Guitar Heaven By Santana

Santana is one of the legends in the world of music. In 1999 he came up with the album ‘Supernatural’ that dominated the charts, stores and the Grammy Awards. Back then he featured a number of guest artists in that album including Rob Thomas and Everlast to name some. In 2011, Santana came up with the album ‘Guitar Heaven’ which contains evergreen songs from the past with featured vocalists and some improvisations.

The album ‘Guitar Heaven’ is full of old classics which includes classics of Led Zeppelin, ACDC, Doors and Deep Purple among some others. In fact this particular album is not that impressive. All the old classic songs are re-sung with some added flavours of the Santana signature licks and solos. The guest artists or more over the vocalists include Scot Stapp, Chris Daughtry, Gavin Rosadale, Chris Cornell and few others. The biggest layback in the album is ACDC’s back in black. Santana was unable to recreate the song. Another great classic of all time ‘smoke on the water’ by Deep Purple is terribly messed up in this ‘Guitar Heaven’ album. These re-sung and re-created songs are nowhere close to the old classics.


Santana however had tried to rejuvenate those old classics but everything goes wrong. The choice of songs is completely wrong because Santana’s way of playing guitar does not at all click with ‘smoke on the water’ or ‘back in black’. Santana has his signature solos, licks and counters and they would have sounded very good on his original versions. But when he chose old classics, his way of playing completely differed and did not blend well with the songs. Rating the album has been very hard here because, his solos and guitar works are absolutely pleasing but they did not go well with the old classic rock songs.