One of the most iconic performances at the Woodstock festival in August 1969 was by the band Santana, who took its name from the group’s charismatic leader Carlos Santana. At the time of the Woodstock performance, Carlos was a spry 22-years-old and the band’s debut album was days from being released.
The inclusion of Santana’s “Soul Sacrifice” performance in the documentary film about Woodstock’s three days of peace and music catapulted the group to prominence among the most influential psychedelic rock groups of the 1960s and 1970s. “Soul Sacrifice,” an instrumental song written by Santana, bassist David Brown, keyboardist Gregg Rolie and percussionist Marcus Malone, became among the band’s signature songs, closing out their aforementioned, self-titled first record.
Noted for both Carlos Santana’s incredible guitar playing and drummer Michael Shrieve’s extensive solo, the “Soul Sacrifice” performance at Woodstock spanned 11 minutes. Fueling Santana’s playing was a powerful dose of LSD he received from Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia earlier in the day.
In August 2019, 50 years after Woodstock, Carlos Santana spoke to MetroFocus about his experience at the historic festival held near Bethel, New York. Santana, who today celebrates his 76th birthday, spoke candidly about his psychedelic experience at Woodstock, including while onstage performing. At one point during Santana’s Woodstock performance, Carlos was able to keep playing even while hallucinating that his guitar neck was a snake.
“I went out there and when I started playing, of course, the guitar neck, the neck of the guitar, started wavering like a snake,” Carlos said. “And I was like “uh oh,” so I just started making faces because I was trying to keep it tame, you know, I was trying to keep it from slithering.”
Watch the full MetroFocus interview with Rafael Pi Roman below:
Around the same time as the MetroFocus interview, Santana shared a similar account of his electric Woodstock experience during a SiriusXM event. Watch that clip, featuring an anecdote about getting dosed by the Grateful Dead in 1968, below:
Here’s the historic Woodstock performance of “Soul Sacrifice”:
