When you hit a note, it's easy to give people chills," Carlos Santana tells me.
The Mexican musician is sitting in a booth at the Shangri-La in Dubai, where he's been staying since Thursday ahead of his Dubai World Cup concert, not going out, just "reading the books I'm into. I'm reading a book about Desmond Tutu and a book about learning in a tangible way to become more transparent."
Right now, he's on the verge of giving me giggles rather than the hoped-for chills. Thankfully, he has a habit of closing his eyes when he speaks, which gives me time to compose myself.
But I sense he's in on the joke, just a little, and listening closely, some of what he says begins to make sense.
"The more transparent you become, there's less of me, myself and my story. Me, myself and my story really get in the way," he says. "In the way of the message that everyone is meaningful and significant. No one's special. When people think they're special — look at Michael Jackson — you start thinking that your pain is more than someone else's and you need special drugs and a special doctor. I've seen that with all the people that I love, like Marvin Gaye and Jimi Hendrix — they become more special than other human beings and we're not. You may have more zeros to the right of the cheque, but everyone is equally significant and meaningful."
Music-led philosophy
Santana has a well-documented interest in spirituality, as someone whose career started with a phenomenal gig at Woodstock may well lay claim to. He's studied under Indian gurus and become born-again, and now, it seems he's taken that lifetime of experiences and rolled it into a fascinating, music-led philosophy on life.
"This stuff is really tangible that I'm talking about, not hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo or wishful thinking," he says. "It's solid as the foundation of this building, it's gonna hold you. A lot of people ask, what kind of amplifier, what kind of strings, what kind of guitar, what kind of speakers, and I say, you forgot to ask me the most important question: what was I thinking about, feeling?"
After decades in the industry — some more successful than others — Santana's met and worked with nearly everyone in the industry, although he'd only come across his co-headliner Elton John once before, at a tennis match ("I got beat like crazy."). The guitar hero, despite having made a Grammy-winning collaboration album, Supernatural, which featured tracks with chart-toppers like Chad Kroeger and Rob Thomas, prefers to stick to the golden oldies. When asked who he's listening to currently, he goes blank. "Name someone," he says, so I throw Lady Gaga's name out. "She's an entertainer," he remarks brightly, without a note of scorn. "Not an artist."
Eternity
"I think that the music that I love — what I call the sound of eternity — It's A Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong, What's Going On, Marvin Gaye, Imagine, John Lennon, One Love, Bob Marley — remind you of eternity because they will always be relevant and you stay forever young. I call it the fragrance of the soul, because it's not coming from any other part than from the centre of your heart, the best part of you."
While his record label celebrates a decade since the release of Supernatural (which landed nine Grammys) with a reissue of the album this year, Santana himself is looking ahead to a residency in Las Vegas, where he'll perform nightly at the Hard Rock Hotel. It sounds gruelling, on a Celine Dion scale, I tell him, but Santana's already planning on giving himself time off.
"Everything that I do is balanced. I've made a commitment. In Las Vegas we play for about 8-12 days, then I go back home for a month and a half. It's not a job, routine or labour. It's like offering flowers to people, to ensure your smile is as fresh as possible."
