The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light by Carlos Santana Page B

grabbed the guitar. It all fit with the music he played and the way his guitar sounded. It made a huge impression on this little Mexican kid—I was even wondering what kind of water he was drinking.
    But there was a price to pay to be around Javier. Two of the TJs didn’t like me and would try to shoo me away, punch me in the stomach, and pull my hair and my ears, just being bully assholes, and Javier did nothing to stop it. The worst was a saxophone player named Brachi. But he wasn’t going to stop me. In my thirteen-year-old mind, getting my ass kicked by this bully was worth it in order to get the goods. I was the youngest kid there with these older guys. One day I came home all red-eyed from crying, and my mom told Javier that Carlos had an older brother who would kick their asses if the mistreatment didn’t stop. It stopped. I heard years later they found Brachi’s body somewhere on the outskirts of Tijuana—that he made the wrong deal with the wrong people.
    Javier’s bass player was nice—he looked like Jughead in the Archie comics—and the guy could really play the instrument, and he turned me on to Jimmy Reed. I remember going to his place, where he had a room with a bed, a dirt floor, and a phonograph. He would smoke a joint, lie on the bed, and put on a Jimmy Reed record, and that voice and harmonica had all the elegance and emotion of Duke Ellington’s music as far as I was concerned. I still feel that way.
    The second thing that happened after I heard Javier in the park was that my mom immediately sent a letter to my dad telling him that Carlos found this music that he loves, that he’s following around this musician like a puppy dog, and he wants to learn electric guitar. She asked him to get one for me if he could afford it. I forget if he brought it with him the next time he got back to Tijuana or if he had someone else bring it. It was a big, fat Gibson—a beat-up hollow-body like the ones the jazz guys would play, black with a little yellow in it. I didn’t have a clue what to do. First thing I did was to go out and buy strings for it—nylon strings!
    I learned fast after that—that you need steel strings, and that you have to play through an amplifier. I learned what a pickup was. My ears were already trained from playing violin, and I knew how to hold strings against a neck, but this was totally different. Different feel on my fingers; different tuning. I learned a few chords from watching Javier, but it was mostly my dad at the start—and listening to records and the radio, just trying to pick up what I could.
    The thing is, I hung out with Javier, but Javier was not really a teacher. It’s been reported that he gave me lessons, but he was not someone who would say, “No; you’re doing that wrong. Play with this finger here and that finger there.” He let me hang around, he turned me on to different songs and the people I needed to know: B. B. King, Ray Charles. He had the albums, and he had the knowledge. But when it came to guitar technique, what he showed me mostly was his back. Really—that’s how he would play, so I couldn’t see what his hands were doing.
    Of course years later I found out that making someone learn on his own is a big part of the blues tradition. You don’t want to make it too easy or too accessible. Even my future father-in-law, Saunders King, one of the best R & B guitarists of his generation, didn’t like to show me anything. My chops are my chops—go get your own!
    I have been supportive of Javier and have acknowledged him accordingly. He has been a guest in my house. We have hung out together and played together—like when we jammed in Tijuana in 1993. I presented him with a Boogie amplifier and gave him one of my guitars. He now plays a Paul Reed Smith.
    But I feel like I have to be careful now not to do things that will perpetuate the idea that some sort of debt is still unpaid. I owe Javier gratitude for turning me on to the electric guitar but not