The Gregg Rolie Interview

Singer/keyboardist Gregg Rolie is the co-founder of two international super groups: Santana and Journey. As a member of Santana, he played the Fillmore and Woodstock, and sang classic hits like “Black Magic Woman,” “Evil Ways,” “No One To Depend On,” “Everybody's Everything” and “Oye Como Va.”

He left Santana in 1972 with the intention of ditching the music business for good. Then guitarist Neal Schon called about starting a new group, and before he knew it, Rolie was back in the game as a member of Journey.

Once Journey achieved multiplatinum success in the 80s, Rolie decided it was time to move on once again. He returned briefly to the Santana fold before going on hiatus to start a family. Rolie eventually came back to music, working on various one-off projects before establishing a group of his own.

Today, the Gregg Rolie Band plays between 40 and 50 dates a year. It’s a no-pressure situation for the musician, who presently lives and thrives in the casual, slow pace of Austin, Texas. As he prepares to release his very first concert DVD, Rolie shared his experiences with us for the intimate interview that follows.

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Tell me a little about the upcoming Sturgis Rally Concert DVD?

It’s about an hour. We were slotted for an hour and I’m known to be pretty good with it at this point in my career. If you need an hour, I can play an hour. It covers the material from Santana that I did with (Michael) Carabello and the original band. It covers Santana from the first three albums, as well as new material that is unreleased and also material from the Roots CD I put out in late 2001.

So you didn’t do any Journey songs?

No. The band has timbales and congos, and that doesn’t really work (laughs). I basically went back to the roots of where I started. When I sit down and play the piano, that’s the kind of the music that comes out. That’s the way it happens. So I just went to whatever was comfortable. That’s what I was weaned on, so that’s where I went.

Who’s playing with you?

Mike Carabello plays with me and he’s the original congo player (of Santana). The timbale player is Adrian Adreas who is Chepito’s son (editor’s note: Chepito José Areas is Santana’s original timbale player). Alphonso Johnson played bass with Santana actually longer than I did after I left. I was there for about five years and I think he played for about six, so Al’s played the Santana stuff as well.

I’ll just tell you the rest of the lineup. Let Ron Wikso played with me in the Storm and has played with many, many people as well. I’ve known him for 15 years. Actually, he’s kind of the instigator of the whole thing because I was in a hammock and he kind of dragged me out of it. He’s the drummer. The keyboard played is Wally Minko. He played with Jean-Luc Ponty and Tom Jones and a host of others. He’s very much like Alphonso — the list is so extreme and we don’t have time. The guitar player is Kurt Griffey, who’s virtually unknown to people, but is a shredder. He’s a phenomenal player. He plays all the signature lines that he needs to play, and then takes it to where he wants to, and it does not miss at all. This is the Gregg Rolie Band.

And how about the songs? Are you playing things like “Black Magic Woman” and “Oye Como Va”?

Yeah, and “No One To Depend On,” “Jingo,” “Evil Ways” — all of those and the obscure songs that we do totally differently. It got arranged by the band Abraxas Pool that I was in with guitarist Neal Schon and all the original members of Santana minus David Brown (the original Santana bassist who passed away in 2000). Carlos wasn’t in it, David Brown wasn’t in it, but it was all the other players. We did this short little stint, and one of the songs we put together was “As The Years Go Passing By,” which is an Albert King song. So we’re doing that arrangement and it ends up being 10, 15 minutes with a lot of playing going on.

You also appeared on The Legends Of Latin Music. Can you tell me about that?

It’s a PBS special. It was supposed to come out in March, but I just got word that it won’t be out until June. Trini Lopez was the host. It was really a PBS fundraiser for PBS, and this was one of the things they do to do it. At least that’s what I was told, so I hope I’m right (laughs). We had El Chicano play as well and Tierra. It was a night of Latin music.

Was Carlos Santana there too?

No, this was with my band.

But you played Santana songs?

Oh sure. “Black Magic Woman,” which is what everyone expected. We did “Soul Sacrifice” as well. We actually did a new song too.

I understand you’ll be participating in a panel at SXSW in Austin, discussing Woodstock.

I was talking to Mike Shrieve (original drummer for Santana) about this. I guess I’ll have to make up some stories because I don’t remember anything (laughs). It’s supposed to be with Michael Lang, the guy who put it on, and Stu Cook from Creedence. It’s a panel for people to tell stories, so like I said, I’m gonna make up some really good ones. There’s gonna be people ruined all over (laughs).

Does it seem like 40 years?

No. If I go back and look at the pictures, yes. My life has gone pretty quick since then.

I know there were a lot of problems at Woodstock, but the clip of Santana playing “Soul Sacrifice” from the film is definitely a highlight.

Interestingly enough, we had our own problems. There were tuning problems because it was outside. The instruments back then didn’t have the tuning heads they do now that lock in. All the technology that’s going on is much more advanced, so you don’t end up with quite the same problems.

But it really came together on “Soul Sacrifice.” The band played well and it was energetic. We got put in the middle of that movie. If you were at Woodstock and in that movie, you had a career. And that’s pretty much what happened. It just kick-started the whole thing internationally. Our reputation preceded us playing Woodstock. We’d never been on the East coast, and that was our first trip. We played a couple of gigs out there. People knew of the band from San Francisco because that was the place. It would be like what Seattle was in the 90s.

It was in San Francisco where you and Carlos Santana first met, right?

I actually met Carlos in a tomato patch (laughs). What happened was a friend of mine saw Carlos play at the Fillmore on a Tuesday night, which was “locals” night. Bill Graham would put on local bands who could just come in there and play. So he saw him play, and he came and told me about him and decided he’d go find him. So he went into San Francisco — I lived in Palo Alto, which is 30 miles south. So he went and found him, working at a Tic-Toc’s hamburger place, and invited him to come down and jam. He drove him back down to Mountain View and we played at some house.

Of course, marijuana was a very happening substance back then, and we were doing all those things. When the noise got to be too much for the neighbors and the police started showing up, I turned to Carlos and said, “We’d better get out of here.” All I saw was his back. He was about 20 yards down the road, very hip to everything, running to hide in a tomato patch. And I ran after him, and we sat there until the cops went away. And that’s how I met him.

So you two form a band and create this whole new, vibrant Latin rock sound. Was there a conscious effort to create this or did it evolve organically?

It just evolved. We started out as kind of blues players, but we had congos in it. And there was some jazz involved and there were just different colors. We just played what we played. I liked Jimmy Smith, so I picked up a B3 and started learning things from the blues side of Jimmy Smith. Carlos had been playing guitar for a long time, based upon blues. We just kind of found things.

One of the things that turned it around was the (Paul) Butterfield Blues Band for us. It was East-West. They did this long jam that had a lot to do with what we did, except we had Latin percussion. It kind of developed. That was a period of time when people played music like that. It was about jamming — you know, like what Phish does now. So that’s what we did. But we wrote songs for them and jammed in between them. We just kind of developed it. The music was developed by six guys — right or wrong — playing as hard as they could because that was as much as we knew. Part of the energy was because of it. It was a brand new music.

I can imagine those days were pretty heady playing with Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and — you guys even played with Miles Davis at the Fillmore.

A lot of that was Bill Graham. He would put together music that would normally not see — from jazz to blues to folk to us. It would be in one package and people would go and they’d get a lesson in music. But everyone liked it. It was a culture.

I read where Carlos Santana compared the chemistry of your partnership to Lennon and McCartney. What’s your take on your musical relationship with him?

I thought that was pretty accurate. The thing I could add to that is that Carlos and I have been saying this for 100 years literally almost (laughs). Carlos and I did the lion’s share of the work in that band, developing that. But without the other players in that band, it would have never happened like it did, like all things. It didn’t matter what percentage anybody brought in, they brought in something. It had its own vibe to it. Without Chepito and the Latin breaks he’d put in — it took me awhile to figure those out as a matter of fact; they sound simpler than they are — we wouldn’t have had that. He knew exactly what to do. He was a street player. Carabello was a street player. It wasn’t traditional Latin music. It was this street vibe music with guitar and organ that nobody had done, created by six guys.

Yet you left the Santana band in the early 70s. Why?

Too much too soon is the best way to put it. Everybody got pretty full of themselves. Looking back, I see it this way — the one thing that we really had in common was the music, and when that went away and we thought differently about what we were doing, we didn’t know each well enough to be able express it. So it became personal things. It just went south and it was time.

At the same time, I am really glad to have done that. When I look back on it, it’s like we were creating a different style of music that has gone on for years. I’m pretty proud of it.

It’s amazing how big Latin music has become. And you guys were a big part of that.

There is something to that. That is true.

Then you and Neal Schon formed Journey. What was the plan behind putting that band together?

Actually, I had opened a restaurant in Seattle with my father, and I got a call from Neal and Herbie Herbert, the manager. And you know, “What are you doing? You wanna do this?” And (I said), “I’ll give a shot.” It was really like that. I didn’t have any plans of being in the music business after Santana. They were very serious about it, and I was kind of like, “Ok, let’s see what it is.” Pretty soon, it turned into a full fledge band and we went after it.

That band was built. Santana was a phenomenon — we built that and worked hard on that as well, but it happened pretty quickly. And Journey was a long journey (laughs) to make it happen.

But then Journey transformed from a progressive rock band to a pop rock band. How did you feel about that change?

I thought the change was great. It was really challenging for me because I came from playing Santana music to playing something that was all majors and built for singers. In Santana, singing was almost the last thing you thought about. It was all about solos. And mainly the keys were minor. In Journey, it was all major and a little happier, not as blues-driven. And that’s where I came from. It was like two ends of the spectrum for me.

After working briefly with singer Robert Fleischman, the band hired Steve Perry to take over most of the lead vocals, although you two sang together on those early hits. Looking back, how well did that work for you?

I liked doing that. I liked having a lead singer. It didn’t bother me at all. I had been that and playing keyboards and harmonica. It was pretty spread out. I thought it was a new challenge, a new way to go. Why not? Steve Perry had a great voice. It was that simple.

I heard “Feeling That Way” on the radio the other day, and the contrast between your voice and that of Steve Perry’s was very effective. I would have liked to have heard more of that.

I’ve heard that in the past and I hear it now too. It was nice. Kind of like what the Beatles had, with four singers really. That never hurt their career. I think having different voices, whether it be instruments or vocals, keeps everyone's interest. At least that’s the way it is with me. I get bored with it. I thinking having two ways to go or three ways to go is excellent.

But then, at the height of Journey’s popularity, you left. Why?

I left to start a family .I was really tired of the road. I’d built two bands and had been on the road for 14 years. It was the end of it for me. I didn’t want to go travel anymore. But look what I’m doing now — I’m doing the same thing. At the time, I wanted to change my life and so I did. I made a conscious effort to start a family and I’ve done that, and now they’ve kicked me out of the house (laughs).

You can’t win, can you?

It’s like, “Dad, we’re trying to have parties here. Get out. Isn’t it about time you went on the road?” (laughs)

Journey, of course, continued to have great success after your departure. Did you have any second thoughts about leaving?

No, I never did, not at all. And I’m proud of that band as well. The heritage that I have can’t be taken away. It is what it is and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished and the guys I accomplished it with. On a good note or a bad note, it doesn’t make any difference, it’s there.

You came back in the early 90s with the Storm. But by then grunge had moved in and took over. Was it a case of bad timing?

You’re the first guy that I’ve ever talked to who has pinpointed that. That’s exactly what happened. It was no big deal. We put together some very good music and Kevin Chalfant is a great singer and we wrote some good songs, but we were like four years too late. And that’s pretty much it. Interscope took a chance on it and we actually had a hit “I’ve Got A Lot To Learn About Love,” which went to number 13, I believe. And then we went and did another album, and during that time period, they changed their whole direction and that was pretty much the end of it. They went to Nine Inch Nails and all kinds of other stuff because that’s where the music. And you know it’s no harm, no foul, we were just a little late with doing it.

You’ve been pretty much on your own ever since, making records with both Carlos Santana and Neal Schon along the way. What would you say the major differences are when you’re playing with these two legendary guitarists?

That’s a great question. They’re both great guitarists and totally different. Neal is more schooled and Carlos is more heartfelt. He just does what he does. Not that Neal doesn’t. Neal can play many styles of music and Carlos is Carlos. The beauty in that is that Carlos can pick up an acoustic guitar and you would know it is him. It’s his fingers, his note choice — he’s developed a style of his own. Neal, when he plays, I think some of the best stuff he’s ever done has been those melodic solos. He’s a very artful guy. They’re both great, but they’re different. That’s the best way I can describe it.

That leads me to my next question: Do you have any plans for a new studio album? If so, what can we expect and when?

Yeah, I do have new music. But mainly I am going to play live. When I was young, I loved playing live and was terrified to record. The red light would go on — back then you played as a band and if someone made a mistake, you had to do it again. And so it was always kind of terrifying. Then that reversed. I didn’t like playing live anymore because of all the travel, but I loved recording because it all changed. There were many ways to go, so many ways to play. With multi-tracking, you can play anything after the fact. But now it’s reversed again (laughs). Recording is like, it’s not terrifying anymore, but I would prefer to play live.

Are you playing new songs live to test them out?

Absolutely. What’s funny about it is that we end up playing some of this new material, and I have had comments like, “Is that a Santana song I never heard? Did I forget it?” Given the players and the band that it is, everyone gets what style this is. Although we could do many other things, this is kind of where it goes.