Santana riding high with new fiancee, album

The 63-year-old guitar legend proposed to drummer Cindy Blackman onstage during a July concert in Illinois. "I wanted them to know that God has sent me a queen," he says of the public display of affection.

While love has made Santana no less cosmic, it does seem to have put a bounce in his stride during his "Supernatural Santana" shows at the Hard Rock Hotel.

"Kiss your girlfriend. Kiss your boyfriend," he urged the audience at one point last week.

"We love to make the females happy," he told the crowd at another point. "Because when the ladies are happy, everything happens. … When the ladies are not happening, even Barack Obama won’t help you."

During an earlier telephone chat, Santana proclaims, "It’s a grand time to be alive, because it makes the music a lot more vibrant, alive and juicier."

Santana explained that when his longtime drummer Dennis Chambers couldn’t make a gig, he had divine inspiration to call Blackman, 50, who has drummed for Lenny Kravitz and mainstream jazz players.

They started "texting and communicating" about shared passions such as Miles Davis, and "before I knew it, my heart felt I could trust putting aside the professional stuff of being a bandleader and open the door to intimacy."

"Being with Cindy, we can talk for hours on music alone," he says. "So it’s wonderful when you can find a spiritual mate (where) nothing is boring. This feather would not touch the ground. It just keeps floating."

He says the two plan a December wedding in Maui and will make Las Vegas their primary residence.

Santana proclaims he is "still a hippie, who believes that love and peace is better than greed and anger and hate and fear." He also says "God is very real" to him and his fiancee. "We follow this inner voice that is very clear."

Those not used to talking to the guitarist can be taken aback by his upfront expression of these faiths. Take, for instance, his unusual way of explaining what turns out to be a common reason for moving from California to Las Vegas:

"I love being in a place where I can be of service. The Bay Area is not equipped to reward people who give so much to children. Las Vegas is."

And by that he means?

"It’s really expensive to live in the Bay Area. … The taxes that I pay a year just for breathing in California, it’s obscene. I’d rather give that money to poor people in Las Vegas and around the world (by) establishing full-time residency legally."

By moving to Nevada with no state income tax, "I can help the Bay Area more by having a say-so where my money goes, (rather) than just give it to them blindly and it goes to the war."

He’s asked if the move to Las Vegas might shock fans who know him as one of the tie-dyed pioneers of San Francisco psychedelia in the late ’60s. "They said the same thing when I moved from the Mission District to Marin: ‘Now you’re gonna be one of them.’ "

His response to that is, " ‘Them’ is called people. Children of God. I tell my son this all the time: Be for everyone, but belong to no one. That way people don’t put a headlock on you."

Santana doesn’t talk much about the nuts and bolts of the music business, so record mogul Clive Davis did it for him in a recent event at the Hard Rock to advance the Sept. 21 release of "Guitar Heaven … The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time."

The 78-year-old Davis was the driving force behind 1999’s "Supernatural" album, which harnessed Santana’s sprawling jam-based sound into radio-friendly singles. Propelled by the modern standard "Smooth," the album sold 15 million copies in the final days before the dawn of digital copying.

Davis has been chasing it ever since, repeating the duet format to diminishing results. Davis was first to call himself out by explaining that "Guitar Heaven" offers a new twist on the formula.

"The idea of repressing that guitar wizardry into a three-and-a-half-minute record for Top 40 purposes has its incredible benefits, no apology needed, but it also has its limitations," Davis told reporters at a "listening party" previewing the new songs. "Carlos needed to stretch out. The world wanted Carlos to stretch out. God knows rock critics wanted Carlos to stretch out."

So "Guitar Heaven" takes on the classics of the rock era, from Led Zeppelin ("Whole Lotta Love," voiced by Chris Cornell) to Van Halen ("Dance the Night Away," sung by Train’s Pat Monahan).

OK. The latter is indeed a short radio single. "We can’t give up on radio," Davis explained.

For his part, Santana acknowledged such endeavors require "a tremendous amount of trust and learning when to defer." But, he advises, "If you want to create a miracle for yourself, learn to get out of your own way."

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