Carlos Santana

What's the right metaphor for this Santana-in-Vegas thing?

Sure it makes sense on the baby boomers-still-spend-money level. And while the business model is similar, it sounds bizarre to equate an exclusive Santana residency at the Hard Rock Hotel to Las Vegas showcases by Cher or Barry Manilow.

"In my own vision, I feel like we're bringing a Trojan horse to Las Vegas," Carlos Santana says.

Bingo.

"Not necessarily to infiltrate or to infect," he is quick to add. "But Las Vegas is basically realized on luck, chance and fortune. ... We're bringing something really different. It's called power to God's grace. There's no chance with that one."

One is not in for mundane chatter when one speaks with the 61-year-old guitarist, who, if all went as planned, plays his first shows this week in the Hard Rock's new 4,000-capacity concert hall. (He continues a batch of shows through June 14.)

You can squeeze him for noncosmic details about his life, such as the fact that he plays tennis and will be looking up his pals Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf.

But the man is even more spiritual than his music. The Santana sound can be "sexy, swampy and funky, but it still has the element of (John) Coltrane and Mahalia Jackson in it," he says. "It makes your hair stand up beyond the illusion of entertainment or show business.

"I love infusing and activating people with knowing that you and everyone in your family has a spark of the divine and you can make a difference."

This is the guy who recently was on "American Idol"?

And did we mention the Hard Rock showcase is called "Supernatural Santana -- A Trip Through the Hits"? It's a nod to the "Supernatural" album, which spent 12 weeks at No. 1 in 1999 and 2000, a record only recently challenged by Taylor Swift.

But to talk about Billboard chart records or Soundscan sales with Santana? "To me it would be like asking how much oxygen do my nostrils take for my lungs to breathe," he says. "I would just say I'm grateful to be breathing."

But it's always been this way, this push-pull of commercial and spiritual forces. Whenever Santana has threatened to veer into music-industry irrelevancy -- at least once per decade, it seems -- less-cosmic forces have pulled him back to the mainstream.

More than once, it was record mogul Clive Davis who steered Santana back from the brink of jazz-fusion obscurity. Davis assembled the pop power behind "Supernatural," which was propelled into a phenomenon when Rob Thomas voiced the mega-hit "Smooth."

"I am deeply grateful for (Davis') going out of his way to believe in me, to create an atmosphere of artists, singers, producers, managers, lawyers, accountants," Santana says. "By the time I went onstage, all I have to do is penetrate the note."

Santana says he approached "Supernatural" and two follow-ups in the same duets formula with "supreme balance" as his goal. "Don't be a control freak, and don't be a wet noodle that says yes to everything. ... Do it with integrity."

He also says, "You can put all the same ingredients we did with 'Supernatural' and put in another person, and it may not necessarily fly. And that's because of my heart. I have a different kind of heart.

"My heart is not about Carlos, it's about bringing it all together," he explains. "I bring it all with me, I don't leave anybody out. Clive could feel it. And he knew I wasn't going to say, 'I don't feel it. I don't do windows.' "

Santana didn't seem to be feeling it on the season finale of "Idol," where he played his guitar, face down, barely acknowledging this year's crop of youngsters as they traded licks on "Smooth" from a safe distance.

He couldn't have seemed more out of place, yet couldn't be more gracious. "Somehow in this lifetime you get opportunities," he says. "Woodstock was a big door. 'Supernatural' was a big door. 'American Idol' was a big door."

The talent contest took him back to his youth in Tijuana, Mexico, when the son of a violinist would enter local talent shows and usually win.

"I used to be afraid of many eyes looking at me. But that's because I was afraid of me." Once he understood that, he was fine. "They always looked at my dad like that, and I just wanted to be like my dad."

Instead, his transcendental guitar became a key part of San Francisco psychedelia. Santana -- the name originally covering a collective band -- blended American jazz, blues and rock with Latin rhythms and percussion fueled by timbales and congas.

He says he remembers opening his eyes after one solo in Golden Gate Park and seeing the faces of concert promoter Bill Graham and guitarists Jerry Garcia and Michael Bloomfield, laughing as if to say, "You're on it. You got it."

"It's like they were witnessing something that was coming from all of them. That just made me feel -- well, that's my favorite word right now -- validated. In a spiritual way, not in an ego way."

He was validated again by Bob Dylan, with whom he toured in 1984 and 1993. Dylan told him, "I want you to know you're one of the few who carries the pristine principles of the '60s, of real love and peace, pursuit of unity and harmony."

"He went on, and he was just validating my spirit. To me, that was the equivalent of being knighted. The queen doesn't mean anything to me, but Bob Dylan does."

And he's validated again whenever he hears radio-friendly singles such as "The Game of Love" in public places or he's asked for an autograph by youngsters.

"Being 61 and being relevant is really an incredible blessing," he says. "The main thing I love to see is when people cry and laugh and dance at the same time. When people cry and laugh at the same time, those are my platinum records."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.