Santana w/ Neal Schon

General Music Discussion
#1

Early 70s Santana is probably my favorite pre shred non metal band of all time. I grew up with my dad having a copy of the greatest hits album (the one with the black guy holding the dove on the cover) and a very worn copy of Abraxas on tape that I wore out eventually. I’ve been a fan since and it’s probably the band that really informed my harmonic ear towards the more Latin and exotic sounding scales and harmonies.

Neal Schon joined the band in 1971 and left in 1972 after the recording of the at the time panned experimental jazz fusion Caravanserai album.
I was unaware of any footage from this time of Neal playing with Santana. I finally stumbled across footage I thought didn’t exist. Neal Schon in his late teens playing with Santana in the early 70s.
Here they do their rendition of Joe Zawinul’s masterpiece “In A Silent Way” made famous by Miles Davis.

And here’s what is in my opinion one of Santana’s greatest instrumentals. “Incident at Neshabur”. Carlos would stretch the form into a 10+ minute jazz fusion piece in coming years so this is probably one of the last times it resembled it’s form from Abraxas

Anyone know if this full concert is available on physical media? Seems to be from the concerts that closed Filmore West. Gregg Rolie is underrated on the keys massively. I never hear him in convos with the likes of Wakemen, Emerson, and Banks but he deserves to be there just as much.

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#2

I just wanted to add that last year I saw Journey when they came through Austin. Greg Rolie lives in the area, so after they finished the regular Journey set Greg came up and they did a Santana set. :slight_smile: The venue turned the lights on as though the show was over, and Neal mentioned “we are just playing for ourselves now, but you are welcome to hang out and watch.”

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#3

The ‘Santana III’ era is my favorite era of Santana. The audio of the live performances in the video clips are on the Expanded Edition of ‘Santana III’ that came out in the late 90s or early 2000s.

Joe Zawinul indeed wrote “In a Silent Way” and the original recorded version of that song is from the Miles Davis album of the same name which Joe and John McLaughlin play on.

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#4

As much as I like later 70s jazzy Santana (Caravanserai - Moonflower are criminally slept on imo especially Welcome and Borboletta) the songs from debut though III never sounded quite as good without Gregg’s bluesy crooning.

If this had come out anytime aside from the late 90s it wouldn’t be as criminally overlooked as it is.

I was joking with a friend that Chick Corea on the vocal cuts of Return to Forever’s debut kind of invented the City Pop genre like a decade before the Japanese.
Jazzy keyboard led sound: check
mellow female vocals: check

This genre famous in the 80s has a had a recent resurgence due to the internet’s obsession with everything that has a vaguely 80s a e s t h e t i c. Flora Purim on Welcome isn’t far off from that sound in 1973.

I think these albums would have done much better if the R&B and rock charts weren’t so cordoned off to one another in the 70s. The vocal cuts on the post III Santana albums are extremely under appreciated imo.

When McLaughlin comes in on here it’s awesome, and his tone is so identifiable you know it’s him.

Another favorite from the post III era

And don’t get me started on what an absolute masterpiece Lotus (and Caravanserai) are. If CBS had released Lotus outside of Japan in the 70s it would stand toe to toe with The Dead’s Europe '72

Gregg’s last vocal cut with the band (prior to Santana IV) and the way the tracks on this album flow into one another is simply sublime.

I’m still immensely happy that (most) of the band was still with us to do the reunion almost 50 years later.

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#5

Santana is a legend. Everybody in Latin America loves his music, and playing Europa and Samba Pa’ Ti is the perfect introduction to guitar-oriented instrumental music…and they also served as a great argument for having your parents buy you an electric guitar since it showed them the instrument is not only used for “the devil’s music” LOL.

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