Carlos Santana names his five favourite heavy bands
Carlos Santana isn’t always the first person who comes to mind regarding the hardest guitar players in the world. Though the man is responsible for bringing some of the most eclectic sounds of the 1960s to the forefront, he has always remained a fan of all stripes of music, either the tunes that he heard growing up or the down-and-dirty blues that earned him his rock and roll chops. Throughout his time in the spotlight, Santana has also had a place in his heart for the heavier stuff.
When talking to Guitar World, Santana expressed his desire to play something in the vein of heavier acts at some point, explaining: “I would love to do an album that’s just heavy metal. Because I love AC/DC, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Jimi Hendrix”. As a child of the ’60s, Santana was always drawn to the allure of Hendrix, going from playing soft-spoken songs like ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ to making his guitar cry out in agony on songs like ‘Machine Gun’.
Santana’s love for Metallica stemmed from his relationship with guitar Kirk Hammett, who had guested on his latest album on the song ‘American For Sale’. When talking about Hammett, Santana recalled, “Kirk Hammett and I are brothers, we go back. Who isn’t a Metallica fan, you know?”. Hammett and Santana also share a mutual love for the Peter Green-fronted Fleetwood Mac, who Santana would call “heavy metal before heavy metal”.
As for his love for the infamous Aussies AC/DC, Santana was always struck by Angus Young’s attention to rhythm guitar playing, explaining to Music Radar, “The grooves that they put down are phenomenal. You know, a lot of what they do comes from Chuck Berry. The rhythm guitarist, he’s holding the whole thing together. To me, the rhythm guitar is the real muscle of any band.”
For any fan of the early days of metal, though, Cream and Led Zeppelin are always part of the conversation. Whereas acts like The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds were playing straight-ahead blues on a majority of their albums, both Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page brought a certain swagger into rock and roll, with Santana describing songs like ‘Whole Lotta Love’ as “hip-hop from the ghetto”.
Then again, the best way to see how these bands have rubbed off on Santana is to see him in action. From the minute he kicks off the solos on albums like Supernatural, Santana is tapping into every heavy genre he has ever known, infusing as much soul into the mix as thunderous heavy metal.
As the genre started to become more prevalent, Santana would find himself rubbing elbows with some of his idols as well, playing alongside Clapton a handful of times and even doing his own version of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ will fellow Zeppelin fan Chris Cornell taking the place of Robert Plant’s wail.
The influence doesn’t just stop there, with Santana’s soulful playing going on to influence artists like Prince with the way he approached the instrument. Santana might have brought the sounds of his home to the world of rock, but he still knows how to throw down with some of the heaviest bands in the world when he wants to.
Carlos Santana’s favourite heavy rock acts:
- AC/DC
- Metallica
- Led Zeppelin
- Cream
- Jimi Hendrix
