“People think I’m crazy”: How Santana collaborated with Angel Metatron and the Virgin of Guadalupe
Artistic inspiration can strike at any moment and often comes in very unexpected forms. This is certainly true for Carlos Santana, who has been creating mind-bending guitar riffs since 1966, regularly drawing from influences that often go untouched within the world of rock and roll. Namely, the Latin psychedelic rock master often looks to the world of spiritualism and the supernatural to spur on his wonderfully weird musical creations. It is partly this broad range of influences that have made Santana such a mainstay of 20th-century rock music.
Bursting onto the American rock scene during the counterculture age of the late 1960s, Santana found a natural home among the musical experimentalism of the era. Fueled largely by psychedelic substances, and an all-encompassing love of music, the guitarist fit right into the sonic landscape of 1960s San Francisco, alongside legendary artists like The Grateful Dead or even Jefferson Airplane. His position as a stalwart of the counterculture music scene was cemented when Santana performed at Woodstock in 1969, but the Mexican guitarist proved himself to have much more staying power than many artists on the bill.
Although Santana might have reached his commercial and musical peak with the release of Abraxas in 1970, that album certainly was not the end of Santana’s musical exploits. To date, the Latin rock band has unleashed 26 studio albums, each providing a unique and interesting moment in Santana’s musical development.
Mainstream success has never been high on Santana’s list of aims, but the guitarist has amassed a dedicated cult following over the years and even regained some commercial appeal with the release of Supernatural in 1999.
Representing something of a renaissance for Santana, the 1999 album shot to the very top of the album charts both in the UK and USA. It was the songwriter’s most successful effort since Santana III all the way back in 1971, and, according to Santana, a lot of that success comes down to the influence of spiritualism and the supernatural. Back in 2011, he told San Antonio Current that the success of Supernatural “was something God wanted.”
Santana has always been influenced by God, but, specifically, the guitarist looked to the angel Metatron and the Virgin Mary for inspiration on Supernatural. “A lot of people think I’m crazy, but I don’t care,” he shared, explaining, “They say, ‘You say you speak to Metatron and the Virgin of Guadalupe, how can you say that?’ And I say, ‘How can you believe in God and not be able to speak with Him? You speak to Him, but He can’t speak to you? What kind of relationship is that? That’s fantasy.’”
Continuing in his spiritual manifesto, the psych guitar master decreed, “Each person, you and I, have a lot of voices, like monkeys yelling, that make us criticise, be afraid, and all that. But we also have another voice, more calm, lower, but more clear than all those monkeys.” He concluded, “That’s the voice I’ve followed from an early age, and that’s why I am who I am and I am where I am.”
Whether or not listeners could hear the influence of these biblical figures on the final cut of the 1999 Santana album is up for interpretation. Nevertheless, it sounds unlikely that the album would ever have been created – never mind achieving the commercial heights that it did – without this divine inspiration thrust upon Santana. Some artists take their inspiration from literature, or film, whereas Carlos Santana takes his from the heavens.
