Let It Come Out
Carlos Santana is a very cool guitar player. He has his own style, he’s an innovator, I dig some of his music, not all of it, because what he does isn’t necessarily my personal thing. But I find his spiritual searching, his articulation of it and his conclusions — which often relate to guitar-playing and music — always entertaining, sometimes fascinating.
Here’s some cool quotage from the December 2008 Guitar Player, the issue where he’s on the cover. It relates to getting in “that zone,” where you feel like you can do no wrong on the guitar — and if you did, it would sound cool anyway. That’s how I’d describe it, anyway.
“Do you ever have those moments when you’re playing by yourself, and you think you’ve been at it 30 minutes , but you suddenly realize you’ve got sweat and saliva all over your guitar because you’ve been at it for more than two hours?
“Hendrix is [a] bridge to the unknown because what he was playing even he couldn’t reproduce sometimes. He couldn’t quantize it — as much as he might have tried to get back there by taking seven tabs of acid….
“Sometimes it’s nothing — just the willingness. The willingness to take a deep breath and take what was given to you. It’s inside you, as John Lee Hooker said, and it has to come out. But maybe you won’t let it out because you want to analyze it before it comes out. Don’t analyze it. Leave that for other people. Just take a deep breath, stop what you’re thinking, and let go.
“Let God light you up, and let it come out. Then you can get rid of all the sh*t you know, and play things that sound like singing water.”
Another cool quote from Santana in that passage is: “When you hear Robby Krieger’s creepy minor-major blues thing at the beginning of The End, it’s like Dracula giving you a hug, but you don’t mind it.”
Awesome. Santana is a wordsmith as much as he is a notesmith.
Category: Carlos Santana
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