When we talked to Brown last week, it was in the attorneys' visiting room at County jail, where he was serving thirty days for a second bust. Stan Marcum had said Brown was busted in another person's house, where police found drugs. Brown himself said he was on the streets, got stopped for looking suspicious, "and they found some seeds or something." Brown, in work shirt, khaki slacks, and blue sneakers, smiled. "When I'm on the road, I'm in a hotel room studying and reading, you know. And I feel free inside, 'cause that's what it took to get me to play in the first place. So I don't feel that confined, really."
As for Carlos: "Going to the Fillmore and stuff like that, I developed sort of a thing for LSD and mescaline, mushrooms, stuff like that, because they were expanding my consciousness, expanding my goals. I wanted to try everything just like a little child. It took me a long time to find out the difference between getting loaded and getting high... actually, up till this year. I quit cocaine and stuff like that two years ago. The times when I did it, which was like three times after I quit at different times, I found myself having some bad experiences. Like one time the house I was visiting almost burned down. I just took them as signs for me to say, `You can't do that."'
When we first met, backstage at one of the enlightened Santana's triumphant four nights at the Winterland, Carlos held a small bottle of pop wine. That now, is his only indulgence.
"It's sort of like a basket of fruit, of me marinating myself with beliefs that I have now, this faith, actually, and me waking up in the morning and me not going to bed with chicks anymore, giving myself like true discipline for awhile. I didn't want to make love to one person or three persons in bed anymore. I felt that my energy could go farther than that to make love to everybody who's got ears." Carlos said he is down to one "soul sister."
And then there are the lawsuits: Are there any lawsuits, Stan Marcum?
"I don't know of any. [long pause.] Oh, uh, Barry Imhoff owed Santana a lot of money from some gigs we did with him. And there was some talk about a lawsuit on Bill Graham's part when we split from his company."
David Rubinson, a vice president at Fillmore Corporation at the time Graham was working for Santana, was clear on the matter: "Bill Graham broke Santana. No one else. Not Marcum. Not Carlos. Nobody."
This becomes interesting testimony when you meet Stan Marcum.
"He was a barber," Carlos said. "He had a part-time job as a barber, and he introduced me to the drug LSD. He introduced me to a lot of beautiful people. He introduced me to a lot of beautiful times, beautiful moods. He taught me a lot."
Three months ago, the current Santana drummed Marcum out. Stan doesn't claim he was ever the "manager," even if he allowed himself to be so credited on the first two albums. "I managed their affairs," he said, "but I can't say I'm an artist's manager because I'm not, and I don't have a license to be."
So Bill Graham-who'd done the same previously with the Airplane and the Dead-helped manage Santana?
"He never managed," Marcum says. His is a soft face, with voice to match. "What happened was-the reason why we didn't stay with Bill Graham-I was doing everything from my house and we needed some help, and at the time Bill Graham was in our minds as somebody who could help us. He set up an office, and it came down that Bill Graham was just answering my phone calls."
That's all?
`And relayed messages to me."
Why would Bill Graham, who was a fairly busy man in 1968, act as a receptionist for you?
Another pause. Then, finally: "He wanted to be involved with the band.. .because he knew the band was going to make a lot of money.
"It started out like a booking agency, then, `If you need space we have space here.' I'd say 90 percent of the bookings came from people calling in and asking... Graham claimed that he had such an important role in Santana that he was entitled to 10 per cent of their earnings the rest of their life. Which was such bullshit. He had no grounds; all he could have done was make threats."
Then why does his FM Productions continue to do booking and promoting for Santana today?
"That's just booking. Like IFA or anything else."
VII. WHY BILL GRAHAM LUNGED AT MR. HERB RESNER
I T HAS BEEN SOME THREE YEARS since Bill Graham has spoken at length to this magazine for publication. But for a piece on Santana he invited me to his office, where he works in a tiny, trapezoid-shaped room walled off from his secretary and the outer office by a sheet of glass.
Our half-hour appointment stretched into three hours, and by day's end it was obvious that Graham had been almost shattered by the Santana betrayal. that he had been in some kind of love with the band he'd adopted.
"If Stan Marcum says, 'he answered the phone,"' Graham began, "it's very sad.
"The Santana situation is so indicative of one of the major problems in rock. I've said it too many times: One of the challenges of life, challenges to your character, is what happens to you when you make it. What happened to Santana? Well, what happened to Stan Marcum? Now, Stan Marcum was a neighborhood boy who was the nonmusician, and he became the manager of the roadie. Now Santana came to Bill Graham. `We would like you to manage our affairs.' Fine. And this is the percentage.' I made it very clear to them. I don't ask for 20 percent or 15. Most managers ask for that (Graham got 10). And I never asked for papers from anyone, never. Because I felt, I'm good and you're good. If we get along, why have a marriage license. I'd rather live together.
"To understand Stan Marcum's situation and his feelings is to ask, well, why isn't Stan Marcum the manager of the group that he made?-number one. Number two is-at one particular point before they left maybe a year earlier, there was an argument within the group where Stan felt he was strong enough to do it himself, so to speak. We had a meeting in my office at the Fillmore-I wish they were sitting right here-and I knew they were coming into the office, and I made a list of all the important things that ever happened to Santana-ever-other than the music. Now, the one thing I will always maintain, I am not responsible for their ability. I'm a cowbell nut. I love to hang around Latin music, but the one thing I never take credit for is their music. But at one point-at this meeting that we had in `69 or '70, whatever it was, Stan said something to the effect, `Well, you know, we want to get more together and do our thing.' I think it was because Stan felt that he was ready to manage the group. And I said, `Stan, what you're saying is that you are primarily responsible for what's happening to the group?' `Yes.' And I said, `I've made a list here of important events'-I think it was seventeen or eighteen different things: Woodstock, Ed Sullivan Show, the tours, how they went to the Fillmore East, the advertising, the PR and what-not. And one of the important things that I fought with them about and finally they agreed to do: I just wrote down `Evil Ways,' and I said, `Now, is there any important point that I left out, Stan?' `Uh, no.' Any member of the group, is there any event or situation that's not on this list that has helped you to become who you are?' `No.'
"'Fine, now Stan, one by one, let's take them. What did you do with Woodstock?' And I said, 'Let's stay with that.' I sat with Michael Lang at the restaurant next to the Fillmore till five in the morning-'Bill, what do you think of this group?' Now he had some ideas and I had some ideas. In the exchange for that I asked him for one favor`put on this group from San Francisco that I think deserves to be heard' and I sold the group.
"I said, And when you went there, Stan, I asked you not to sign anything until I got there, and I got there one day later, and because somebody said to you unless you sign this, you can't appear, you almost gave away the rights to the movie. Remember that, Stan? And I said, `You signed for $750.' The deal was, Santana was getting $1,500-I didn't care. I wanted them to go there. The deal with all the other groups was if you were to appear in the film, you would get half again as much. Now for a group that was getting $20,000, they were getting another $10,000, which was fine. I said, `But, Stan, you were getting another $1,500, that's $750, and I'm not going to give you away.' And by the time the film had com
e out, I knew.
"What happened in the film? Michael Wadleigh was the director, and his partner, Bob Maurice, had a great deal of trouble getting the groups to just see the film. Joe Cocker didn't want to see it. Richie Havens didn't want to see it. The filmmakers came and said, 'Bill, will you please get so-and-so to at least look at the film?' I have fairly good relations with a lot of musicians, and I got X amount of musicians up to their studios on Broadway in New York to view it. And they said, `Bill, we can't thank you enough.' `What can we do?' I said, `I want Santana in the film.' I said, `Look at the drummer. Look at the solo, and look at this, look at that.' I said, `Stan, why are they in the middle of the film for twelve minutes? Longer than anybody else-uninterrupted. You?'
"I'm gonna prove to you what I've done, and while I'm doing that, I'm afraid I have to call this man to a test. What has he done? 'Cause you brought up this challenge.' I said, `Now, the movie is done, and you got $750. Stan, what happened then?' `Uh.' I'll tell you what happened. I called Warner Brothers and said, 'We're not going to work for $ 7 50.' They said, `We have a contract.' I said, `There's a difference between laws and justice. Fuck your law. The law is that piece of paper. You know what justice is? They're gonna be in the middle of that film, and they're stars today and you guys are going to make millions of dollars. You should come to me like men and say here's money.' And they said, `Well, we have a piece of paper.' I went to N.Y., and you can check with Warner Brothers, and I talked with some of the heavies in N.Y. and said, `Do you know who I am? I'm the manager of the group. You've heard I'm crazy, right?' 'Yeah.' `Now look, because it's true. Unless we get what's fair-at least close to what's fair, I'm gonna blow up this building. Now you don't have to believe me. Just throw me out of here.' Make a long story short, I got that $ 750 with a zero behind it. $7,500. Why? If they didn't respect the ethic of giving me more money, they respected my supposed insanity.
"Woodstock was so important to Santana, because Woodstock took rock from the neighborhoods and put them on Wall Street. And you're gonna say, 'Bill, you've always been outspoken against these things.' True, but I'm the manager. It was my job to expose them as best I could. That was one gig."
For which Graham said he was hardly paid. He never received any record royalties or statements, he said, and he had a meeting with Marcum. "I said, 'Stan, what about the percentage from this?' And he said, `You mean to tell me you get 10 percent from royalties also? You got paid for Woodstock, didn't you?' I said, `Fuck Woodstock, they got $1,500 to play, and what you're saying is that I should only be paid $150. He didn't think I should get paid a percentage from the movie, from the $ 7,500, or from record royalites. And I once said to him, which is a very ugly thing, `I'll show you what a manager really is. When his client sneezes, he gets 10 percent of the snot.' I looked him straight in the face and said, According to you, I should be paid 10 percent on the gig and nothing else from the gig.' He said, `That's right.' I said. `Do you think that's fair?' `Yeah, man.'
"So I began to realize that he's either very stupid or very ruthless."
Back once more to the list: "Stan," Graham was asking, "what did you have to do with Ed Sullivan? I went to New York, walked in, was rejected. I sat in the producer's office for three hours. He was late, finally didn't show up. I went back the next day. I played `Evil Ways'; he wasn't caught by it. And ask him what I did. I got up, in his office, and I did a choreography of the ethnicality of the group. [Graham announces his performance with a sharp slap, right hand into left] `Black! Chicano! Nicaraguan! White! A cross section of America or Latin America on your stage!' And I told him what they looked like and he bought it. And I came back and did I say to you, `Oh, I went to New York'? No. It's not my job to tell you how hard it was for me. But now that you ask me `What do I do?'-this is what happened to get it."
Finally, the group huddled and came in with the verdict: "We're sorry this came up, let's just go ahead and do the best we can."
But Marcum, said Graham, was still intent on taking over-"He set up his own office and I never went down there." It is not like him to hand out. "But you should ask Stan Marcum how they went about telling Bill Graham he was no longer needed. I set up a gig in Tanglewood that I loved so much, with Miles Davis and the Voices of East Harlem. I mean just music, and excitement and warmth, and after the gig I got a trailer for the boys in the back, and we were just happy. `Bill, you're the greatest.' Love, love, love. I went back into New York for the next gig and they came out to California.
"The day after this joyous togetherness, I got a call three thousand miles away from Stan Marcum saying, `Bill, we decided we want to do our own thing, man, and we're not gonna be with you anymore.' I remember distinctly on the phone-I wish Stan was here right now-I said, `Stan, regardless of whether it's right or wrong, how dare you call a man three thousand miles away to tell him that you're taking his lover-like a woman saying to her man, hello, honey, this is your wife, Charlotte, I'm in Hawaii with George. How do you do that?' And I said, `Why couldn't you be man enough to tell me when you get back here for the meeting? Or say something to me at Tanglewood?' 'Well, yesterday everybody was so happy.' I said, `That's right.' I was extremely disappointed, not because of the money. They owed me a considerable sum of money. They still owe me a considerable sum of money. I was really hurt. And he didn't want to get together, he didn't want to discuss it.
"He made his move at a time when the group was gonna break, I mean big. I'm not talking about hundreds of dollars. I'm talking about hundreds and thousands and millions of dollars. At that point, did he ask himself with respect to the group could he handle a multimillion-dollar piece of talent? And if he couldn't, who was he really helping? One of the meetings I had with Stan Marcum afterwards, I said, `I have to be honest, I don't think you can do it.' And he mentioned a lawyer and an astrologer friend who was going to run it for them, and I said, `It's only a matter of time. Because some of the people you mention, I think, are of ill repute, and I think they are what you accuse me of being, but they don't know anything about your industry and in the long run they'll hurt you. Now what happened to Stan Marcum is that he dropped Bill Graham and he went with these people, and not two years later-how many times in life do you say to yourself, `I'm sorry-I was right'?"
Bill Graham, by the way, says he isn't suing. He did feel he deserved compensation for the jobs he'd booked for Santana up to the day of his dismissal, and he felt he should've gotten a few percent of the band's earnings after August 19 70. Graham says he's received nothing-especially after a meeting at Santana's then-lawyer Herb Resner's office. `And there was this feeling that we deserved absolutely nothing. We got very heated and he started calling me some names and I lunged at him." Graham chuckled.
Stan Marcum insisted that he could recall no meeting where Graham produced a list of Santana milestones. "What he says and what went down is a bunch of shit."
Marcum was getting testy. "Look," he said, "If Bill Graham wants to look good, let him."
Still, would he agree that the switch from receptionist Bill Graham to his astrologer/attorney/accountant team was a mistake?
"Well, yeah. It was you make one mistake after another to get in the position to make things better. Which is where we are now."
He talks about being involved in music. "I've got a lot of creative things in mind in music, and I've also got a lot of living I want to do, and I'm gonna make them work together."
Marcum, Neal Schon, and Michael Carabello seem to think that Carlos Santana had surrounded himself with a band of yes men. Well, yes. Shrieve is definitely with Carlos, spiritually; Rauch appears to be getting there, having accompanied Carlos and Armando Peraza to the Mahavishnu sessions in New York; Peraza appears to be an oldtimer going along for the ride, getting some dues after years of work in the Afro-CubanLatin music scene, and Chepito is in it for the dinero, as Carabello says.
The little half pint of brown sugar is thumping his chest, gesturing with his hands, fourteen more inches, and he is asked by proud h
usband and father Tom Koster if he likes the Caravaseral music.
"They are heavy musicians," he says thickly, "but I don't like the music as much. I write my own music, a lot of Latin and rock, but they don't like it. I stay in the group because I like to stay with what I start." Chepito came to the U.S.-to New York, to join the Latin-jazz scene there-six years ago from Nicaragua. There, at age 8, he first injured his head in a fall onto hard, rocky road. `And I never grow up," he said, to explain his five-foot lack of height.
"In the hospital," Koster is saying now, "He screwed all the nurses."
"Yeah," Chepito agrees. "But I don't remember nothin'."
Carlos Santana has hired this band; pays the new members a salary; exacts supreme discipline. Even a system of fines, a la James Brown and Ray Charles, it is said. Carlos will no longer be abused by brothers for his phrases, for trying to take over a band. Carlos, today, is Santana.
And Santana is so solid musically that fewer and fewer people are demanding the old evil ways. The crowds were sparer than expected in a few spots this recent first tour, but there were standing ovations in San Francisco and New York, and encores almost everywhere else.
Carlos took a risk few musicians could afford, and fewer, still. could dare to make. He pauses for a moment of prayer before each set; for an encore, he'll bring the caravan back to "Jingo" or "Samba Pa Ti" to say thanks for accepting the change.
"The name only dies when a person dies inside. There's a lot of dead people walking around, you know. And they don't have the eyes to see these things."
Carlos is standing up against a hotel room wall this morning in Seattle, his eyes closed as the photographer blitz-clicks around him. Incense is burning and on the cassette now is Dionne Warwick.
"Dionne," says Carlos. "She doesn't OD on soul. She carries the melody. And that's hard to do."
Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll Page 18