Carlos Santana Wants His Own Church

Jamming for the Lord....

By Fred Mills

Word got out over the weekend that Carlos Santana is looking to quit music when he turns 67 and become a church minister. The legendary guitarist, currently 61, set the six-year plan into motion via an interview with Rolling Stone in which he likened his career arc to that of Little Richard's (although, it should be noted, the latter leads a dual career as both a minister and a rocker - the two disciplines aren't mutually exclusive).

Said Santana, "I'm going to stop playing when I'm 67 and work on what I really want to do, which is to be a minister, like Little Richard. I'm not sick of what I do, but I find that God gave me the gift of communication even without my guitar and with the ability to get people unstuck with certain sections of the Bible having to do with guilt, shame, judgment and fear."

"The thing I learned is, you have to go through the darkest night of the soul to get to the brightest light of the day, and that's what I did last year," added Santana, referring to how his Faith got him through tough times. He indicated that he'd like to start his church in Maui, Hawaii.

Santana's current Live Your Light tour wraps Oct. 12 in Concord, Calif.

Perhaps the first thing Santana could do once he gets off the road is to pray that Rob Thomas and Chad Kroeger both get hit by a bus so he won't be tempted to collaborate with those doofuses again and decimate whatever remaining credibility he has with his longtime fanbase.

Or maybe he could simply join the Church of John Coltrane and take things from there.