thirteen

WINNING

Carlos may be a little difficult from time to time.

—BILL GRAHAM

DURING THE LATE WINTER OF 1978, AS MICK JONES, THE LEAD guitarist and founder of the band Foreigner, sat in front of the mixing console inside Studio A at Atlantic Records’ Columbus Circle recording facilities in New York City, he slowly began bending a pencil in his right fist. And the more Jones heard from one of the people in the room with him, the harder he squeezed.

Having recorded and released their first LP, Foreigner, the year before, Jones and his five fellow group members, including Foreigner’s world-class, leather-lunged lead singer and front man, Lou Gramm, were attempting one of the hardest tasks in all of rock and roll: to follow up a multiplatinum debut with something hopefully even better.

Containing anthem-like FM favorites such as “Feels Like the First Time,” “Cold as Ice,” and “Long, Long Way from Home,” Foreigner’s first album had become one of the industry’s biggest sellers in 1977, quickly going gold and then platinum within weeks of its release. And despite the chorus of critics who gleefully condemned the band and their highly produced, power-chord-driven sound as being yet another manifestation of the subgenre of rock and roll derisively referred to as “corporate rock” (alongside fellow practitioners Queen, Styx, Boston, and Journey), Foreigner nonetheless had become one of the most popular acts in the country within mere months of hitting the charts.

But Mick Jones wanted to take the next step. Having been a mainstay in his previous band, Spooky Tooth (with Gary Wright, later of “Dream Weaver” fame), as well as playing guitar on many high-profile sessions in his native England for musicians such as George Harrison and Peter Frampton, Jones had been around the industry long enough to know that he and his band were going to have to raise their game in order to prevent a sophomore slump. They needed to come up with an even tighter, tougher, more aggressive approach to stay competitive within a hard-rock music scene that featured such heavy hitters as Kansas (“Carry on Wayward Son”), Aerosmith (“Walk This Way”), and Blue Öyster Cult (“Don’t Fear the Reaper”). That meant writing even better songs. It also meant hiring a new producer. That was part of Jones’s secret formula. No matter that Foreigner had experienced remarkable success with John Sinclair and Gary Lyons in charge of the production on Foreigner, it was still time to move on. “One album isn’t enough for a producer to inflict his style upon us,” Jones liked to say.

During the same period, with Keith Olsen’s reputation growing by the record following his work on Fleetwood Mac and Terrapin Station, it was but a matter of a few phone calls back and forth between Olsen’s highly connected manager, Bob Buziak, and Foreigner’s manager, Bud Prager, before Olsen found himself installed as Mick Jones’s new man behind the glass. On Olsen’s part, working with Foreigner would provide the chance for a musical challenge of a different sort: instead of working to elevate the success of a well-known niche band who had been around for years without earning even one gold album as he had done with both Fleetwood Mac and the Grateful Dead, this time Olsen would get the opportunity to dive in midstream and help make a big-time hit-maker even bigger.

Forgoing his preferred recording environment at Sound City, Olsen agreed to Jones’s request that the basic tracks for the new album, Double Vision, be cut in New York City at the in-house studio owned by Atlantic Records, the band’s label. After flying to the Big Apple and taking a short-term lease on a Central Park South apartment, Olsen got right to work with the band. And he immediately liked the songs Jones and Gramm began laying down, two in particular.

Giving evidence that musical inspiration can come from the unlikeliest of sources, the album’s title track, “Double Vision,” developed while Jones and Gramm attended a New York Rangers hockey game. After an injured player left the ice at one point following a fight, the announcer described him as suffering from “double vision” and therefore was unable to return. With the British Jones being unfamiliar with that particular turn of phrase, it stuck in his mind, leading him, along with Gramm, to soon cowrite a driving rocker about the inability to be monogamous (though many listeners erroneously assumed “Double Vision” to be about drug use). And though the song would ultimately hit number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1978—yet another smash for the band—it was the lead single “Hot Blooded” off the new album that had Keith Olsen intrigued and Mick Jones perturbed.

Developed in the studio when Mick Jones and Foreigner’s drummer, Dennis Elliot, locked in on a groove together that had everyone instantly tapping their feet, it was also the suggestive set of lyrics conjured by Gramm and Jones that made the song a particular standout. Spewing out innuendos like, “Come on baby, do you do more than dance?” and “Now it’s up to you, we can make a secret rendezvous,” there was no mistaking the lead singer Gramm’s libidinous intentions. The baseness, the coarseness, the utter primitiveness of the words gave rise to the song’s universal appeal, certainly among teenagers and young adults, especially of the male persuasion. It represented the age-old rock-and-roll go-to: when in doubt, sing about sex. Which thrilled Keith Olsen to no end. To him “Hot Blooded” was a relatable, brilliantly rendered little story song, just as Carole King had instructed him back in 1974. That’s what people wanted to hear—that’s where hits came from.

Yet however catchy “Hot Blooded” may have been, the simplicity of its sentiments did not exactly excite everyone in the studio during the playback session when Mick Jones held his death grip on the Dixon Ticonderoga no. 2 pencil. The person standing next to Olsen in the control room, John Kalodner, had a less than positive opinion of the song. Kalodner, who had both found and helped bring Foreigner to Atlantic Records, was one of the label’s A&R men and a rising star. This band was his baby. Though still early in what would become a lengthy and legendary career through his work in revitalizing acts such as Aerosmith, Sammy Hagar, and Cher, the longhaired, bearded, almost Jesus-looking Kalodner was born with an uncanny instinct for what the public wanted to hear. And he was sure the words to “Hot Blooded” were not it.

“Keith, where did you get those lyrics? Those really suck.”

Just as the caustic comment came flying out of John Kalodner’s mouth, the pencil in Mick Jones’s hand finally snapped from the tension. His anger evident, Jones began to rise from his chair with the intention, Olsen was sure, of knocking Kalodner’s block off. But before Jones could do something he might regret, Olsen put a hand on the guitarist’s shoulder and gently pushed him back down. It was time for the producer to do some flexing.

“John, you and me, out in the hall,” Olsen said to Kalodner, pointing.

After a brief, heated exchange in which an angry Olsen made sure Kalodner understood that slamming an artist’s songwriting in front of that very artist would under no circumstances be tolerated, a smarting Kalodner trudged off, leaving Olsen alone for the rest of the project. However, with Foreigner under a severe time constraint due to a string of intermittent tour dates, including an appearance before three hundred thousand fans at the prestigious California Jam II in March of 1978 at the Ontario Motor Speedway, it took every ounce of Olsen’s patience to get the album in the can. Though once it was there and after returning to his home base at Sound City to do all the mixing alongside Mick Jones, Olsen knew it was a hit. At least he felt certain “Hot Blooded” would be a big deal. And it was.

Rocketing to number three on the Hot 100, “Hot Blooded” quickly and forever became Foreigner’s signature song, propelling the Double Vision LP to platinum status, then double, then triple—eventually reaching 7 million units sold, surpassing Foreigner’s first album by a cool mil. Keith Olsen had done his job. He had helped take the band to the next level, just like Jones wanted. Even John Kalodner finally came around following many months of disliking Olsen for giving him a studio hallway comeuppance. After “Hot Blooded” cracked the Top Five, Kalodner called Olsen at Sound City, clearly looking to make amends.

“Keith,” he began in his usual slow and measured way, “you’re a genius.” Kalodner’s nasally voice and Philly-born-and-bred accent were famous in the biz.

“John, it was a momentary lapse of judgment, that’s all,” an equally conciliatory Olsen responded, referring to Kalodner’s in-studio comments in front of Mick Jones. “You’re the genius and you know it.”

“I know,” Kalodner replied.

But Keith Olsen had little time to reflect on either Foreigner’s latest success or his renewed friendship and business relationship with John Kalodner (who on the Double Vision back-cover credits Mick Jones and Lou Gramm had cleverly listed as “John Kalodner: John Kalodner”). Several more major recording artists would soon be stepping forward to grab most of Olsen’s increasingly precious studio time—the first, a lightning-fast guitarist originally from the central coast of Mexico.

BY THE SUMMER OF 1979 RECORD BUYERS ACROSS AMERICA WERE fed up. At least those who loved straight-ahead rock and roll. With disco music and its relentlessly pulsating four-on-the-floor percussive style saturating the airwaves with the seemingly endless number of songs spun off from the multimillion-selling Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album, something had to give. The general public could only take so much of the Bee Gees and their friends. And the catalyst for that something would prove to be the antithesis of all things disco, something as traditional as it was tranquil: America’s favorite pastime, baseball.

When an outspoken, rock-and-roll-loving local Chicago disc jockey by the name of Steve Dahl decided that enough was enough, the shock jock took it upon himself to arrange a “Disco Demolition Night” at Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox. Hyping it on his radio show for days beforehand, Dahl encouraged his many listeners to bring the vinyl disco albums of their choice to the upcoming doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers, where all the offending records would be dynamited into glorious oblivion.

Worrying that not many people would appear for the promotion, both Dahl and White Sox officials received the surprise of their lives when, instead, over fifty thousand fans showed up for the game on July 12, approximately thirty-five thousand more than the White Sox usually drew. Further, with the stadium ultimately selling out, almost another twenty thousand people who couldn’t get in milled about outside.

As the first game progressed, a throng of unruly, beer-swilling fans began flinging their albums onto the field like so many sharp-edged would-be Frisbees, causing players on both teams to scurry out of the way. Some, such as Tigers outfielder Ron LeFlore, refused to take their batting helmets off. Between games, after the highly anticipated ten-second countdown and a mammoth explosion near second base of several giant crates filled with albums, the crowd simply went berserk, leaping over seats, railings, and fences to flood the field in a mindless frenzy of destruction. They tore up the turf, stole the bases, and fought with anyone who got in their way. With the melee spiraling out of control as a giant bonfire burned unchecked where the records had once been, the police were called in, a flurry of arrests were made, and game two was canceled before it ever began.

But the image of tens of thousands of people rioting over disco records was a lasting one. The national wire services were quick to pick up on the story, and video footage made the evening newscasts in city after city. Some argued that the melee was less about true opposition to the music and more about being racist and/or homophobic, given the diversity found among disco’s performers and fans. But whatever the motivation behind each of the individuals and their participation, one thing was certain: a seemingly minor publicity stunt had unleashed a startling amount of pent-up vitriol across the country, enough to knock King Disco right off his platform shoes.

Far from realizing that its favorite source of easy revenue might actually dry up anytime soon (disco albums were often comparatively cheap and fast to make), the major record labels were ill prepared for the sudden downturn in airplay and corresponding sales across the country. Underscoring the precipitous decline, the single “Good Times” by Chic, one of the best-known disco songs of all time, first hit the Top Ten during the week of the demolition, one of an astonishing six to make it. A month later only three disco songs were in the national Top Ten. And thirty days after that it was down to zero.

At the same time the rallying cry of “Disco Sucks” began sweeping the nation, creating a fierce blowback inside a great number of record stores that were already packed to the rafters with way too many albums by the soon-to-be-forgotten, booty-shaking likes of Tavares, Heatwave, and Foxy. After retailers ultimately shipped back millions of unopened disco LPs to the record companies for credit (most labels offered a 100 percent return policy), the music industry, once considered recession-proof, in 1979 experienced its first year-over-year downturn since World War II, with revenue sliding a whopping 11 percent.

With sky-high oil prices also a contributing factor along with disco’s untimely decline (petroleum was/is the central component in manufacturing vinyl), CBS Records, the parent company of the Columbia, Epic, and Portrait labels, in but one example of the fallout, fired 120 employees in August of 1979 on the heels of cutting 52 others just weeks before, for a total of 6 percent of its workforce. By November Warner Bros. Records, the last of the majors to make cuts, lopped off 55 of its employees (8 percent of its workforce) after waiting to gauge the market viability of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, upon which they had based their fall quarter sales projections.

Furthering the dearth of desirable product in stores, disco’s popularity during 1977 and 1978 had also caused the major labels to hold back on both developing new rock artists and also aggressively promoting many of the ones they already had on their rosters. When disco abruptly fell out of favor in mid- to late 1979, it left album-rock fans feeling victorious. But it wasn’t only disco that put a dent in the dominance of album rock; it was also the growing desire among a good share of young listeners to experience other styles of music like punk and new wave. Bands like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Ramones, Blondie, and the Talking Heads were starting to set the agenda.

Though the Los Angeles–based album-rock artists who had flourished during most of the seventies tried their best to adapt to changing tastes, all too often their efforts came up short. Fleetwood Mac, after its colossal success with Rumours in 1977, abruptly shifted direction in 1979 with Tusk, an edgy, spare, double album of bold musical choices that alienated many of their fans. Rather than doing a Rumours II, as Warner Bros. had hoped, the Lindsey-Buckingham–driven, yearlong Tusk sessions at the Village Recorder in L.A.’s Westwood neighborhood (whose owner spent a then-record $1 million on building an entirely new studio within the studio just for the band) were all about visiting new horizons. But with sales coming in at a fraction of what Rumours had rung up, many considered Tusk, fairly or not, to be a major disappointment, despite selling a couple million units. “You went too far,” a disappointed Mick Fleetwood said to Buckingham afterward.

Though perhaps the most high-profile example, Fleetwood Mac was far from the only well-known rock-and-roll outfit working in the Los Angeles studios who tried to find a way to remain relevant. The band Chicago, after the shocking death of their guitarist, Terry Kath, in late 1977, regrouped several months later in an effort to find its artistic footing in the face of the rapidly changing music environment. Putting out the albums Hot Streets in 1978, 13 in 1979, and XIV in 1980, Chicago desperately tried to reinvent themselves to fit the times. With well-intentioned stabs at disco and power pop mixed in with their traditional horn-driven blues-rock sound, the hodgepodge of styles found on 13 and XIV especially were less than satisfying to their many fans, with 13 barely going gold and the Tom Dowd–produced XIV not even coming close.

Not long after, following a virtually unparalleled twelve-year hit-making run together, Columbia Records finally dropped Chicago, signaling the end of an era. But it wasn’t just Chicago who was no longer a major player; as the eighties arrived, the Eagles disbanded, as did Steely Dan, and the Doobie Brothers, who cut the bulk of their albums at Warner Bros. in Burbank and experienced an unexpected last hurrah with their Michael McDonald–infused Minute by Minute and One Step Closer albums, were about to do the same. Linda Ronstadt would soon abandon rock for good and turn her attention to nostalgic, heavily orchestrated ballads from the forties and fifties. The group Boston, after putting out their second album, Don’t Look Back, in 1978 to lukewarm response, dissolved in 1980 amidst a flurry of lawsuits between its band members (Tom Scholz would reemerge with Brad Delp and an otherwise new Boston lineup to release Third Stage in 1986). As for the California Sound singer-songwriters such as Carole King, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Warren Zevon, and others who had achieved so much success in the early to mid-seventies—well, they were running out of hits too.

It was the musical changing of the guard. Along with the influences of punk and new wave, a flurry of overwrought, overproduced power ballads were becoming rock and roll’s newest darling. Those acts who wanted to stay in the game were going to have to reinvent themselves with all that in mind. Some would make it; many would not.

IN EARLY 1967, AS CARLOS SANTANA PEERED THROUGH THE grimy kitchen window of the Tic Tock drive-in located in San Francisco’s Mission District, he instantly felt a wave of certainty wash over him: he knew on the spot that he was going to become a music star.

Pulling up outside the restaurant in their limousine to grab some hamburgers were the five members of the Grateful Dead, a local band who had recently released their first album on Warner Bros. Records. Santana, having been around the Dead on the local music scene since they were known as the Warlocks, was sure that if they could do it, he could do it. He had, after all, been playing guitar in clubs, both strip and otherwise, since he was twelve years old and living in Tijuana, Mexico, with his family. After they moved to the Bay Area during his early teen years, Santana, who was by then a virtuoso and had dropped out of school for good, picked up small-time gigs wherever he could while also working odd jobs.

After sitting in one night with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Fillmore Auditorium, Santana received his first critical acclaim. He thereafter started gaining a local following, enough to attract the high-powered impresario (and owner of the Fillmore) Bill Graham as his manager. With the savvy, tough-as-nails Graham steering his career, Santana assembled a band, developed a unique Latin-rock sound, signed a record deal with Columbia, scored a Top Ten album (Santana), a Top Ten single (“Evil Ways”), and appeared onstage at Woodstock, all by the time he was barely twenty-two.

Following this breakout success in 1969, Santana kept up the pace. He and his band, also called Santana, racked up several more huge hits in the early seventies, including “Black Magic Woman,” “Oye Como Va,” and “No One to Depend On,” along with an LP, Abraxas, that would go down as one of the finest in rock history. But as his commercial and material success grew, so did Santana’s egotistical ways. Stunning many in the music business, he ended up splitting with his original band in 1971 after only three albums. More than anything he longed for a sense of centeredness and spirituality.

During the sixties, seventies, and even into the early eighties the quest for enlightenment and inner peace was an all-consuming pursuit for many famous musicians. George Harrison, after a trip to India in 1968 with his fellow Beatles (and others such as Mike Love of the Beach Boys) to sit at the feet of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, subsequently became an ardent practitioner of Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation. Harrison’s bandmate, John Lennon, later tried utilizing a variety of current self-help philosophies, including Primal Scream therapy, while his wife, Yoko Ono, favored EST (Erhard Seminars Training). For every rock-and-roller so inclined, there seemed to be a correspondingly personalized path to the hoped-for attainment of bliss, which also often included the time-honored options of booze and drugs. For Carlos Santana, who, after his breakout commercial success, had partied for a while just like the rest of his musical peers, the way toward fulfillment would eventually materialize in the form of a robe-wearing Bangladeshi expat mystic by the name of Sri Chinmoy.

WHEN KEITH OLSEN ANSWERED HIS PHONE TO FIND BILL GRAHAM on the other end of the line, he couldn’t have been happier. By the fall of 1979 the San Francisco–based Graham was one of the most powerful men in the music business, with concert promotion and artist management companies that worked with only the biggest names. With Olsen’s own work for Fleetwood Mac, the Grateful Dead, and, most recently, Foreigner putting him on the short list of the most sought-after producers around, Graham wanted to see whether Olsen had any interest in taking on Carlos Santana.

After a red-hot start to the seventies, then a long dry stretch, followed by a brief resurgence in late 1977 with the album Moonflower, the superstar Santana’s record sales had, for the most part, slowed to the point where he was lucky to go gold with each new release. Perhaps, Graham hoped, Olsen could jumpstart his famous client’s career, just as he had done for others.

“Now, Carlos may be a little difficult from time to time,” Graham said, chuckling. “But you know that, right?”

A battle-tested Olsen shrugged it off.

“Yeah, I’ve worked with difficult artists before.”

Olsen wanted the gig. Even with slowing album sales, Santana was still a hell of a big name. Plus, Olsen figured he had already seen pretty much all there was to see inside a recording studio. But that came before he knew that he would be answering to not one but two people on the new Santana project: Carlos Santana as well as his personal guru, Sri Chinmoy.

Instead of recording the basic tracks at Sound City, Santana wanted to work in his new favorite studio, a place in downtown San Francisco called the Automatt. Formerly owned by CBS Records and before that by Bill Putnam’s Coast Recorders, the facility had become—along with the nearby Wally Heider Studios, Pacific Recording in San Mateo, Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, and the Record Plant in Sausalito—one of the main studios in the Bay Area. Though it wasn’t Olsen’s first choice—he much preferred his own equipment back at Sound City—the rock band Journey had started working at the Automatt. So had the famed jazz musicians Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, who cut several albums there. There were worse places Olsen could have ended up. Mostly he just needed to figure out how and when he could get some songs down on tape.

With Carlos Santana usually busy on Wednesdays enjoying his life and then spending the next day meditating and also atoning with Sri Chinmoy via long distance, there were automatically two days of the week unavailable for recording. That left Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, plus here and there on the weekends to put together what would become the Marathon album.

However, even then, as each song was recorded, sometimes just parts of songs, Santana—who had officially changed his full name to Carlos Devadip Santana in honor of his spiritual beliefs—insisted that the musical passages and/or lyrics be played over the phone to Sri Chinmoy back in New York City so the guru could determine whether they were of sufficient “oneness.” If they were, then Chinmoy would give his blessing for Santana, Olsen, Dave DeVore (Olsen’s lead engineer), and all the gathered musicians in Santana’s band to continue. If not, the song would have to be reworked. With Olsen knowing little about Eastern religious philosophies and exactly nothing about Sri Chinmoy, he had to cross his fingers and hope for the best each time the oneness call was placed.

But despite the oddness of the production process, Olsen genuinely liked Carlos Santana as a person and certainly respected his incredible guitar-playing skills. More so, Olsen wanted to produce a smash album for him. After all, that was the reason Bill Graham hired him in the first place. To do so, Olsen knew he would need to identify at least one standout track among the bunch they had been recording that could be released to FM album-rock radio. That’s what still drove album sales in 1979: airplay. And more than anything, picking the right song was arguably Olsen’s chief skill—he usually knew a hit when he heard one.

Realizing there were two single possibilities that had been put down on tape during the sessions—one, an up-tempo rocker called “Winning” penned by Russ Ballard and the other a midtempo power ballad called “You Know That I Love You”—Olsen very much wanted to go with the former. It would be a perfect lead track on the new album, and radio would probably jump all over it.

Bill Graham also loved it.

“Oh, my God, that’s a hit,” he said, practically dancing around the room after Olsen played a demo for him. “Finally, we’re going to have another hit with Santana.”

But there was no need to even call Sri Chinmoy for his opinion this time around. When Carlos Santana heard the “Winning” playback with his band’s lead singer, Alex Ligertwood, passionately belting out the overdubbed lines, “I had a dream / But it turned to dust / What I thought was love / That must have been lust,” Santana turned as white as the linen pants and gauze shirt he was wearing.

“Nooo!” he yelped. “That song can’t be on my record!”

As Olsen would quickly learn, Sri Chinmoy had a thing about lust. Temptation, lust’s nasty little partner in crime, led to impurity, which then led to preventing a person from becoming a fully God-realized follower. Oneness was apparently okay. But any sort of “twoness” was definitely out.

All of which left Olsen incredulous. “Winning” was easily the best song on the album as well as the most commercial. And now it had to be tossed, all over one word. When Olsen broke the news to Graham, after a brief four-letter word outburst, the tears simply rolled down Graham’s cheeks as he imagined the money pouring out of his pockets. CBS Records was already excited enough by an advance copy of the track to begin negotiating a new lucrative record deal with Graham on behalf of Santana. Now Marathon would have to be released without “Winning.” Graham’s leverage was gone. A dejected Olsen returned to Sound City with the master tapes, dutifully did all the mixing there, then turned in the final product to the label, ready to move on.

But temptation and impurity would win out.

As the vicissitudes of mysticism would have it, not long after the release of Marathon in the fall of 1979, Santana abruptly parted company with Sri Chinmoy after years of tutelage, thereby opening the door for the song about lust to be released after all. CBS quickly tacked “Winning” onto Santana’s next LP, Zebop!, which came out a mere seven months after Marathon in April of 1980. Sure enough, “Winning” won, zooming to number two on the Mainstream Rock Charts and making it to number seventeen on the traditional Billboard Hot 100, Santana’s best showing in almost a decade. Carlos had his comeback hit, Graham secured a new contract for his client, and Keith Olsen had come through once again. Barely.