ticket. In order to claim heaven you have to share it. if you don't share it, you're not claiming it. And so that's why for me to be in this place where I aspire and I long to do something with all those brothers that before I said I would never do, whatever, there was nothing wrong with them. It was me that had to change my perception about can I compliment -- like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

Can they make peace and bring something that the whole humanity would benefit? Which they did, which we have.

Tavis: I'm going to get back to the Hard Rock, I promise. I want to talk about these shows and the music and what you're going to play there. But as always when I talk to you you open up so many doors that I want to walk into, and I'm trying to figure out which door I'm going to go in next.

And this may be a bit uncomfortable, and if it is you tell me and I'll back off of it. I'm only raising it for two reasons -- one, because the last time you were here you were going through it, and because I knew you were going through it I was not going to ask you about it on television.

Santana: Very gracious of you, thank you.

Tavis: You remember that conversation.

Santana: Yeah.

Tavis: You were going through it. We talked about it off camera but I didn't raise it on camera. Since then I've seen a couple places where you've been asked about it and you actually responded, and if you don't want to respond tonight, you don't have to.

But you went through a divorce, married for many, many years, as we all know. You went through a divorce that was very, very painful recently, very painful for you. I read in one place, and I want to make sure I got this right, where you said to one interviewer, if they told the truth, that you actually thought about suicide in that process. Is that a true story?

Santana: Yes. However, God sat me down and he says, "I'm next to you and I made you the way you are before, during, and after her. And I'm sitting next to you -- isn't that enough?" This is the only lady who hasn't fallen apart on me. (Laughter.) Because ladies tend to have emotional meltdowns, man, and sometimes you can be of service and sometimes you've just got to let them -- because it's the planet of free will.

I love Deborah. She's my soul mate. I love Deborah immensely. What keeps me together now is every time I see light, shining light in the streets, the sunlight against windows and water and everything, in that light, it's in my heart, and she's there along with my children. So therefore, in that light, time, distance and separation is an illusion.

And so she's right here with me. And I allow for her, because I want to honor her, for her to go into her journey, because that's what she said the whole time -- "I'm on a spiritual journey to find out about myself," because she didn't want to be in my shadow. The journey is from the mind to the heart. It's only, like, maybe 18 inches long.

Tavis: And yet it's a long way to travel. So close and yet so far away.

Santana: It's her choice, man. I miss everything about her, driving around, listening to Coltrane, her skin, her eyes, her voice and everything. But at the same time I also know that she needs to find out what is her modum operandum.

I knew since I've been a child what I came here to do, and nothing distracted me. And so she deserves, like my daughters and all my sisters and my mom -- every woman deserves to find her own -- Stevie Wonder, "Place in the Sun." I don't want to be a shadow. I don't want my thing to be a shadow on somebody else.

So that's where I am today, and I feel better because what I've learned since, I've learned that my life has meaning and so I have to stick around because there's a lot of people who do need me. I love -- to close this thing, what I have learned from all this is that the highest sensation that I've known, being from the '60s with drugs and sex and everything, nothing makes me feel more better in my whole being than doing what Desmond Tutu does or Mother Theresa does or Andre Agassi do -- to utilize money, energy, passion, ideas to help other children.

A lot of Latinos graduate from high school, high grades; they don't have money to go to college. Bam, that's where it goes to. The more Arnold takes money away from California, bam.

And so now that I know how this feeling feels of doing what Mother Theresa does or Desmond Tutu or Dalai Lama, they're not the only ones that can do this, man. We all can do it anywhere in the city -- with a smile in the elevator. So in other words, I'm still in love with life -- life and god are not going to leave me.

Tavis: Wow. I'm again trying to choose where I want to go, given all that you've just said.

Santana: Sorry.

Tavis: No, no, no. I think where I want to go next is to ask you, to your point about always being clear and focused on what your calling was, what your vocation, what your purpose is, it is to spread love through the music that you share with us when you find yourself in this space.

When you were a kid you started playing violin. As talented as you are, you could have been Itzhak Perlman**, you turn out to be Carlos Santana on a guitar. How did you go -- why guitar? Why didn't you stay with that violin?

Santana: Well, the violin is a very demanding instrument to play. I didn't like the way it smelled. (Laughter.) I didn't like the way it felt, and I didn't like the way it sounded. So it had three strikes. The guitar just -- it's like the body of a woman, man, you just grab it and you put your fingering on it, and high.

Tavis: And it just works.

Santana: It works.

Tavis: Those watching this program now, and for that matter whenever you see Carlos Santana, because it is part of who you are -- it's not an act, it's part of who you are -- you are such a spiritual being, you've said that when you get to be somewhere around 67 -- you've got a few years to go -- but somewhere around 67 at least you're thinking of retiring and going full-time into the ministry. You still feel that way?

Santana: Yes. I did learn from Steffi Graff. She knew when to bail out and say "That part of my life is complete." Twenty-two Grand Slams -- she's, like, the Tiger Woods of --

Tavis: Women's tennis, yeah.

Santana: Yeah, yeah. And so I want to be able to not overstay my welcome. Whenever my fingers do not keep up with the feelings and the vision inside I will say I'm stuttering, I'm stuttering -- done. Because I know that if I don't play music I still have the gift of being anointed. And being anointed is that I'm aware of my light, and I'm aware how to invite other people -- not impose it, but how to invite other people to claim their own light so that people don't have this dimension of being victims or villains.

Because when you have a split mind and you invest more in your darkness, well, there's suicides every day on TV. Every day -- we won't even talk about the soldiers. And to me it's like my calling is that if I can convince people to change the music in shopping malls, elevators, everywhere like that, if you put "What a Wonderful World," "What's Going On," "Imagine," "One Love," "A Love Supreme," if you put certain songs, "Naima," in shopping malls, people will stop suiciding and killing and hurting people.

Tavis: You think music's that powerful?

Santana: Oh, I know it is, because, see, music goes beyond your molecular structure -- it goes all the way to your light. Music makes you cry and you don't even know why you're crying. You're crying because something reminds you that you can go into a place where you always have been, you never not have been there.

It's the illusion and the nightmare that we create to think that we're not worthy or we're sinners or whatever, or it's the White man's fault, or whatever. I love saying, hey, Barack Obama's in the house, man -- no more excuses, brothers. (Laughter.) You know what I'm saying?

So as a minister, man, as a musician, I know that it's not that difficult for me to be a minister, because I do feel that God gave me, since I was a child, the gift of being like a crystal. When light hits me, all the color shows up. We just did South America. Everywhere we went there's a lot of -- you'd think we're like the Cirque de Soleil without the acrobats, man, there was children all over the place. I never seen so many children come to our concerts.

So I have spiritual confidence that if I lose my fingers or I can't play anymore I still have the light in my heart and I have a different way of reasoning with my brain to invite people, not impose it on people.

Tavis: At 60 years of age now, Carlos, do you feel anything -- physically, that is -- do you feel at 60, since you play so much, do you feel anything different in your hands at 60 than you did at --

Santana: No. If anything, because I don't -- for right now, this is the peak of my existence because it's not how fast, it's how deep. Albert King and Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix will tell you that. People who play really fast, it's like bullets that don't penetrate paper. But when you go slow and deep, man, people say you touched me in a place I never been touched before.

And they start crying and you go, "I wish I knew what that is." (Laughter.) Because I have no idea -- you're just channeling it. So no, I'm not there yet but I will know when it's time for me to pass the guitar to Derek Trucks and brothers like that.

Tavis: Tell me about this show at the Hard Rock. My first thought when I saw -- first of all, I'm glad you chose this show to talk about it in your first TV interview about it. A lot of folk are looking forward to it; I'm sure the tickets are going to sell out like crazy -- no doubt about that.

But what got my attention when I first heard the news is I was like for a guy that moves like the speed of light, or better yet, in your case, the speed of sound, for a guy who moves like the speed of sound, how are they going to hold Carlos Santana down for two years in the same venue?

Santana: I changed my perception. I learned from Elvin Jones, play "Black Magic Woman" and "Smooth" and "Maria, Maria" like it's the first time and the last time -- like it's your first French kiss, so you're totally in the moment. When you do the first French kiss and you're like --

Tavis: Oh, I remember. (Laughter.)

Santana: Yeah -- you're in the moment. You're not in Rome or Tokyo, you're right here, right now.

Tavis: Yeah, right here, yes.

Santana: And that's what is required for music to be fresh and new with purity and innocence. You have to be in the moment, not doing this and being somewhere else. And so to be in a parking lot or at Woodstock or Hard Rock Hotel or the joint, to me it's the same place now. This is what keeps it -- this is what keeps the music into that place that I mentioned to you. When eternity nears, time disappears.

Tavis: Have you given any thought yet to what the line-up, what the show is going to be like?

Santana: The only thing that I require is that in the middle of --

Tavis: Is a guitar.

Santana: Yeah -- well, no, that too. (Laughter.)

Tavis: Just give me a guitar, I can do this by myself. (Laughter.)

Santana: In the middle of the concert I require to, as Wayne Shorter would say, take a backwards flip into the unknown. I need 20 minutes to half an hour where nobody knows, including myself, what we're going to do. Not the light man or the sound man. So you can dip into what's not written, beyond the mechanics, the intangibles.

Tavis: Wait, wait -- let me understand this. This happens in the middle of the show or --

Santana: Yeah.

Tavis: Okay, got it. I'm like they got to start somewhere, Carlos.

Santana: Yeah. Well, because I know if I see James Brown when he was here, or Sting or Prince, there's certain things that you want to hear because you grew up with it. They're part of your --

Tavis: Part of your DNA, in a certain way.

Santana: Yeah. But at the same time, I need also to go into that space where it's new for everybody.

Tavis: Is it unfair -- you mentioned Prince; I saw Prince the other night and I love him and he knows I love him, and every time I get a chance to see him, I see him. And yet because you're right, there's stuff that fans want to hear, I sometimes sense that even among your fan base that they're just waiting for you to get to the stuff they really want to hear.

And it almost seems unfair to an audience when the audience -- it seems unfair to an artist when your audience won't let you go there because they insist on hearing what they want to hear. Is that unfair to an artist, when people won't let you go to that space for 20 minutes?

Santana: Yeah, but I don't -- but they're not --

Tavis: You don't care, though.

Santana: See, I'm the director, the screenwriter, the producer, the cameraman in my own movie, so I don't let nobody dictate, especially now that I'm not married. (Laughter.) I don't listen to nobody.

Tavis: Carlos, yeah. (Laughter.)

Santana: If I don't like my movie, I change it.

Tavis: Yeah, I got you. (Laughter.)

Santana: So I'm aware that I'm here of service to people and that I owe them a certain kind of thing, but that doesn't give them the right to tell me what I need to be or need to do with respect to that.

Tavis: Yeah, well, with respect to them, he's going to be in Vegas at the Hard Rock, again, starting -- did I say May 27th, is that right? May 27th he goes to the Hard Rock -- get your tickets now.

Carlos, I need some tickets for opening night.

Santana: You got it, anytime.

Tavis: Thank you. Whew.

Santana: Okay. Bring your tambourine and cowbells and help us out.

Tavis: I'll bring whatever you need me to bring -- everything but a guitar. You got that covered. Good to see you, man.

Santana: Thank you. Best to you and your family.

Tavis: Glad that -- man, I love you, Carlos, glad to have you here.