3 Cuts On Santana Supernatural Legacy Edition!
February 17, 2010 Main, Uncategorized 12 Comments
Sony is commemorating the 10-year anniversary of Santana’s Supernatural by releasing a special Deluxe 2-CD edition of the album, with a lot of extra material including three more cuts involving Yers Truly. Cool!
That’s right – 10 years. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long since Carlos’ chart-busting, Grammy-sweeping comeback album came out. How does it hold up in retrospect? That depends who you ask, but I go to The Onion for most of my information, so let’s leave it at that.
But even if you burned out on the endless rotation of ‘Smooth’ on the radio, it did put some long-due attention on one of my musical superheroes, and it was a welcome surprise to see Supernatural beat out the sales of both ‘N Sync and Britney Spears in 2000 (for those of you under 30, they used to make you pay for music – like 16 bucks!).
I’m sure if I produced a Santana project on my own, it would sound something like Daniel Lanois and Tchad Blake remixing Abraxas, and it would sell about 12 copies (6 of those to me and my Mom). So no, Clive Davis’ concept of what makes the ultimate Santana record doesn’t vibrate at my frequency, but I’m proud to have been a small part of Carlos’ big moment. The song ‘Primavera,’ which KC Porter and I wrote for the album, came from a good place – paraphrasing the Bahá’í Writings for most of the lyrics – and has been praised as one of the more ‘old-school’ Santana tracks of recent years, so that’s cool too. And last but not least, being part of a mega-hit project helped me afford my first proper studio setup – I cannot lie. So thanks, Rob Thomas, wherever you are.
So a decade later, it turns out I have 3 cuts on the Deluxe version, in addition to the original ‘Primavera’:
The first song is an interesting story. When we were first working with Carlos, we had no concept whatsoever of the pop star collaborations that would come to define Supernatural. So basically we tried anything and everything that might work with Santana, including our own songs, covers, instrumentals, John Coltrane, you name it. The wildest card in the bunch was a cover of a song called ‘One Fine Morning,’ by the Canadian band Lighthouse, from back in the ’70s.
It’s actually the first song I ever remember hearing as a Canadian two-year-old. It was on the radio all the time, and I remember sitting and staring at that psychedelic album cover while the record played on the turntable. So when pressed to come up with some more ideas for songs to try out with Santana, I guess I went back to my roots… we tried recording a Santana-fied version of One Fine Morning, featuring some burning guitar work by Carlos and a killer performance by drummer James Keegan. The song never made it onto Supernatural, but the band did play it on the road and I even got to sing it with them once at the Greek Theater in LA. I thought that was the last we’d be hearing about ‘One Fine Morning,’ but lo & behold, it’s coming out on the Deluxe version, freshly mixed by Jon Rezin.
The second is a collaboration between Santana, Ozomatli, KC Porter, me and a few others, called ‘Olympic Festival.’ Carlos was interested in something that would sound good at a huge international stadium event with tons of people singing, like a global soccer chant. So we used that as an excuse to call up LA Latin funk collective Ozomatli, all of whose shows have that celebratory vibe. It was great to work with them for the first time, as well as the awesome Greg Bissonette on drums, and the song ended up on the soundtrack for the movie Girlfight with Michelle Rodriguez. And now it’s getting some more love on the Supernatural reissue.
The third is an alternate version of ‘Primavera’ with Puero Rican salsa singer Jerry Rivera. It sounds like Miami. This track made its first appearance on the ’Ceremony: Remixes and Rarities’ compilation back in 2003, and I forgot all about it until now.
And thus the Supernatural era comes to a close. It sold 27 gazillion records (give or take), the Last Huge Album of an era when major record companies roamed the earth. It brought Carlos back into the limelight, paid my rent for awhile and got me several free cappuccinos from my publisher. What more could you ask for?
