“‘Where's Carlos?’ ‘He's in that room.’ So my parents and I, we knock on the door, and he's, ‘Oh, you're the kid I heard about… do you want to play tonight?’”: How a 9-year-old guitar prodigy ended up jamming with Carlos Santana

In a new interview with Broken Records podcast, jazz guitarist Julian Lage tells the story of how, at the age of nine, he ended up jamming with Carlos Santana in front of an audience of 20,000.

It happened in 1997, when Santana was touring the US with another guitar legend, Jeff Beck. The young Julian joined Carlos on stage for a performance of the Funkadelic classic Maggot Brain.

As Julian now recalls, his connection with Carlos began with a chance encounter.

“My father worked at Fog City diner in San Francisco,” he says, “and someone came in who he was friends with and he said, ‘I know Santana and I heard your son's playing guitar.’ My dad said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Well, Santana's playing at [a San Francisco venue] in two weeks. You should just show up. Usually they get there by 2pm.’

“That's all the information we had. So we got in the car and we drove there and showed up at 2pm.”

He continues: “This would have been when I was seven. We go backstage. ‘Where's Carlos?’ ‘He's in that room.’ ‘Okay.’ So my parents and I, we knock on the door, and he's, ‘Oh, you're the kid I heard about. Come in.’

“We sat, we played, and that night it was Jeff Beck and him doing this tour. But check this out. The best part about it to me was he said, ‘Do you want to play tonight?’ And my parents and I just kind of intuitively looked at each other. I said, ‘No, I didn't come to play in front of 20,000 people. I came to meet the master! That's the point.’ And he said, ‘Well, no worries, enjoy the show. And we come here every year, so when we come back you should just come again and bring your guitar.’

“So with no communication, a year later, almost to the date we drove up, got there at two, knocked on the door and he said, ‘Oh, you came. Do you have guitar this time? Yeah? Okay.’ And that’s [what is seen] the video…

“It was surreal,” Julian says. “But also, I don't think I was in an environment that hyped anything up. It also didn't push me down. And I've known people who have that figure in their life who says, you know, ‘Don't get too comfortable, kid.’ There was none of that good cop, bad cop, macho stuff. It was just like, just respond, be present.”

Julian says in conclusion: “Music, at the end of the day, as we all know, is a healing force of the universe. What we're talking about is very generous, it's very loving, it's very supportive, and it protects us.

“I knew that it wasn't your hands moving. It's this other thing, and it's for all of us. It's not just for the for a few, you know, it's here to make us happy and healthier.”