Carlos Santana: from the streets of Tijuana to eight Grammys in one night | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

CARLOS SANTANA’s guitar is easy to pick. One note and you know it’s him. His own site calls it one of the best-known signatures in music.

He got there by mixing things that weren’t meant to go together: the Latin music he grew up with, rock, blues and jazz. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame credits the band with exactly that blend.

And he has kept at it for six decades. His official site says he has had a top 10 album in each of them. “I don’t like to coast,” he said in 2023.

Early life and training

He was born in 1947 in Autlán de Navarro, in Jalisco, Mexico. His father, José, was a mariachi violinist, and he taught his son the violin.

Around 1955 the family moved to Tijuana. Carlos played violin on the streets there for tips to help his father with the rent, and at about eight he moved over to guitar.

He listened to B.B. King, Who’s Who number 2, Ray Charles, Little Richard, John Lee Hooker and Tito Puente. In the 1960s the family moved again, to San Francisco, and in 1966 he formed his first band there.

Career chapters

1. 1947Born in Autlán de Navarro
2. 1966First band in San Francisco
3. 1969Woodstock
4. 1970Abraxas, US number 1
5. 1998Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with Santana
6. 1999Supernatural
7. 2000Eight Grammys in one night
8. 2013Kennedy Center Honors
9. 2026Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award

San Francisco and Woodstock 1966 to 1971

Bill Graham managed the band, and he got them onto the bill at Woodstock. Santana calls him his “first archangel”.

They played on Saturday 16 August 1969, the festival’s second day, before their first album was even out. Then Abraxas, in 1970, and Santana III, in 1971, both went to number 1 in the US.

Supernatural 1998 to 2000

The band went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. A year later came Supernatural, which is RIAA Diamond.

At the Grammys on 23 February 2000 it won Santana eight awards in one night, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for Smooth, with Rob Thomas singing. Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3 played on The Calling, which won Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Guinness lists the eight as a record for a group.

Guests and honours 2004 to 2023

In 2004 the Latin Recording Academy named him Person of the Year, and Steve Vai, Who’s Who number 30 played at the tribute.

All That I Am, in 2005, debuted at number 2 in the US. The guests included Kirk Hammett, Who’s Who number 10, Steven Tyler, Who’s Who number 23 in · Highway to Hell (story coming soon) and Big Boi, Who’s Who number 26 in · Ultimate Hip Hop Reunion (story coming soon). Guitar Heaven, in 2010, had Nas, Who’s Who number 7 in · Ultimate Hip Hop Reunion (story coming soon) on it.

In 2013 he received the Kennedy Center Honors, the same year as Billy Joel, Who’s Who number 9 in · The Ultimate Reunion (story coming soon). A documentary, Carlos, premiered at Tribeca in June 2023.

Still on the road 2026

In January 2026 he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, alongside Cher, Who’s Who number 8 in · The Ultimate Reunion (story coming soon), Chaka Khan, Paul Simon, Fela Kuti and Whitney Houston.

He played a residency at House of Blues in Las Vegas and the Oneness Tour with the Doobie Brothers from June to August. In May he released Mi Gran Amor with Becky G, and in September he announced 2027 residency dates.

Craft, sound and style

The sound is the thing. The Rock Hall talks about the band’s mix of jazz, rock and Latin music, and his own words put feeling first: “Music without emotion, passion or feelings is just clever noise.”

From the Woodstock SG to the Les Paul

At Woodstock in August 1969 he played a red Gibson SG. It wouldn’t stay in tune, he told Guitar Player, “so I destroyed it”. His amp that day was a Gallien-Krueger solid-state, which he says “sounded horrible”.

In 1970 he bought a Gibson Les Paul with a refinished maple top at Prune Music in San Francisco. He calls it “my main workhorse for at least seven albums”, and it’s the guitar on Abraxas, Black Magic Woman and Oye Como Va included, then Santana III and Caravanserai. From Abraxas on he played through what he calls “double Twins”.

The Yamaha SG-2000

In the mid-1970s Yamaha let him try an early model, the SG-175. Guitar Player says he found it a little light, without enough sustain. So he asked for a metal block under the bridge. The SG-2000 came out in 1976, after nearly two years of work, with a brass sustain block where he wanted it, a neck-through body of mahogany and maple, an ebony board, jumbo frets and Alnico V humbuckers. In 1978 he said it was like hitting a grand piano. Vintage Guitar says he owned three, in green, black and blue, and he played it from 1977 until he moved to PRS some time after 1982. It’s on Moonflower, Inner Secrets, Zebop! and Marathon.

PRS

His tech, Ed Adair, told Vintage Guitar that the first PRS prototype was his ”#1 guitar for years and years”. By Supernatural in 1999 he was on PRS for good. On the 2014 tour, Premier Guitar found his signature PRS guitars, “Salmon” and “Son of Salmon”, plus a Toru Nittono Jazz Electric Nylon. His 2022 gear list has a gold leaf PRS Single Cut with no tremolo as the main guitar.

He’s not a one-guitar man, though. Vintage Guitar says he once played a whole Madison Square Garden show on a 1963 Olympic White Fender Stratocaster.

Mesa/Boogie, Dumbles and the chain

He told Vintage Guitar he has played Mesa/Boogie “since ’72”, along with two Dumbles, an Overdrive Special and a Steel String Singer. In 2014 Adair showed Premier Guitar the rig: his original snakeskin-covered 100-watt Mesa/Boogie, two Dumble Overdrive Reverbs and two Bludotone heads, into paisley PRS 4x12 cabinets loaded with Celestions. The chain ran from 50 feet of Canare cable into a Pete Cornish line driver, a Real McCoy wah built by Geoffrey Teese, a Cornish splitter, two John Suhr amp selectors and a TC Electronic delay in the Bludotone loops.

It was Miles Davis who told him to get a wah, he told Premier Guitar in 2022. In the studio he wants four or five microphones on the amp, out in the room. His strings in 2022 were PRS Signature .0095 to .044, and his picks are red 3 mm V-Picks.

Feedback and one note

“Feedback is good for you,” he told Premier Guitar. The good kind is the one he gets from the right spot between the pickups and the speakers. Feedback from a pedal is “bad feedback”. The tone has to go “straight from my fingers to the amplifier”, he told Guitar Player in 2023.

The playing on the early records is blues lead over Latin rhythms, and Mixdown points to how he borrows lines from other instruments, like the flute line on Oye Como Va. He has said he, Mike Bloomfield and Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3 were “all disciples of B.B. King, Who’s Who number 2”, until he found Gábor Szabó and Wes Montgomery. Hearing them was “like discovering a universe, a galaxy,” he told WFYI in 2024.

Stories people still tell

1. Before the album.

   Santana played Woodstock on 16 August 1969, and their first album came out days later. A lot of people heard them there first.

2. Eight, not nine.

   Supernatural won nine Grammys, but the ninth, Song of the Year for Smooth, went to its writers, Itaal Shur and Rob Thomas. Santana’s own count for the night is eight.

3. His wife on drums.

   He’s married to the drummer Cindy Blackman Santana, who records and tours with him. Her 2026 song The Message Is Love features Carlos, with a spoken introduction by Snoop Dogg, Who’s Who number 3 in · Ultimate Hip Hop Reunion (story coming soon).

4. Best lover.

   “My guitar is my best lover, ever,” he told the Associated Press in 2023.

Legacy

Through the Milagro Foundation, which he set up with his family in 1998, he has given more than $8 million in grants, by his site’s count. His site also says he has sold more than 100 million records.