![Peter Green wears a short-sleeved shirt and plays a gray Stratocaster [left] while Carlos Santana plays his PRS signature model, wears shades and is really feeling his solo onstage](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/SfUV6MR5GDcXb9SvBGriYR-1920-80.jpg.webp)
Come 1998, it was Santana’s turn to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Clive Davis and John Popper did the honors, handing over the award.
The band, led by Carlos Santana, had come a long way from their early rehearsals in San Francisco’s Mission district, from their incendiary and lysergic 1969 performance at Woodstock.
The original Santana lineup is hard to beat. Besides, Carlos, you had keys player Gregg Rolie, while drummer Michael Shrieve, congueros José Chepito Areas and Mike Carabello with David Brown on bass guitar provided one of the all-time great rhythm sections in rock history – a band with such a lithe sense of groove and style they could swing between O.G. electric blues and Latin jazz within the same measure.
This fusion, Santana told Guitar World in 2021, was the “best of both worlds,” and we were all welcome to explore it.
“I’ve always really loved B.B. King and Peter Green, and I wanted to combine that with Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaria,” he said. “To have that Latin feel and underpin it with blues guitar is – for me – the best of both worlds combined, really. It’s a winning combination.”
This was Santana’s time; they had certainly earned their place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“He could take a rock tune like Peter Green’s Black Magic Woman and transform it by adding a hint of salsa clave rhythm,” wrote Daisann McLane, in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame program notes. “Or take a salsa standard like Tito Puente’s Oye Como Va and translate it for rock listeners with some delicious brush strokes from that magic guitar.”
But did the award come a year too soon for Carlos Santana?
Ironically, it would be the following year – when Supernatural (a nod to Peter Green surely) dropped, 30 years on from the band’s self-titled debut – that Carlos Santana was everywhere, on every stage, on every radio station.
Most people would have been familiar with his electric guitar sound, his inimitable way of phrasing, but with Smooth, featuring Rob Thomas, dominating the airwaves and all over music television, everyone the world over could now put a face to the name – and to the sound.
Everyone wanted to be a part of it, and that included music’s best and brightest. Santana has always had an open-door policy for collaboration. Supernatural welcomed the likes of Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, and CeeLo Green to the party.
Eric Clapton, who could play a bit of guitar himself, joined Santana on The Calling. But no, 1998 was not too soon. Besides, after Supernatural, Santana’s awards ceremony schedule was all booked out. Santana took home nine Grammys for Supernatural – more than Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
It was appropriate that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Awards took the Santana story back to the start. Yes, their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Black Magic Woman arrived on sophomore LP Abraxas – the acme of Santana recordings – but Peter Green’s playing with the Mac shaped so much of how Santana approached his instrument and how they phrased their licks.
The above footage is gold, not least because it serves as a lasting tribute to Green. This was Santana’s night, but he was going to share the glory and invite a player along who left a lasting influence on him and gave him one of his biggest tunes.
This was a celebration of Green’s talent, and a reminder, particularly when he takes a solo, of why so many of the greats – Santana, chief among them – were in awe of him.
Santana said Green’s playing put him in a “headlock” and showed him that you didn’t always need to have a singer to get your message across. Players like Green, like B.B. King, had an honesty with the instrument. They couldn’t be anything but themselves.
“Emotion, passion, and feelings are what we all have, and if you keep yourself open, you can let these things express themselves through your playing,” said Santana. “I grew up on Peter Green and B.B. King and, of course, those two players have very different individual styles.
“The essence of that is that they let themselves honestly express what they were feeling through their instrument. B.B. King was originally the template for how I wanted to create my voice on the guitar, but after that period that players go through when they try to sound like their heroes, they have to find out who they are. I am very grateful that I’ve found something that is uniquely my own style.”
Finding your own style: those are words to live by.
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