Guitar Gently Weeps featuring India Arie and Yo Yo Ma First Single For Upcoming Record Guitar Heaven! Pre-order Today!
(August 10, 2010 – New York, NY) The longest-running, most successful partnership in the history of rock takes flight anew, as legendary Rock And Roll Hall of Fame inductees Carlos Santana and Clive Davis, Chief Creative Officer of Sony Music Entertainment, collaborate on the brand new concept album, GUITAR HEAVEN: THE GREATEST GUITAR CLASSICS OF ALL TIME, arriving in stores September 21st on Arista Records. The album was co-produced by Howard Benson, Matt Serletic, Carlos Santana and Clive Davis.
Working from their collective encyclopedic knowledge of rock, Carlos Santana and Clive Davis devised a list of guitar-centric titles – and then invited a Who’s Who of guest vocalists to perform on every track. Singers range from Chris Cornell (on Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”), Pat Monahan (on Van Halen’s “Dance the Night Away”), Chester Bennington and Ray Manzarek (on The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm”), Rob Thomas (on Cream’s “Sunshine Of Your Love), Scott Weiland (on the Rolling Stones’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’”), Chris Daughtry (on Def Leppard’s “Photograph”), Gavin Rossdale (on T. Rex’s “Bang A Gong”) to rapper Nas (on AC/DC’s “Back In Black”), veteran Joe Cocker (on Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing”), and more. The European Edition features Roch Voisine in place of Andy Vargas on Under the Bridge. The Japanese Edition features Kenichi Asai on La Grange.A very special dedication to George Harrison comes together on GUITAR HEAVEN…, with “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” on the album’s first single featuring singer india.arie and master cellist Yo-Yo Ma. “Listening to the song,” Olivia Harrison told Carlos, “it made me jump for joy and cry at the same time.” (Please see below for complete and deluxe edition track listing.)
Along with these stars, Carlos offers “supreme validation and compliment” to his full-time band for their work on GUITAR HEAVEN…, their first entire full-length studio album recording together. Band members who join him on the album include Dennis Chambers (drums), Benny Rietveld (bass), Karl Perrazo (timbales), Tommy Anthony (rhythm guitar), Freddie Ravel (keyboards), Andy Vargas (background vocals), and Raul Rekow (Congas). Bill Ortiz (trumpet) and Jeff Cressman (trombone) also appear on the record.
“To create these songs,” said Carlos, “it took an incredible amount of trust – from Howard Benson and Matt Serletic, and from, and all these incredible singers, all these incredible musicians, they had to trust me, and I trusted Clive, so it’s a chain reaction of love, because that’s the highest form of love that there is on this planet: Trust.”
“The cuts are special and the guest stars are special,” said Clive Davis. “But what is unique and why this album stands for more than just the individual songs or titles, is that they were indeed chosen because they’re guitar classics. And they celebrate the guitar because of the performance of Carlos Santana.”