After leaving Santana four records in, all Gregg did was start up another band you may have heard of: Journey. Several years after that, more radio success awaited the keyboardist with another start-up band, The Storm. Gregg also had released some solo CDs and currently heads the Gregg Rolie Band which features the Latin-flavored rock that permeates the Santana sound.

Gregg has a new live DVD coming out shortly that borrows heavily from the Santana songbook as well as his own solo work. It was with great pleasure that I spoke to him recently to find out about it as well as reminisce about his storied career.

antiMusic: It's such a pleasure to speak with you. I've been a fan since the first record. I've heard a lot of music in my day. I review a lots of CDs, but I tell you, there's nothing I go back to more than early Santana. This is a real thrill.

Gregg: (laughs) Thank you very much.

antiMusic: You've come full circle of sorts. You started out playing the Latin flavored blues rock type stuff and along with the Gregg Rolie band are still mining this area of music. Are you able to articulate about what it is about this sort of style that appeals to you?

Gregg: Yeah, I think it's because I was weaned on it. It was the first experimentation in music for me and you know, it's where I went back to when I just relax and go play. When I sit down at the piano, I always go back to blues, go back to this Latin feel. I mean I just do. And so in doing the Roots CD that I put out in 2001, that's kind of what happened. I was going to make an acoustic album, never had done it…based on acoustic guitar, piano, things like that. And it bored me. (laughs) I realized, I'd just started to open the floodgates and what came out was very naturally a lot of this Latin feel to it. So, I mean it's just my first exploration in music and I always go back to it. So it's got to be that. I mean, I'm proud of both bands. I'm proud of the career and the whole…you know I've been very fortunate. But this is like first love. I don't know. Something like that.

antiMusic: You have a new DVD coming out. What can you tell us about it? Where was it shot?

Gregg: Well, it was done at Sturgis. It's an hour long. There are 11 songs and half of it is the Santana material I did off the first three albums. The main songs, "Black Magic Woman", "Gypsy Queen", "Oye Como Va", "Jingo", "Evil Ways". What else? I think that's it. Then there's newer stuff on there as well. A couple from the Roots CD and an obscure Santana song. Actually it's an Albert King tune, called "As The Years Go Passing By" that's been changed drastically. That's kind of it. "Soul Sacrifice" is on it of course. And the band is phenomenal.

antiMusic: Excellent. Your vocals are obviously very distinctive. Besides that, what grabbed my attention at first was your keyboard playing. I mean, is there a more soul-grabbing sound than the wail of a Hammond B-3 organ? Sugarloaf, Traffic, Mashmakan, Deep Purple and yourself developed a sound that was extremely powerful. As an aspiring keyboard player, I used to always love playing the solo from "Oye Como Va"….

Gregg: That's one of my favorite solos…

antiMusic: Oh that's awesome, there's so much feel in that one. You've used other keyboards over the years I'm sure. But the B3 is special and has gained a reputation of being a gift and a curse with the latter being uttered mostly by roadies because of the weight. How were you introduced to the Hammond and has it slipped in and out of favor over the years over newer technologies?

Gregg: First of all, when I was about 11 years old I heard "Walk on the Wild Side" by Jimmy Smith. I didn't even know what at a Hammond B3 was but I loved the songs and I loved the sound of it. And I wasn't even thinking of being a musician at that time. I just enjoyed it. Then I was playing in a band called William Penn and His Pals. I had a Vox organ with that and I was playing other people's music and not too well , which inspired me to do my own or interpretations of music that is the way I see it, not note by note and be a Top 40 band. I just wasn't into it. And then I ran into Carlos in 1966 and we got together and the whole thing took off. That's when I bought a B3 and sat down to about five Jimmy Smith albums, based on the blues side of Jimmy Smith, not the jazz side. And took his kind of his feel for it, not necessarily all the notes, I didn't want to become…nor could I, as a matter of fact. Jimmy Smith is like, forget it. And so I didn't want to become like that, but I loved the essence of what he did.

And from there I listened to guitar players and I'd play the organ differently from strictly that school of jazz organist. I have that in me, but that's not where I went with it. And I think a lot of it is listening to other singers, other instruments and then kind of adapting it. It was like the first synthesizer. And then I did get into playing other instruments, but the B3, man there is nothing like it. My keyboard player, Wally Minko, can play synths, and is really a piano player. He's awesome and he can play anything. But he looked over at me and said, "I would not know where to start with that thing. The short sustain pedal, you know, (laughs) when you take your hand off of that, it's dead because it's taking up a lot of space. So you have to figure out how to invert every chord, and make them all count. It's very different from playing a piano or a synth for that matter. It's a totally different instrument. You have to be real hands on, and head's up with it. It's a cool instrument. And to play it a little differently instead of just the same standard stuff. In a nutshell that's the history of me and the B3.

antiMusic: Did you start using the Leslie right away?

Gregg: Oh yeah, it's not half of the sound. It's ¾ of it.

antiMusic: Yeah. Hand in hand. Jon Lord was quoted as saying that success of Deep Purple had a helluva lot to do with his the sound of his organ. Santana always gets, I mean you hear the name and inevitably followed by Latin flavored and drums, but do you also think the sound of your organ was at least partially responsible for the success?

Gregg: Very much so. What I've been told by many people is that when they think of Santana they think congas, guitar and organ. Period. I mean Latin percussion: guitar and organ and that's it. Because that's what it was. Like I said it was the first synthesizer, and so we did different things with it. In a lot of ways, tried to color it differently. I got some of that stuff from Larry Young… the draw bar technique of pulling it out, one draw bar at a time, or three at a time, pushing it back in, push another one, pull this and kind of sweep it. And so we did it that way. But you know that's what I heard about it mostly. And I think absolutely it's crucial to it, to the Santana music.

antiMusic: A lot of players like Emerson went to the C from the B…..and moved on from that. Do you still use the B3 today?

Gregg: Yeah. I have the B3 that I had in 1970. It's a cut down model made by Bill Baird out of L.A. who's passed on. But I think it's like the second one ever made, and I still have it. And it's the smoothest organ I've ever played.

antiMusic: How is it to maintain? Have you ever had major problems where you've gone: how the hell am I going to do this show unless I have this sound?

Gregg: No, it's not like that. I mean, I hear it. Not everybody else does. It's mainly, smooth means from the bass notes all the way up to the highest C. It's evenly sounding. In other words, with other keyboards you get up to the higher notes and they get a little too thin and you get to the bottom notes and it gets too fat. This one is like thick all the way through, like a fine tuned guitar. You go up to the high notes and it's still big and round and firm, but it's really high. As well as when you go down low. So it's very equal from bass to high notes.

antiMusic: How did you first meet Carlos and how did the band first come together?

Gregg: The story about me and Carlos was that I lived in Palo Alto, 30 miles south. I had a friend who went and saw Carlos playing with Mike Carabello who is playing with me now and played in Santana. And Gus Rodriguez and Danny Haro, bass and drums. They all went to Mission High School, and they played Tuesday night at the Fillmore, which was a local night, where Bill Graham let local bands come in and play. And he saw them playing there and it was just that foursome, and he came down and told me about it. He said, "I saw this guy playing and I'm going to go find him." And I said, "Go ahead." (laughs) He went up to San Francisco from Palo Alto, tracked him down to through The Fillmore. The guy's name is Tom Fraser, tracked Carlos down. Found him working at a Tick-Tock hamburger stand and brought him to Palo Alto to jam. We played in this house in Mountainview, which is now where shoreline is, and it was like, you know, an old farmhouse or something and we were out there playing in the middle of the farm fields. And of course there was grass around. So the cops started come. We heard the sirens, saw the cars. I turned around and said, "Look Carlos, we getter get out of here." And he was already 50 yards down the road.

antiMusic: (laughs)

Gregg: And so I beat feet after him. (laughs) And so we ended up hiding in a tomato patch and that's where I met him. (laughs) We hid out in this tomato patch till the cops left and then we went to get his stuff and that was the start of it for him and me.

antiMusic: Did you know right away that the Latin-flavoured rock was what you wanted to play and it's one thing to have a few congas in there but you went for the whole enchilada. How did the sound evolve?

Gregg: Well, you know, at that time, it was more, he had, he wanted to play his own music. He was playing "Chim Chim Charrie", but his own way. And that was what was inspiring to me. And I like the feel of the stuff. It was half jazz, half blues, half rock, half this, half that. Congas were just kind of there. It hadn't become a full fledged Latin rock---I hate the term---it wasn't that yet. But it was real free feeling music and blues based and I loved that. And so that's what inspired me to do that. And he played it that way. He was weaned on the blues.

antiMusic: What was the lag time between then and the first record?

Gregg: Let's see. '66…to '69 and our first album came out in 1969, after Woodstock. About a month after Woodstock, which was... I'll get into that later, but it was, what timing! Now it would be the perfect marketing tool; you'd pay guys all kinds of money to come up with ideas like that. We just fell into it. (laughs)

antiMusic: "Evil Ways" was what drew a lot of the attention the band. Do you remember who first suggested recording that and how the song came together?

Gregg: That was Bill Graham. We did that for Bill Graham. And actually, we were, "Really?" (laughs) It shows you how smart we were. You know it turned to be the first hit song. But we were playing "Jingo" and "Soul Sacrifice" and we were into the musicianship more than the hit song at the time and that changed for me. I always became the guy who wanted to do songs with all the soloing in it; I wanted real songs to it. And I thought it was important and you know, I kind of got it from Bill, you need to do this song. And we said, "Ok, we'll do it for you." (laughs)

antiMusic: "Persuasion" is one of my favourite vocals by you. How did that song come around?

Gregg: Hmm, writing in town at my mom's house in Palo Alto on a piano, late at night, I just pounded it out. When I first sang it, it was way more melodic and actually the guy who made me do it the way I did it, the old conga guy we had, Marcus Malone, he came up and goes, man you've got to throw something in this. You're just singing this. You need to throw something in it. So he loosened me up and made me go after it a little harder. And it became what it is.

antiMusic: Cool. "Soul Sacrifice" shows the chops of the band and I'm sure became a favourite for you to play live. Were the instrumental jams important for you from the get-go?

Gregg: It was how we wrote almost everything back then, from jamming. And we would find parts, and make parts out of them, and then we'd fine-tune those. Then it became a little more melodic, where, like jazz, you have a lead-in line and an exit line. And in between you can play what you want. Pretty soon you start playing the stuff that just sounds and works best. And it's after playing it for a while. So that's how that song kind of came about. I mean we all just started playing it. It was written by Carlos, myself, and Marcus Malone, the conga drummer. He came in with just the original line bum bum bum. That's what he had. And David Brown…the bass line on that. And we were just into soloing off of each other and that's the way we wanted to develop the band at the time. And then it became songs with that, but it always was, it had to be musically entertaining. You know, you've got to look forward to playing those parts.

antiMusic: As a vocalist, you were in a band that utilized lots of improv. You may have really liked this side of the band but was there ever a part of you that occasionally said, "Hey Carlos, that's a cool solo but I want to get to the verse"?

Gregg: Well no, as a matter of fact, it was never like that. When we went and recorded the first album, we had Alberto Chinquento (sp?) who played piano for James Cotton…he was a friend of the band and we had him come in to try and help us produce what we were going to do. And we had songs; they were all 12-15 minutes long because we'd soloed forever. And we played them all for him, and he just looked at us, (laughs) and this was his comment: "Cut down the solos. Great. See ya." And that was it, and that's when we started to make them shorter and more concise and you know more to the point. But still, it came from all of that jamming. So it was never a problem. We never looked at it that way. Whatever was feeling good is what we did. And it wasn't an argument about this vocal or that solo or this solo, or is it too long. That's about as far as you could say, maybe that's too long. But it wasn't "I need to have my space." At least that's not the way I took it.

antiMusic: You said you were with Bill Graham from the beginning. How integral was he to your initial success?

Gregg: Very. He loved the band from day 1. And he was a Latin music lover. And here we come with this whole new brand idea, with doing it with electric music and San Francisco scene and the whole thing and he really enjoyed it. He used to sit behind my Leslie cabinet with a cow bell and I dragged him out a couple of times. He wanted to play it so bad. And I was "Stand out here and do it."

antiMusic: (laughs)

Gregg: We dragged him out on the stage and made him play. But he got us into Woodstock. He got us on Ed Sullivan. He got us I believe onto Dick Cavett as well. He did a lot of stuff that at the time I actually did not know about. I knew about Woodstock, but the rest of it I didn't know about it. He got us into the movie. He introduced us at the Columbia Records convention in L.A. and he was the guy who introduced the band to all the powers that be at that convention. We had about 20-25 minutes to play and we knocked these guys out. They had never seen or heard anything like it. And that was the beginning of a lot of it. So Bill had a lot do with it.

antiMusic: This is one of those stupid questions you can't really answer…but just because the sound was so different from the rest of the bands out there, did you know that you would make an impact?

Gregg: No, that could be a hindsight question or at least a hindsight answer. No at the time we wanted to be an international band. We wanted to be huge. Coming from San Francisco was wonderful but it's a big world out there and we wanted to play to everybody and anything. And we looked at ourselves, or tried to be like the people we admired, which were jazz greats and blues greats and so, we approached our music in that fashion. It just seemed to HAVE an impact. Continuously it had an impact. It kept growing and growing and people loved it. So we just kept doing it. For a bunch of guys playing music that we enjoyed playing, and we wanted to be a big band but our focus was much larger than a local scene and I think that added to that. And we would have meetings about it, about…you know, keeping our energy up to do that. I wonder if anyone remembers those meetings other than me, I don't know.

antiMusic: Right after the first record was released, you had the opportunity to play Woodstock. How did that come about and did the size of the crowd intimidate you? Was there more than a few beers or other helpers downed before that show?

Gregg: No, as a matter of fact, we flew in on a helicopter and I looked down at this brown field which was all people, but it did not strike me because I don't know, it's so out of context. How do you know? I played for 10 thousand people. Yeah, it was a lot of people. It struck me that way. And going out to play for them, it didn't strike me and thank god it didn't. It might have scared me to death. But then I did realize…we drove out and it took FOREVER to get through 500 thousand people. But then of course when you look at it later, it's like: I should have been much more attentive to that, but I might have completely blown it if I'd known. (chuckle) Just as well that I didn't recognize it to be such an enormous amount of people, it just looked like a lot of people. I don't know how else to express that.

antiMusic: Yeah. It's at that point you don't really see the faces, it all sorts of blends in…

Gregg: Yeah, you know, after the first 10 thousand, it's just all brown... (laughs) You know, it's amazing. So what's the big deal. (laughs)

antiMusic: From what I remember hearing is that, although there were a few big surprises that day like Janis Joplin, none delivered as much of an impact as your performance. You went on right after John Sebastian and then two more established acts Canned Heat and Mountain had the unenviable situation of following you. Did you see their performances and how did the crowd react during and after your set?
Gregg: I watched bits and pieces of it. I really stayed to see Sly Stone. I thought he was going to be the best band out of that whole 4 days…I thought they were a tremendous band. And they were great. I mean, wow. Cool stuff. At any rate, I was backstage a lot. I remember running into Michael Wang as a matter of fact and I said, "What is going on with this? And he said, I don't know. (laughs) You know, it had gotten so out of control, he was just "Whatever." And we just had to open the flood gates and let it in. but I didn't really see those guys…I saw them play before. You know it's like Woodstock after the fact. When I answer these questions now, it's like after the fact that it became the mother of all festivals. At the time, it was just another festival. So when I was living it, you know, it was what we did. After the fact, it became enormous, obviously.

antiMusic: How would you rate your performance?

Gregg: It was one of those days. We had tuning problems in the beginning because they just didn't have the technology to take care of hot and cold on the guitar strings back then, that they do now. And you know, Carlos had some tuning problems, as well as David. The organ, of course, just stays where it is because it is. So when "Soul Sacrifice" came around, that's when this really came all together. It was all tuned up and ready to go. It was the last song we played. And that was it. That's what everybody saw. And to this day, it just knocks people out. I still play it and it gets the same reaction it always has. And it really came together. "Evil Ways" was pretty good. I mean the band played well but we were having technical problems, as well as everybody else was. You know, everybody had a bit of a problem one way or another. There were things, I heard that amps blew up and some guys couldn't even play because they didn't have any instruments to do it.

antiMusic: Yeah, the Grateful Dead apparently couldn't play their regular set because they kept getting electrical shocks from the guitars.

Gregg: Yeah. Things like that. I mean, things happen. But those were the times and everybody just kind of rolled with it. Again, we're looking at this with 20/20 hindsight and I'm trying to give you a feel of what it was like as opposed to what it has become.

antiMusic: After that came possibly the landmark point in your early career, Abraxas. The title comes from a Herman Hesse book, I've read. Is that true and who suggested that name for the record?

Gregg: It was Carlos. I just liked it because, hey, Abraxas. Are you kidding? That sounded pretty cool. (laughs) He also picked out that artwork. He found Mattice, that did the artwork. In fact, he kind of chased him down in New York and asked him if we could use it and all that stuff. It had the woman on the conga and the flying conga and all that stuff and it was pretty cool. It seemed to; it really seemed to jell with what the band was.

antiMusic: Was there a lot more confidence in the band going in to record that record based on the massive success you had so far?

Gregg: No, actually, for me it was the complete opposite. It was like: okay, now we really got to prove we can really do this. We had three years to develop all that music. And we had to do the next one WITHIN a year. But we were expecting it to be great. And it turned out to be…. Abraxas is still one of my favorite albums I've ever done. In fact, probably, it's THE favorite. I mean it was really slick. You could only have so much…so many minutes on vinyl without losing quality. So to make an album sound and feel good and fulfilled and complete in a short amount of time, which is under 20 minutes a side, it's an accomplishment. The Beatles did it in 2 minute songs. My god, they could fill up anything, you know. I envy them for that. So that was a great accomplishment. That album came out great. It still is very vibrant today.

antiMusic: Absolutely. There were a couple of massive highlights with this record. The first was the cover of the Fleetwood Mac song "Black Magic Woman". Whose idea was it to cover this song?

Gregg: It was mine.

antiMusic: Awesome.

Gregg: Yeah. It took me a year to talk these guys into playing it. And I actually got the song through Mike Shrieve. He knew I was a Peter Greene fan from his work with John Mayall. You know the song, "It's Only Supernatural" is like, to this day, is just awesome when he did it. There were no sustain pedals back then. I mean, you just either played this stuff or you didn't. He was great. Anyway, so he turned me onto it. He said "There's this Fleetwood Mac thing and you're gonna love it. It's got Peter Green on it." And it had that song on it. And I went, "Man I could sing that song. I really like this tune." And brought it into practice, and I brought it into sound checks and whoever was coming in the room first playing something, and as people filtered in we all started playing on whatever was going on. We just jammed to whatever was going on. So I totally made an effort to be first all the time. (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs)

Gregg: And I kept playing it. And Carlos originally grabbed a hold of a solo and this is after a while of playing this stuff, and goes, "That's really good. I like that." (And I said) "It's the song (laughs) I've been telling you about for a while." Anyway. (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs)

Gregg: So then we worked it up and it became, what, it went up to #4 or something. Anyway it was a big hit for Santana for decades.

antiMusic: The other highlight is "Oye Como Va", possibly the most recognizable Santana song among the public. Another cover. How did this one come about?

Gregg: Well I believe it was Carlos who brought it in, and my position on it, when they brought in that song to play it, I went: You're kidding! What do I DO what with it? You know, a Tito Fuentes song, and I like it and all that, but how do I approach this thing because the instrumentation and so we just figured it out. And again, the B3 became the synthesizer and the new way of expressing many instruments at the same time. And it's kind of the approach. And then it turned out to be, and still is, one of my favorite songs. But when I heard it initially, I was just like, "Wow, I don't know what to do with this."

antiMusic: That's funny you say that because the intro is all yours. I mean you hear the start of that, and your heart starts going and you know who it is right away.

Gregg: Yeah, it IS funny, but it's from the original arrangement but there IS no organ, so it's just our approach to it. And also for me to solo on it was…it's one of those things, playing solos is like…it comes from somewhere else. It's almost not from within when you're doing them, if you're really trying. I don't know how to express that one either. You just kind of let go. That came out. That was it. One hit. And boom that was it. And it's one of my favorites till this day.

antiMusic: Among my all-time favourite tracks is "Hope You're Feeling Better". Do you remember writing it and how easily did it come together?

Gregg: I remember writing that song. And as a matter of fact, we played it live and I had to… I had finished the lyrics right before we went on stage…

antiMusic: Wow.

Gregg: And I had them written out so I could see them right in front of me. Yeah, that song is awfully cool. That one did come from the B3 first…that whole opening.

antiMusic: You left after the fourth record. Was it a matter of too much time with the same people on the record/tour cycle?

Gregg: It was many things. This I CAN do from hindsight. Shrieve said it this way: it was too much, too soon. A bunch of young guys on top of the world. It just got to everybody. But at the same time, the one thing that we had in common was the music. And that strive for the music. We did not know each other all that well, I have to admit. Not really. and so when the music falters, we didn't' even know how to express it to each other what was going on or wrong why, or whatever. I don't know, it was like, I look back on it and it was like a moment in time that was really special and great for me. And at the same time it was kind of painful towards the end of it. But I look back at it and it was great. What was accomplished by the six music musicians there and seven with Neil, was a whole different kind of music that no one had ever done before, an approach to music that no one had ever done before. And we were in the middle of it and we were just striving to do what we did. That we all came together in that little point in time and all that is pretty… pretty interesting. And I'm glad it all happened. Absolutely, I can't tell you. I listened back to that music and to this day I could go right back to it.

antiMusic: We're almost out of time and we're just up to the end of Santana. We haven't even gotten to Journey and The Storm yet.

Gregg: That's okay; I'm basing most of my work nowadays off of that anyway. I learned a ton off of Journey in the first place. But mainly, what I got out of Journey was songwriting skills that I did not have in Santana. I had feel and the ability to jam and I don't know, grab a hold of jazz things and make them your own along with, along with any music you just kind of make it your own. But the real skills, the technical skills of writing songs, with courses, beats sections and bridges, and breaks and things like that, I learned a lot from Journey. And so now I put it together with what I'm doing now which is gone back to those roots and I think I craft a better song now because of it.

antiMusic: What's life like for Gregg Rolie now? You can evidently pick and choose what you want to do. Are you happy with life? Do you look back and think there are things I missed out, or should have done?

Gregg: Nnnooo. I really don't. I feel very fortunate. You know, to do what I've done in my lifetime with two bands, building them up to the successes that they were from the ground floor from nothing, twice, is not…not that many people have done it. And especially with the difference in the music, for me that was the two extremes. Playing with Santana and playing with Journey were two different things. The original Journey was more like what Santana was without the congas. There were a lot of solos in it, it was fusion rock. It was not so much song based…it was songs, but there were a lot of solos and that was a feature. It was soling. And that was very much like Santana in that regard. But totally different music. But then when Perry got involved with the band, which I was in full favor of having a lead singer of that caliber and writing songs like that, it was something I had never done before and I thought: this is great. Why not? So we stuck it out. That was a long build-up process with Journey. That was a little harder road. Santana was three years. Woodstock---Bang! We were done. And this one was more like; it took a good 4 or 5 years of trying to build it up.

antiMusic: Well, we're almost at the end. I won't take up any more of your time. I appreciate you speaking with us. And like I said, I can't think of any other music that I go back to on a consistent basis, every week than your stuff. I'm obviously not the only one. It's affected a lot of people, so thank you so much for all your music. It was just a pleasure speaking with you.

Gregg: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure talking to you, Morley.