The Catskill Chronicle

By Jason Dole

Photos by Leni Santoro. Photo of Santana and Duke Devlin courtesy of Mike Bloom and Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.

“This is the real America!”…

So said Carlos Santana to a cheering, sold-out crowd last weekend at Bethel Woods. He had just finished playing “Soul Sacrifice.” Good choice for an opener. The same song helped launch Santana to international fame when his band performed it at the same location some 41 years ago. You may have seen it in a little movie called Woodstock.

Along with Sly Stone’s “Higher,” and Richie Havens’ “Freedom,” “Soul Sacrifice” stands in a 3-way tie for Most Amazing Performance at the concert that defined a generation. With a clip of the “Rain Chant” and a shorter, contemporary performance of “Soul Sacrifice,” Carlos Santana essentially said I have returned to Woodstock.

Then, when the music stopped, he opened his mouth and said a bunch of other stuff… (see video at bottom of page)

The Opener

Wait, hold on. Let’s not forget about Steve Winwood.

Although most folks were there for Mr. Santana, this gig was billed as “Carlos Santana, Steve Winwood: Universal Tone.” At least, that’s what it said on the tour shirt, with each performer’s respective guitar next to their names (just so you know, Santana plays his own signature version of a PRS, while Winwood often plays what looks like an aqua colored American Standard Fender Stratocaster).

The point is, Steve Winwood was a big part of this show, even if he’s not as well known to the general crowd. His songs ranged from one-off classics like “Gimme Some Lovin’” from the Spencer Davis Group or “Can’t Find My Way Home” from Blind Faith, through vintage Traffic stuff like “Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” and “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” to latter-day 80s hits like “Higher Love” and his darkly excellent 2008 track “Dirty City”

If you haven’t heard Dirty City, please take a moment and watch it here.

Before the show, several people asked me “What does Steve Winwood sing?” If they listened to his set, which included all of those songs I just listed, at some point one of them made those folks say “oh, he plays that song!”

On top of his repertoire, Winwood is an excellent performer. He’s got serious chops on two instruments (his aforementioned Strat and my favorite, the Hammond Organ). His live band is a stripped-down (drums, percussion, horn, guitar, and whatever Winwood is playing) and the arrangements are very organic: tasteful, restrained, but full of vitality. When he dipped into the Traffic material, that’s when Winwood was spinning some real musical magic. It was another beautiful evening at Bethel Woods, and songs like “Low Spark,” “Empty Pages,” and “Mr. Fantasy” provided the perfect soundtrack.

The Crowd, The History

Are you kidding? The crowd was massive. Massive! There was something like 16-17,000 people there. Late-comers like me were better off standing on the outskirts of the lawn – there was no place to sit where I could actually see the show. That’s okay. Outside of Santana’s cover of “Riders on the Storm,” it was not a night for sitting. As it happened 41 years earlier, “Soul Sacrifice” got the audience on its feet and Santana kept them up and grooving most of the night.

I think it was a particularly diverse audience, which is only appropriate when with a legendary Mexican-American guitarist headlining the event. I saw that great Bethel Woods mix of young and old folks, many African-American families, a wide variety of Hispanic and Latino Americans, and the most fun I had all night was listening to “Jingo” and a few other songs in the company of a family of middle-aged Japanese folks at the top of the lawn. What a crowd! I think Santana saw this wonderful mix of people first-hand. Several concert-goers reported seeing Santana walking around the crowd earlier in the evening. Some even got to chat with him.

Before that, Santana took a moment to visit with another local guy, Bethel Woods site interpreter Duke Devlin. The original Woodstock performer met the original Woodstock attendee down by the monument; that painted concrete and metal marker Duke dubbed, “the Tomb of the Unknown Hippie.” When performers like Santana return, they relive those memories and honor the history. (And speaking of Woodstock History, I also saw event organizer Michael Lang at Bethel Woods last Saturday, though I don’t know if they met.

“This is ground zero for peace and love.”-Carlos Santana-7/17/10 Bethel, NY. Before his sold out show Carlos Santana poses at the site of the 1969Woodstock festival at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, with Duke Devlin Site Interpreter at Bethel Woods. MICHAEL D. BLOOM/Bethel Woods mb@michaelbloomphoto.com

The Songs

Santana played a mix of new & old hits, and a mix of styles that ranged from his trademark latin-flavored rock (“Oye Como Va”), incorporated elements of psychedelia (“Riders on the Storm”) African funk (“Jingo”), and also included some modern sounding salsa (“Foo Foo”). He had the aid of a stage filled with vocalists, horns, and percussionists.

As you can see below, Santana’s setlist included a number of covers like the Doors’ “Riders,” Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” Van Halen’s “Dance the Night Away,” and Coltrane’s “Love Supreme.” I heard one fan complain “Why is he doing so many cover songs? Thirty years of his own music to choose from and he’s covering Van Halen!”

That gentleman was in the minority, but he was by no means alone. However, you have to remember that covers have always been a big part of Santana’s repertoire. For instance, “Oye Como Va” is a Tito Puente original dating from 1963, and “Black Magic Woman” is a Fleetwood Mac cover from back in the Peter Green days. Although he didn’t delve into a full-blown Hendrix cover, Santana did drop some Jimi riffs (like “Third Stone from the Sun”) into a couple of songs.

Here’s the full setlist:

1 – Rain Chant / Soul Sacrifice

2 – Maria Maria

3 – Foo Foo

4 – Corazón Espinado

[drum, percussion, bass solos]

5 – Jingo Play Video

6 – Riders on the Storm

7 – Black Magic Woman

8 – Oye Como Va

9 – Dance the Night Away

10 – Evil Ways

11 – A Love Supreme

12 – Sunshine of Your Love

13 – Smooth

14 – Dame tu amor

Encore:

14 – Bridegroom

15 – Into the Night

16 – Freedom Play Video

17 – Love Peace and Happiness Play Video

The Rapper

Santana is well known for being a guitar player, not so much a singer. But did you know he’s a rapper? As in, he sure likes to rap with the audience. And last weekend, he wanted to talk about everything!

For instance, that “This is the real America” quote from the beginning of the show came in the middle of a rambling speech that went from general “hellos” to the gathering at the former Woodstock site to disses on Fox News and Arizona’s immigration law, then resolved into general good wishes to all the women in the audience (and the world) before launching into “Maria, Maria.”

“I don’t advocate for drugs,” said Santana later on, referencing his altered state of mind at the original Woodstock festival. “[they are] made in a factory. I advocate for medicines, which Mother Earth makes for us, to help expand our minds.

Later, during “A Love Supreme,” Santana launched into a 5-minute rap about how everyone is made out of light and love (see the link below). This included an attack on the ego.

“There’s a lot of ego in the Bible,” he said. “There’s a lot of beauty and grace in the Bible, [but] there’s a lot of ego. Any god who gets pissed off at humans and he floods the world, and he destroys the world, that’s God-zilla, that’s not God.”

Que dice, Carlos? Say what?

“If I sound like I’m preaching, that’s because I am…”

Truly, the Woodstock site hasn’t heard rapping like that since Mr. Sylvester Stewart got up on the mic 41 years ago and said “What we’d like to do… is sing a song… together.”

The Light Show / Conclusion

So, those are the details. It was a pretty good show. I have to say, Steve Winwood is more my style musically, but Santana put on a hell of a show. Once again, the older songs were the best songs. I loved hearing “Soul Sacrifice” “Jingo” and “Evil Ways,” all three of which Santana played the last time he was here.

In my last Bethel Woods review (for the Moody Blues), I waxed on a bit about the “Woodstock Spirit.” I know Santana is a bit of a spiritualist and probably digs that whole Woodstock Spirit thing, maaan. Well, the Woodstock Spirit was alive and well in that crowd on July 17. But it was also alive in the skies above Sullivan County.

During Santana’s entire show, a lightning storm raged in the sky to the north of Bethel. Thousands crowded the lawn sloping towards the stage, but only a few dozen of us sat on the opposite lawn, sloping towards the original site. We could hear the music loud and clear there, but we were watching a different light show. Once again, the elements combined at Bethel Woods for an amazing show, no matter which one you were watching.