By the summer season of 1971, 24-year-old Carlos Santana and his band – Neal Schon on guitar, drummer Michael Shrieve, Gregg Rolie on keys, bassist David Brown, and percussionists Mike Carabello and Jose “Chepito” Areas – had completed their third album, Santana III, and the pitfalls of fame and fortune have been taking a toll.

Fueled by alcohol, medication, and sexual escapades on tour, they have been on a foul path. Being so younger and admittedly misguided, Shrieve at this time acknowledges they weren’t geared up with the maturity to cope with their environment, however factors out they have been self-aware.

“Carlos and I have been making a shift, spiritually, and making completely different selections after having been by means of a whirlwind of success,” he advised VG. “There have been a whole lot of influences, and we felt it was time to get away from them and do one thing extra religious.”

Brown, who had succumbed to heroin habit, was fired. Santana himself even left the group for a short while, refusing to return till Carabello and supervisor Stan Marcum have been fired for supplying the medication. After some dialogue, Carabello was voted out and Carlos returned.

In his 2015 biography, The Common Tone: Bringing My Story to Gentle, Carlos recollects needing to step away for worry of the band changing into a caricature.

“If you overindulge, staying up all evening doing no matter you’re doing, then the following day you gotta play, and now you’re taking cocaine to get the power again – and now you’re drained, wired, and also you odor humorous – and also you look horrible. We have been like, ‘This s**t is miserable, man. We gotta do one thing completely different.’ We would have liked religious self-discipline.”
With the purpose of attaining a shift in consciousness, Carlos and Shrieve started studying the identical books, making higher selections, and changing into knowledgeable by the zeitgeist of early-’70s San Francisco. Carlos rejected the enterprise of Christianity and faith, preferring to lean into the inclusiveness of spirituality and Christ consciousness. This included the teachings of Buddha, Rama, Krishna, and Allah. Their shifting mindset pushed the music of Santana to turn out to be way more profound and common.

Searching for recent musical identities, they immersed themselves within the work of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Climate Report, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and others, nurturing their spirits and giving them the braveness to take possibilities in a world of manufacturers, labels, and focused consumerism.

“All this music was popping out and it was thrilling,” stated Shrieve. “Bitches Brew blew the doorways open, and the attractive factor about Miles is that musicians that got here from him went on and have become fruitful. They multiplied.”

“It was Michael who… corrected my twisted notion that ‘Jazz is just for previous, fuddy-duddy folks,’” Carlos says in The Common Tone. “He went by means of my report assortment, noticed what I didn’t have, and determined I needed to hear Miles and Coltrane. He introduced over a giant stack of data. ‘Whoa, what’s this? It’s actually completely different from John Lee Hooker.’

“When he introduced Miles within the Sky, it was over. He opened my eyes, my ears, and my coronary heart to a whole lot of issues. Some drummers solely have chops, however Michael Shrieve had imaginative and prescient.”

Thus started a brand new chapter, with a brand new musical route and new members in percussionists Mingo Lewis, Armando Peraza, bassist Doug “Dougie” Rauch, and (later) keyboardist Tom Coster. Columbia Information wished extra hit songs like “No One to Rely On” and “All people’s Every little thing,” from III, however Carlos has by no means been one to serve quick meals; reasonably, he wanted to mix his evolving artistry together with his blossoming sense of humanity and spirituality, and this new iteration of the band was totally alongside for the journey.

From the opening observe of Caravanserai, the instrumental “Everlasting Caravan of Reincarnation,” Carlos wished to set the temper with the sound of nature. To get the impact, engineer Glen Kolotkin recorded an ensemble of crickets in his again yard. The observe continues with Hadley Caliman on saxophone, joined at 1:44 by Tom Rutley on acoustic bass and Shrieve gently introducing a pulsing rhythm with Rolie’s delay-soaked organ and Schon on guitar.

The depth will increase on “Waves Inside,” the place Carlos’ guitar performs in opposition to Latin grooves and sparse chordal stabs from Douglas Rodrigues on guitar.

“Look Up (To See What’s Coming Down)” highlights the funk-infused interplay between Shrieve and Rauch in opposition to Latin percussion preparations, Rolie’s gritty organ pads, and Carlos’ hovering guitar strains. “Simply In Time to See the Solar” is Rolie’s vocal introduction on the album, which harkens to the band’s earlier work.

One in all Caravanserai’s highlights is “Music of the Wind,” which has Carlos and Schon delivering a basic guitar tour de power that resonates to at the present time. Facet one closes with “All of the Love of the Universe,” which affords a potent concoction of psychedelia, jazz, Latin rock, burning organ, hypnotic arpeggiation, incendiary wah-guitar soloing, and Japanese metaphysical philosophy inside the lyrics. Facet two is even higher, with Carlos channeling Gabor Szabo, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Herbie Hancock’s Crossings on the epic “Each Step of the Approach.”

Launched October 11, 1972, Caravansari stalled at #8 on Billboard. And whereas it yielded no hit singles, alienated many followers, and was thought-about a industrial failure, it’s at this time cherished amongst Santana fanatics as one key to the band’s longevity.

“We thought it was interesting to the ear and to the soul; it made me really feel good inside,” stated Shrieve. “There’s a sure purity within the music that needed to be acknowledged, that might contact folks in the event that they actually listened to it.”

However not everybody was proud of the band’s new route. Rolie and Schon left and shortly after shaped Journey.

“[Some people] referred to as it my first profession suicide, however I referred to as it dancing with the unknown in unpredictability,” Carlos wrote in 2015. “It takes a whole lot of braveness to do this. Folks say, ‘You’re going to lose your followers.’ Perhaps they have been by no means my followers. My actual followers would settle for me for my development and never for who they need me to be. Caravanserai is an announcement of pure religious self-discipline – pursuing one thing that your gentle, your spirit, your soul, and your coronary heart wish to do. That’s completely different than your ego.”

This text initially appeared in VG’s March 2024 challenge. All copyrights are by the creator and Classic Guitar journal. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.