Santana, just like the first time

Playing music, says Carlos Santana, is like pashing a hot chick. "Do you remember what it felt like the first time you French-kissed a woman?" he asks, a tad impertinently, given that I scarcely know the man. "Everything is very pure, very virginal, very innocent and new. And you don't know how it's gonna go. This woman might slap your face or she might hug you closer. You're nervous, and incredibly excited. Your hands are getting sweaty but this kind of uncertainty is good. Making music should be like that."

It's a metaphor that begs to be extended, because back in the late 60s, when Santana was Mexico's answer to Jimi Hendrix, his guitar playing went way beyond such tentative first-date fumblings. At its best, it was more akin to the intemperate shagging of honeymooners: extended, inventive, overheated, borderline delirious. As a hungry young gunslinger backed by a dynamite band, Santana first found fame during the 1967 "summer of love" in San Francisco, blending Latin music, jazz, blues and rock in bold new ways and blowing many other bands of the era right off the stage. By 1969, he was playing in front of half a million people at Woodstock, despite having yet to release an album.

Sadly, such explosive energy wasn't to last. After an extended golden period in the 70s, Santana's guitar solos started to sound much alike during the 80s, and by the 90s, his albums struggled to generate as much heat as 10 minutes of Wednesday night lovemaking between a long-married couple. And it feels churlish to say this, given that he's just about to play here, but Santana's recent albums have been about as sexy as macaroni cheese. Ever since his huge-selling comeback album Supernatural in 1999, the formula has been the same: haul in endless guest stars, set them to work on generic chart-fodder songs, then embroider a few flashy lead guitar riffs on to the end of their vocal lines. Wait 12 months, then repeat.

But Santana retains a reputation as a spirited live performer. While he seems to have given up taking risks in the studio, he still tries to surprise himself each night on stage, heading out into uncharted territory in his solos, improvising like a jazz player and trusting that, with the help of his guardian angel, he will pull something magical out of the bag.

Now 63, Santana still sounds hugely excited about the music he's making, even though many critics don't share his enthusiasm. A case in point is last year's Guitar Heaven album. Santana believes it's among his best works, although most reviewers wondered aloud why the guitarist would want to record pointless covers of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, AC/DC, The Beatles, Hendrix and The Doors.

"If I woke up every day worrying about what other people might think of what I do, I'd never get out of bed," he says, his voice a husky whisper with a pronounced Mexican accent. "I wanted to cover these familiar songs because it was scary. Really! Everyone loves the originals, including me, but I think songs benefit by different interpretations, so I did my own versions. People can make of them what they will."

Santana, by his own admission, an incorrigible hippie. His speech is scattered with cosmic new age philosophising, and he calls me "man" as if I was a bearded brother from the Woodstock era. His thinking seems as sharp as a bowl of jelly, but he's friendly, and, when he talks about music, his love for what he does is palpable. He talks about the act of playing on stage with a sense of almost childlike wonder, as if what happens when he plugs in and plays is still mysterious to him: an inexplicable mixture of emotion and electricity and divine inspiration.

Music, it transpires, has always seemed magical to him. One of Santana's earliest memories, growing up in his home village of Autlan de Navarro in Mexico, was of his father having musical conversations with the creatures of the air. An accomplished mariachi violinist, Santana snr would sit outside and quite literally charm the birds down out of the trees. Little Carlos would watch in awe as his father sawed away with his bow, peeling off runs of squeaky little notes that soon had the birds flying down to answer him and hopping around his feet. Behold the supernatural power of music!

The unique ability of music to communicate across barriers of race, class, language and, in this case, species had a profound effect on Santana. He decided early on he would follow his father and become a musician himself, and now here he is, a seasoned veteran of the international touring circuit with sales of more than 90 million albums.

"I'm 63 now, and I'm still learning. My playing has gotten more soulful with age. I last played in New Zealand about three years ago and I think I'm a better player now than I was then. I play faster instead of slower, because I discovered that when you slow down your brain, your fingers work faster. Your conscious mind gets out of the way and your creativity flows. Really, genius energy comes from getting out of your own way. Fortunately, God gave us imagination and, with that imagination, you can channel purity and innocence, you know. You can be brave. The highest compliment for me is if someone comes to one of my shows then they go home and get rid of a lot of stuff in their closet, because my music has changed them so much these clothes don't suit them any more! The first time I heard Miles Davis, The Beatles, Hendrix or Cream, it changed me deeply. Great music inspires the listener to feel significant and meaningful and truly alive and inspires the fellow musician to feel humble."

Behind this cloak of amiable flakiness, Santana seems to have a pretty high opinion of himself. He name-drops shamelessly, thus situating his own name in the company of more gifted souls, and in the manner of many covertly arrogant men, he talks a great deal about situations making him "feel humble". And while he presents himself as being more spiritually evolved than most people, some of Santana's actions suggest otherwise.

In 2007, he was divorced by Deborah, his wife of 34 years and the mother of his three adult children, who claimed her husband had regularly been unfaithful to her. Santana publically apologised but tells me he has no regrets about any aspect of his life.

"None. Not really. Everything I've done in this life, good and bad, has made me the person I am today. To paint a masterpiece, you need all colours, not just the pretty colours like gold and silver. Sometimes you also need black and grey to create a masterpiece."

Santana remarried three months ago, to his touring drummer, Cindy Blackman. "Yes, and she's gonna come play with us in New Zealand so you guys can see what an incredible musician she is."

When they're not touring, the couple divide their time between homes in Maui, San Francisco and Las Vegas.

"I mainly live in Las Vegas, which people find surprising. It has this reputation as a very shallow show-biz place but that scene's really only a few blocks long. That's like me wandering around downtown Auckland and thinking I'd seen all of New Zealand. And playing so often in Las Vegas has been great. People stop me in the street there, so it's a place that makes me feel more present for my fans, and makes me feel humble, you know? And if I play a whole lot of dates there in a row, I do little things to change my mindset so the music stays fresh, like take a cold shower or sleep on the floor or read something different, to spark myself up in different ways. Same with making love. If it starts to always feel the same, you're doing something wrong."

Again with the sex metaphors. For a self-proclaimed hippy and spiritual seeker, Santana sure is a something of a horndog.

"Well, you know, as a hippy I'm in good company. Jesus was a hippy and The Beatles were hippies. One of the best things that happened in the 1960s was the consciousness revolution, where certain people rebelled against the government and conventional religion and so on. Without using guns themselves, the 1960s hippies use a flower against someone with a bayonet. The man who stood against the tanks in Tiananmen Square, he was a hippy. We need more hippies today to rebel against the wars happening all over the world. Hippy for me means someone who goes against popes and politics; they're rainbow warriors who fight without anger and without weapons."

On the internet, Santana says he makes music to "connect the molecules with the light", reckons the original 60s hippies were "reincarnated Native American Indians who wanted a different dimension of existence", and believes the rest of us are "angels who have traded our wings for feet".

In one particularly memorable interview, he suggests the best way to prevent rape, street violence and Columbine-style school shootouts is to play the music of spiritual musicians like himself in elevators and shopping malls: "When you're stuck in an elevator and you're ready to go postal and you hear `A Love Supreme' or `One Love' or `What's Going On' or `Blowing in the Wind' or `Imagine', you can't f------ do anything stupid any more."

Hmmm. But while Santana's musical crime prevention strategy probably needs a little more work, this self-described "space cadet" does have a sense of humour.

He laughs with a hearty chuckle when I suggest some of his ideas sound hopelessly flaky and he's a good sport when I ask him to tell me about his guardian angel, who goes by the excellent name of Metatron.

"I think everyone on this planet has many voices inside their heads. Most of these voices scream at you and tell you you're a liar and full of shit and you'll never amount to anything, but behind all that there's always one voice that reminds you that you are significant and meaningful and worthy of love.

"Some people think I am crazy but I don't think this is strange. Policemen have their own patron saint, St Michael, to protect them. The healing angel is Raphael, and travellers have St Christopher. Everyone has something they believe. Some people believe in Mickey Mouse or Santa Clause but I believe in Metatron, along with Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bob Marley. It's not a problem, man."

Areme-007.blogspot.com