Columbia 30595
Producer: Santana
Track listing: Batuka / No One to Depend On / Taboo / Toussaint L’Overture / Everybody’s Everything / Guajira /Jungle Strut / Everything’s Coming Our Way / Para Los Rumberos
November 13, 1971
5 weeks
The success of Abraxas brought changes for Santana. Most notably, Carlos Santana opted to add a second guitarist, hiring on Neal Schon, who was being hailed by San Francisco locals as “the Eric Clapton of the Bay Area.” Clapton himself had tried to recruit Schon for Derek and the Dominos, but Schon chose Santana.
Says Santana, “I heard a duet sound, like on ‘Jungle Strut.’ I wanted two guitars synchronized, like the Allman Brothers.” Yet the new personnel failed to defuse tensions brewing in the band. “We would fight like cats and dogs to create that chemistry. You could hear us cussing at each other between takes,” he says. Yet while the members of Santana were having trouble relating to each other, making it difficult to work as a group, “the chemistry was still there,” Santana says.
“Most bands, with the exception of the Rolling Stones or the Grateful Dead, cannot stay together after the first two or three albums,” he adds. “Some people are not equipped to deal with success and all of a sudden they become unreliable or inconsistent.”
While Santana was having personnel problems, the 1971 self-titled album was a reunion of sorts, as several associates, including percussionist Coke Escovedo, were featured. Escovedo temporarily replaced Chepito Areas, who was recovering from a brain aneurysm. He co-wrote the album’s “No One to Depend On” with Santana percussionist Michael P.R. Carabello.
Originally, Santana recorded what was set to be the group’s third album with engineer Eddie Kramer. “We cut some tracks live at Hammersmith Odeon and we also went into Trident Studios in London, but it didn’t work out,” Santana says. “We wanted to work with Eddie, because he worked with Jimi Hendrix, but it just wasn’t our sound.”
Instead, the band returned to San Francisco and recorded the album at Columbia Studios with engineer Glen Kolotkin. Upon its release, the album was dubbed simply Santana, like the band’s 1969 debut album. For convenience’s sake, some referred to it as Santana III, since it was the band’s third album.
With Santana still basking in the success of Abraxas, the third album entered the Top LP’s chart at number 13 on October 16, 1971. A week later, it climbed to number four, where it stayed for two weeks. On November 6, it hit number two, before reaching the summit a week later.
The album spawned two singles. “Everybody’s Everything” reached number 12 in December 1971, while “No One to Depend On” stalled at number 36 in March 1972.
But 1971’s Santana would be the final album released by that incarnation of the band and the last Santana album to top the charts until Santana’s Supernatural comeback in 1999. Following release of Santana’s third album, keyboardist Gregg Rolie and Schon left the group and eventually formed Journey. “We all knew it was becoming disjointed and we had to split,” says Santana. “We disintegrated.”
THE TOP FIVE
Week of November 13, 1971
1. Santana, Santana
2. Shaft, Isaac Hayes
3. Every Picture Tells a Story, Rod Stewart
4. Imagine, John Lennon
5. Teaser & the Firecat, Cat Stevens