Accurate or not, my impression is that a lot of people believe Santana—born as the Santana Blues Band and made famous by its imaginative melding of rock, Latin, jazz, and soul elements—first made a strong push to get in the charts with 1999’s megahit album Supernatural. But the truth is, bandleader Carlos Santana has always been a restless musical traveler, alternating jammy excursions and esoteric experiments with more commercially inclined collections of songs.
Carlos broke up the founding Santana lineup after 1972’s smashingly successful III, regrouping with a smaller ensemble for the spiritually-tinged, experimental Cavaranserai, before making the even more jazz-and-spirituality focused Love Devotion Surrender album with John McLaughlin. When keyboardist-vocalist Gregg Rolie chose this era as his off-ramp (to co-found Journey), Santana brought in Tom Coster, a talented jazz-fusion player and arranger, who became his chief musical partner and foil for the band’s next several albums, up through 1977’s Moonflower.
Coster’s 1978 departure coincided with Santana—and one assumes Columbia—making a push for a return to the band’s earlier chart successes. But a decade had passed since “Evil Ways,” with Santana himself the sole remaining member of the original band, and success in 1978 looked different than it had in 1968. The result is what AllMusic’s William Ruhlmann astutely described as “one of the band’s more compromised efforts.”
For Inner Secrets, Carlos and company—Greg Walker (vocals), David Margen (bass), Graham Lear (drums), Chris Rhyne (keyboards), David Solberg (keyboards), Chris Solberg (rhythm guitar), Pete Escovedo (percussion), Armando Peraza (percussion), and Raul Rekow (percussion)—welcomed in the frankly commercial producing team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, whose previous clients included Glen Campbell, The Four Tops, The Righteous Brothers and Tavares. Lambert and Potter’s attempts to meld Carlos’ jammy Latin-jazz-rock tendencies with more mainstream sounds were then applied to an album featuring more covers than originals.
Opener “Dealer / Spanish Rose” tries to have it both ways by cross-fading the radio-friendly “Dealer”—a muscular Traffic cover—into a flamenco-influenced Carlos instrumental, as too-chirpy synths trade phrases with squalls of guitar. “Move On” (a band original) and “Stormy” (a cover of the Classics IV’s 1968 Top 10 hit) both lean into the group’s soul and r&b side, playing to the strengths of this era’s lead vocalist Greg Walker, with the latter being released as a modestly successful (#32) single.
Song three is where you have to look at context to understand what in the world is going on. Lambert and Potter’s “One Chain Don’t Make No Prison,” originally written for the Four Tops, is arranged here as a Latin-inflected disco tune. The thing is, it’s not terrible; you can see what they were going for, given the times and what was getting on the radio. (It’s worth noting that during this same era, Bruce Springsteen wrote “Cover Me” for Donna Summer, before electing to keep it. Say what you want about disco; it did have an influence beyond the genre itself.)
Santana opens up side two with “Well All Right,” a catchy, anthemic cover of Buddy Holly, of all people. It’s a far cry from “Black Magic Woman,” but again, it’s not terrible, manifesting a kind of tidal surge as it comes into the chorus that feels tailor made for radio (and yes, it was a single, reaching #69 in the US). Next up, the Lambert/Potter/Santana/Walker/Margen co-write “Open Invitation” veers in a hard rock direction, with a solo that even features Carlos doing some tapping (given the year, it’s hard to read this other than as a reply to Eddie Van Halen). The latter half of the track finds Santana pushing farther, taking the fire and bite that has always been his trademark and turning it up to eleven.
“Life Is A Lady / Holiday” is another odd bird, an instrumental medley opening with a rather bland Lambert-penned piano ballad decorated with sustain-drenched soloing from Carlos, before the Carlos-penned second half offers a salsa-flavored Latin-jazz-rock romp. Lambert and Potter’s “The Facts Of Love” is the album’s lowlight, a pedestrian pop-rock song with Walker’s soulful lead vocal and Santana’s stinging licks the only elements of note.
Album highlight “Wham!” closes things out, a percussion-driven stomper of an instrumental with some of Santana’s fieriest playing on the album, alongside Hammond organ adding soul and texture. It’s the one tune here that carries forward the original band’s sound, in the hands of co-composers Santana, Lear, Peraza, Rekow and Escovedo.
Inner Secrets has its moments, as nearly every Santana album does; the core elements of the group’s unique sound are all here, just frequently muted or modified. This album wasn’t the first time Carlos Santana compromised musically in the interest of chasing tastes and chart position, and it wouldn’t be the last. The tone and bite of his wailing guitar is unmistakable, but the songs here feel both less organic and less interesting than usual.
