It was not the feeling that I thought I would have when I had a chance to meet with other big guitar players. I was nervous and thought they would think poorly about him, but instead of a long conversation. The guitarist Jerry Garcia decided that he wanted to help Carlos in his own way of improving his music. He taught me how to play and improve Latin rhythm and many other things to improve on like his tone of voice when I wanted to sing. Another famous guitar player is Peter Green that became a key strand in the Latin rhythm and how I play today. When I made my own band “Santana”. The way I play now is because of two blues guitarists T-Bone Walker and B.B. King.
When I first started playing in the band we were nervous with each other, but after the first concert we did, it was like we were all best friends. After that we never separated. We did songs with famous rappers and singers, one of those people was Rob thomas. My band is known as a blues band because of the style and the way and sound that we make when we are playing. The way that I played when I was a solo artist, people say that you could tell that it was me playing from me playing one note. Other famous musicians that I talk to always compare me to different musicians, but always say that “Carlos played prettier”. When me and my band play it’s always “pretty” as people would call it and famous singers want to collaborate all the time and concerts are always ready. Before concerts most musicians do drugs or alcohol, but I never did anything like now, but before when I was young I always did drugs in alcohol before big concerts because performing in big crowds constantly is a lot to take in and so musicians result in drugs which isn’t good for them.
When I first started doing concerts I did alcohol and drugs, but when I turned 25 I stopped which has helped me a lot today, so I can do a lot more things without having any sort of stamina issue. So I can do sports and do a lot more physical activities. Instruments like a guitar can take up a lot of energy because with all the strumming I have to do sometimes it hurts your fingers and tires out your arm, so most artists are worn out from playing a couple songs because of the drugs and alcohol affecting your body. Going all over America can also be really tiring also because certain places you need to go and lots of people you have to see in only a couple of days which can be frightening and if you mess up your part you are going to embrace yourself with comments about how you messed up in that one part, so that's why musicians take drugs so they don’t get that feeling about messing up. It was what everyone was doing and my band got into doing drugs. After I realized that it wouldn’t help me in the future I said to myself “ I am going to take better care of myself for the future.” When I stopped myself from doing drugs I encouraged my band to do the same and after a day or two they committed themselves to stop and we performed a lot better in our concerts and did more songs at a time. I remember one time when I hallucinated during one of my concerts, I can’t really explain it, but I had to take a small break right after the song. My friends say that “We could see him from the side of my eye wobbling and tripping about falling off the stage.” Until this day I am wondering what I saw during the concert because if it was that bad to where I was about to fall off the stage I want to know what happened during the concert and what had happened. Not to mention this was when I stopped doing drugs, it probably happened because I was in the sun for too long and I got tired, but it would be cool if I could see what happened and what it was that I saw. I say to myself every now and then “What if it was what predicted my future”.