A Quote by Carlos Santana
A lot of people said to me, 'Enough with the guest vocalists for a while. We want to hear the Mexican play the guitar!'
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I'm coming into places with some people who just want to hear what I did before, with some people who want to hear me with a band, but I am just at the moment sticking to my guns and saying, 'You know what? I want you just to hear this for a minute. I want it to be in the context of me and a guitar.'
I grew up across the street from, you know, the Villarias, which was a great Mexican family there. In fact, there was three houses right across the street from me. So, day and night, I listened to Mexican music, and I'm sure, you know, my guitar playing, singing, writing, whatever, has a lot of Mexican flavor there, but it comes natural.
I said this to my daughter, if you don't practice the guitar, when you get older you wouldn't be able to play it. It's that simple. If you want to play the guitar, you put a half hour in everyday, but you have to do it.
If I want to be moved by the track, I don't want it to be sequenced, I want it to be somebody playing the guitar or piano or a horn arrangement where you can hear the breath. You can almost smell the studio while listening to the music. For me, that's what moves me emotionally, that's what I came from. I think that's always going to work best for me.
I like playing at public schools. I like when there's more of a diverse audience. I'll play wherever people want to hear my music, and I'll be glad and grateful for the opportunity, but I'd rather not play for a bunch of white privileged kids. I'm not meaning that in a disrespectful way; you go where people want to hear your music. So if that's where people want to hear me play, I'm glad to play for them. But I'd rather play for an audience where half of them were not into it than one where all of them were pretending to be into it, for fear of being uncultured.
I'm Mexican, and we do a lot of singing, and it was my brother's guitar that I'd practice on, and he would say, 'Who's that playing my guitar?'
I have come to the conclusion - and I don't know why it took me so long, but nevertheless, I'm here now - that a lot of people tell me they don't get enough guitar on my albums. So I decided to do an album where the guitar would be the singer, playing the melody.
I never get tired of performing to people who want to hear me. Hell, that's my handshake to the world. I'm doing just what I've wanted to do since that day I was 15 and heard Lenny Breau play the guitar.
I don't play a lot of fancy guitar. I don't want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks.
I want to win a Grammy. I want to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. I want to be a musical guest on 'Saturday Night Live.' And I want to play arenas and have tons of people watching me.
At Pinetop I just studied music, and there was no pressure to look any certain way, and so being able to sing and play guitar was enough. But when I came out to L.A., there's a whole image that you put out there and people really feed off of that because of social media platforms. And sometimes someone will see a picture of me before they hear one of my songs. It's really important to have it all figured out so that you can portray what you want people to see.
What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar.
I used to have these reoccurring dreams that I played guitar, which I thought was so bizarre. It all sort of fit together at some point, and I said 'I want to play guitar.'
My dad played a little bit of piano and guitar, but not that professionally. I saw him play, and I said, 'I want to play. I want to try this instrument.'
I think if you really put your mind to something you can do it. Five and a half years ago I couldn't stand on stage and play guitar. I didn't have enough talent as a kid to play guitar. I started really late. I hired a guitar teacher when I was in Nashville and I applied myself and stayed focused.
I play guitar; you'll find me at home strumming 'Vincent' on the guitar. I also read a lot of poetry, and Shakespeare was my first love, which was why I got into acting. A lot of the fighters are intelligent!
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