Santana and Doobie Brothers

Santana grew up in Autlán de Navarro Mexico, with his brother Jorge. He learnt to play the guitar at the age of eight, before moving to San Francisco with his family, where he was influenced by watching the likes of BB King and the hippie movement in the city to follow his dreams of being a professional musician.

After spending time as a dishwasher and busking, Santana caught the eye of promoter Bill Graham at an open night jam session in the city. Around this time he formed the Santana Blues Band with some fellow buskers and musicians, which gained a strong local following due to their unique blend of various styles, including rock, jazz, blues and salsa.

Following a triumphant Woodstock show, the newly renamed “Santana” were snapped up by CBS records and quickly released their debut album, also titled “Santana”, which was a success, charting at number four in the charts. This led to a whirlwind of success and line up changes for the band as they released an astounding 11 further albums in the next decade.

Santana has released over 20 studio albums and has won numerous Grammys. Santana is considered by many critics as one of the greatest guitarists in the modern era. Popular music magazine Rolling Stone named Santana as the 20th greatest guitarist of all time. Only further cementing his legendary status, Santana was inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame in 1998.

John Hartman arrived in California in 1969 with the hopes of meeting Skip Spence of Moby Grape. Spence introduced Hartman to singer-songwriter Tom Johnston and the two musicians later became the engine behind The Doobie Brothers. They began by calling their band, “Pud” and went through a few line up changes sometimes including Skip Spence. It was in 1970 when they met Dave Shogren and another singer songwriter called Patrick Simmons, who had really made a name for himself in the local scene, but he really worked well alongside the line up that was beginning to form. Playing all over Northern California earned them a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records in 1971.

It was over the next five years that they would become an international hit, with their sophomore album “Toulouse Street” released July 1972, going Platinum in the US and charting in Australia and New Zealand as well. “The Captain and Me”, released in March 1973, followed suit but this time going 2x Multi-Platinum. A similar pattern happened over the next couple of years in the form of “What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits” and “Stampede” both being top 4 albums in the US, and then in 1976, along came soulful power house, Michael McDonald. Under a contract to release an album in 1976, the Doobies were in a difficult situation where their main songwriter was unavailable so they turned to McDonald and Porter for material. With this request came the album “Takin’ It to the Streets” which was released on March 19th 1976. With the success of this album seeing it make it to number 8 in the Pop Albums Chart, The Doobie Brothers asked McDonald if he’d like to continue working with them for their next record. Fast forward a couple of successful albums to 1979, which is when they released an album called “Minute by Minute”, and on that album featured a song called “What a Fool Believes”, written by McDonald and Kenny Loggins. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 14th 1979, and received Grammy Awards in 1980 for Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

Over the course of the next couple of years, The Doobies embarked on world tours but unfortunately due to many issues between band members, exhaustion and disillusion, there were no original members left. Michael McDonald was ready for a solo career, so the band elected to disband. Of course, the band briefly disbanded and effectively hibernated for the next four years before making a comeback in the form of an album called “Cycles” which was released on May 17th 1989, this time without McDonald.