Carlos Santana’s band had not released their debut album when they arrived at Woodstock. Nobody knew their name. Nobody had heard their music on the radio. Nobody had bought their record because there was no record to buy. They were there because Bill Graham, the most powerful concert promoter in rock music, the man who ran the Fillmore in San Francisco, had fought to get them on the bill.
He had gone to the festival organizers and made the case for a band that almost nobody had heard of. He had insisted. On Saturday, August 16th, 1969, Santana and his band performed at Woodstock. Also on Saturday, August 16th, 1969, Janis Joplin, the most famous female rock singer in America, the woman who had stopped the world at Monterey two years earlier, the voice that Pete Townshend would later call incredible even on an off night, the same day, the same field, the same 400,000 people, nobody watching everything. The story of what happened to Carlos Santana before his Woodstock set has become one of the most famous backstage stories in rock history. He was 22 years old. He had arrived at the festival and been told he would not go on until 8:00 in the evening. He had the afternoon. He found Jerry
Garcia. Garcia, who had a specific and long-standing relationship with psychedelic substances, shared what he described as his medicine. Santana has described it in interviews as most likely peyote, mescaline, ayahuasca, or mushrooms. The specific compound is not entirely clear.
The effect is documented precisely. At some point in the afternoon, Santana was called to the stage earlier than expected. The schedule had shifted. He needed to perform now. He was, by his own description, higher than an astronaut’s butt. He stood backstage looking at the stage, the largest stage he had ever seen, the largest crowd he had ever seen, and he understood that he was about to perform for 400,000 people while being unable to locate his own nose.
He said later, “It was like being inside a kaleidoscope.” He did what a person does in that situation, if that person has the specific combination of faith and commitment that Carlos Santana has always carried. He prayed, “God, I really believe in you. If you help me right now, I won’t poo my pants in front of everybody.” Read that sentence again.
“God, I really believe in you. If you help me right now, I won’t poo my pants in front of everybody.” He walked onto the stage. He picked up his guitar. He believed, somewhere in the part of his brain that was not entirely connected to consensus reality, that the guitar was a serpent.
That the thing he was holding was a live snake that he needed to control. He controlled it. The set that Santana and his band played at Woodstock on August 16th, 1969, is considered one of the greatest live performances in the history of rock music. It culminated in Soul Sacrifice, a 3 and 1/2-minute drum solo by the 19-year-old Michael Shrieve, one of the most extraordinary percussion performances ever captured on film, with Santana’s guitar leading into it and out of it with a force that nobody in that crowd had heard before. The 400,000 people in the field responded to something they had not heard before, the Latin rhythms, the specific energy, the combination of blues guitar and Afro-Cuban percussion that was completely unlike anything else on that stage all weekend. He had arrived as nobody. He left as someone. Janis Joplin
performed later that night, or rather early the next morning. The schedule had been stretched by rain and delays until the lineup that was supposed to be Saturday evening was running through Sunday morning. She performed around 2:00 in the morning. She was not at her best that night.
She had been waiting for hours, and Pete Townshend would later describe what he saw in the specific honest language he brought to everything. She had consumed a considerable amount of booze and heroin during the wait. But even Janis on an off night was incredible. The two performances, Santana’s in the late afternoon or evening, Janis’s in the early morning, were separated by a few hours and a few thousand feet of festival ground.
Both of them were transforming American music. Santana by bringing Latin rhythms and Afro-Cuban percussion into rock and roll, creating something that nobody had heard before, something that had no existing category. Janis by taking the black American blues tradition and singing from inside the wound, giving rock music a quality of exposed feeling that it had not previously contained.
Different roads, the same destination. Making music that was completely original by going deeply into where they came from. After Woodstock, the trajectories diverged. The Woodstock documentary was released in 1970. Santana’s Soul Sacrifice was in it. The footage of him playing as a nobody, guitar like a serpent, prayer in his heart.
The largest crowd he had ever seen responding to something they had never heard appeared on movie screens and changed his career. Janis Joplin cut herself from the documentary. She watched the footage and was unhappy with her performance. An off night, the wait, the condition she was in. She said no. The definitive Woodstock documentary does not contain Janis Joplin. Santana is in it, she is not.
He got the film, she got to decide for herself. Janis Joplin died on October 4th, 1970. She was 27 years old. Carlos Santana went on. His debut album had come out 1 week after Woodstock and gone to number four on the Billboard charts. The exposure from the documentary made him one of the most famous guitarists in the world.
He had a career that lasted 55 years and is still going. In 2009, the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, Carlos Santana returned to the festival grounds in Bethel, New York. He performed for the first time on those grounds since 1969. He was 61 years old. Halfway through the show, he paused. He said, “Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Sly Stone, all of us who were here remember the magic.
Only love can conquer hate. This is Woodstock. This is the place where miracles can happen. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Sly Stone.” He named the dead. He named Janis Joplin, who had performed on the same day as him at the same festival and who had been gone for 39 years. Here is the specific thing about Carlos Santana and Janis Joplin at Woodstock.
They were not close. There is no documented deep friendship or meaningful personal connection. They were two musicians at the same festival, on the same day, in the same field, but the day they shared was the most important day of both their careers. In different ways, with different consequences, Santana arrived as nobody and left as someone.
It was the beginning of everything. Janis was already everything. It was one stop on a road that would end 14 months later. He prayed not to disgrace himself. She performed in the condition she was in. He went on for 55 more years. She had 14 months. And 40 years later, standing on the same ground, he said her name.
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Sly Stone, only love can conquer hate. This is the place where miracles can happen. Here is what this story asks you. What was the day that changed everything for you? The day you showed up not knowing if you could do it and did it. And who else was on that same field living their own version of the same day on a completely different trajectory? Carlos Santana prayed not to poo his pants in front of 400,000 people and instead changed his life.
Janis Joplin walked onto the same stage a few hours later and showed him what everything looked like. Both of them were there. The same field. The same night. He still says her name. Subscribe. The next story goes somewhere nobody has taken you before.
