From the Vaults: Caravanserai
A Deep Dive Into Santana's Fourth & Finest
A lonesome saxophone moans downhome blues. It’s the first sound you hear on Caravanserai - Santana’s fourth, finest, and most audacious record. Consider the chirps that follow the sax, described by engineer Glen Kolotkin as a “cricket chorus,” and a bass roll reminiscent of A Love Supreme. So goes “Eternal Caravan of Reincarnation.” The album is a journey, which means you’ve got to put work in if you want to enjoy its bounty. Hell, the band’s namesake virtuoso lays out on the opening track. Maybe that’s why Columbia Records president and industry oracle Clive Davis dubbed it “career suicide.” If the record lacked a smash a la “Evil Ways,” “Black Magic Woman” or “No One To Depend On,” it brings remarkable flow, expansive sonic imagination, and some of the hardest playing I’ve ever heard.
Do you blame Santana for feeling froggy in 1972? As Carlos has it, “Abraxas was outselling Abbey Road.” I betcha anything he and his band listened to the Beatles’ best album plenty, though; tracks two through four rival the Abbey Road medley in how they build a sweeping whole of disparate parts. “Waves Within” sees Carlos build explosive solos over thrillride riffs. It runs seamlessly into “Look Up (To See What’s Coming Down),” where new bassist Douglas Rauch, second guitarist Neil Schon, and drummer Michael Shrieve cook thick viscous funk. The album’s first vocals arrive at track four, “Just In Time to See the Sun,” whose surge and drama build to a killer ending. Carlos’ solos pop out of goddamn nowhere, and the percussionists fill the right places. You’d think this record sprung from supercharged camaraderie. Carlos and Michael Shrieve were sure locked in; Shrieve introduced our fearless hero to jazz via “one, Coltrane Ballads and two, Miles Davis Kind of Blue.”
Yet a look into Caravanserai’s backstory reveals troubled times. Per Carlos, “When we get in the studio we have an attitude. You either show up late or you’re too over-the-top with drugs to play.” Shrieve corroborates: “We didn’t have the abilities or the maturity to know how to deal with that kind of success.” Tale as old as time: big famous rock band does big famous rock band things. Bassist David Brown got booted for heroin use; to hear Carlos’ own account, manager Stan Marcum and percussionist Michael Carabello “[supplied] the band with heavy stuff and we sound[ed] like shit.” It got so bad that Carlos Santana briefly left his namesake band in October ‘71, to protest Marcum and Carabello’s continued involvement. The band chopped some heads, got their star guitarist back, and replaced their jettisoned members with hardcore jazzbos.
With drama in the rearview, it’s easier to source Clive Davis’ discomfort. Hell, Gregg Rollie and Neal Schon split and formed Journey after these sessions wrapped. Per Rolie, “Carlos was impossible to deal with,” and I’ve got to wonder if Carlos’ temporary exit fueled these feelings. Still, dig the support those two give the dude on this record. Rollie’s percolating organ and Schon’s steady chords give Carlos’ explorations a gorgeous foundation on “Song of the Wind.” As with Trane, Carlos dives so into his part that melody streams into solo. The Rollie-Schon-Carlos trio also shine on “All the Love in the Universe’s” thrilling conclusion. Each instrumentalist takes a stunning solo, sometimes (see Schon’s wah’ed harmonies on Carlos’ part) crashing into each other’s spaces in the most gorgeous ways imaginable. Rollie goes all Phantom of the Opera, Schon looses volcanic wah, and Carlos makes that sucker sing.
Straight from the horse’s mouth, “We’re fearless, we’re not cowards, man.” Arguably the record’s most daring touch thus far comes via “Future Primitive,” whose windswept keyboards and clattering percussion evoke a dusty desert stopover. It’s brief, it’s creepy, it’s ambient music six years before Eno coined the term. The lively “Stone Flower” conjures the caravan in the morning; a gorgeous Joabim cover, it’s beefed up with nifty needling guitars and hippie lyrics. That, too, is peak audacity. Imagine sticking your own words on somebody else’s instrumental hit. The Cuico (that Brazilian drum that’s designed to sound like a hooting monkey) and prominent keyboards (Rollie shines toward the end) suggest reverence for the original, which necessitated the changes. If you love something enough, chase your vision of it all the way.
Santana smartly saved the emotional apex for the end. “La Fuente Del Ritmo,” where guitar ripples play against surging percussion, marks the most kickassery on the entire record, yet it’s still an amuse-bouche. Because it’s all about “Every Step of the Way,” which ratchets the intensity to soul-cleansing levels. A little “In A Silent Way”-style groove leads into a string of guitar arpeggios that’ll leave you on the edge of their seat. From there, the kickass drum entrance, and the whole-band rampage lashed onward by Carlos’ guitar. Guest flutist Hadley Cadiman (also responsible for the opening sax!) pours so much into his part it’s a wonder he didn’t explode. The orchestra that creeps in might’ve sounded cheesy in other hands, its cinematic swells pretentious, but Carlos plays like he’s working a demon out of his body; shades of Africa/Brass here, but it remains pure Santana. The way the song swirls into empty desert landscape, leaving my fresh brainspatter on the turntable? Dude.
Late ‘60s and early ‘70s rock presented many renowned mind-expanders. Your Dark Side of the Moons and Zeppelin IVs and Electric Ladylands and Close to the Edges. Caravanserai deserves a seat at that table that it still can’t get, even though it boasts the conceptual sweep and textured arrangements and astronomical musicianship and shocking song structures that defined the era’s beloved cutting-edge rock. Ask me to do a Big Three of that ‘68 to ‘72 run, and I’ll put this up there with Exile on Main Street and, yup, Abbey Road. You like jazz? Rock? Latin in its multifarious incarnations? Check this record out. You like all three? You’ve got no excuse not to.
Bonus Fun!
A few unforgettably weird interview quotes from Carlos that didn’t really fit: “‘Well, Santana, you’re an interesting dude, man, what’s your sign?’ I go, What do you mean? ‘You know, your sign, astrology.’ I go, ‘Oh, all of them. And none of them.’ And they go, “Whoa.” And, a little earlier on, “What’s it like to make love to an angel?”
Bigtime shoutout to the Music Aficionado blog, which inspired me to festoon these pieces with pictures. It’s also where I learned about Armando Peraza, a percussionist with a knack for misnaming musicians. Per Carlos, “I was called Carlo. McLaughlin was Maharishi, not Mahavishnu. Lionel Richie was Flannel Richie. There was Argentina Turner, Roberta Flop, and that Weather Report guy, Joe Sabano. ‘Hey, Carlo, you know I was with Sabano when he wrote ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy’?”