Musician feuds often get out of hand, and the seemingly unbothered Carlos Santana has found himself embroiled in a few. Here are the most famous musicians, who just don't find Carlos Santana — or his music — very "Smooth."
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00:00Musician feuds often get out of hand, and the seemingly unbothered Carlos Santana has
00:05found himself embroiled in a few. Here are the most famous musicians who just don't find
00:09Carlos Santana, or his music, very smooth.
00:13Both the most recognizable and least popular member of KISS, fire-breathing, blood-spewing,
00:17makeup-wearing bassist Gene Simmons has made a lot of enemies in the music world, and beyond.
00:21I was just joking because she's a comedian.
00:28Thanks for the question.
00:29KISS disparaged the likes of Axl Rose, Madonna, and N.W.A., but he's not the one who started
00:34a beef with Carlos Santana. KISS concerts are a purposeful spectacle, with pyrotechnics,
00:39set pieces, and abundant theatrics. In 2005, Santana eviscerated KISS' approach to performance,
00:44singling out Simmons in the process. Santana reportedly said,
00:48"'He's not a musician, he's an entertainer.' KISS is Las Vegas Entertainment, so he wouldn't
00:52know what music is anyway. That's why he wears all that stuff. A musician doesn't need the
00:56mask or the mascara. There's a difference between an entertainer and a musician."
01:00Four years later, Simmons delivered a full response to Santana's criticism during an
01:04interview about a concert tour with FOX 5, a station from the also-insulted Las Vegas.
01:09Simmons said,
01:10"'It's time for us to go out and show the little boys how the big boys do it. I'm sick
01:13and tired of these bands like Carlos Santana looking at his shoes and thinking that's a
01:17rock concert. Get off the stage.'"
01:19"'I'm Sheriff Dirty B. Hines. If you do the crime, you do the time.'"
01:24As a lead singer and primary instrumentalist for the dark, heavy, and experimental metal
01:27band Mastodon, Bret Hines understands other guitarists like Carlos Santana. He also has
01:32very specific tastes, and he isn't afraid to speak up about music industry figures he
01:36doesn't care for, even the seemingly untouchable ones. Hines has made his opinions known about
01:41musicians like rocker Dave Grohl, and he's not a big fan of Santana, either.
01:45Hines doesn't necessarily hate Santana, the band, or Carlos Santana, the person. Emphasizing
01:51the past tense verb, he told the A.V. Club,
01:53"'I loved Santana. Loved Santana.'"
01:56His iron distaste for the musician sits solely with Smooth, a pop collaboration for the 1999
02:01album Supernatural, with Matchbox 20 singer Rob Thomas providing a vocal counterpart to
02:05Santana's lyrical guitar. The song spent 12 weeks at No. 1 and won three Grammy Awards,
02:10including Song of the Year. When it came to Supernatural, Hines admitted,
02:14"'I don't hate Santana. I want to clarify that. I don't hate Santana at all. I just
02:18hate that he made this really horrible album.'"
02:20As for Smooth, Hines wouldn't mince words. His take?
02:23"'It's just like someone taking a carrot peeler and gouging it into your ears and skinning
02:27your ears. It's just, ick. Just talking about it, I'm cringing.'"
02:32At the 2005 Academy Awards, El Otro Lado Del Rio from The Motorcycle Diaries won the prize
02:37for Best Original Song. The South American road trip movie was based on the writings
02:41of revolutionary Che Guevara, and when Carlos Santana performed El Otro Lado Del Rio at
02:46the Oscars ceremony, he did so while wearing a Guevara T-shirt as well as a crucifix necklace.
02:51Guevara was a prominent figure in the political movement that installed communism in Cuba
02:55in the late 1950s. The Cuban Revolution and its aftermath imprisoned thousands and killed
02:59as many as 141,000, including Christians whose religious belief didn't align with communism.
03:05Many Cubans hold Guevara responsible for the bloodshed, among them award-winning saxophonist
03:09and Latin jazz pioneer Guido de Rivera.
03:12During the 2005 Oscars, de Rivera published an open letter directed at Santana. Translated
03:17from Spanish, it read,
03:18"'You showed your stupidity by appearing at the Oscar Awards proudly donning a large crucifix
03:22over a T-shirt with a stereotypical image of the butch,' which is how Che Guevara is
03:26known to Cubans who had to lamentably suffer under him at said prison. One of these Cubans
03:31was my cousin Bebo, incarcerated there precisely for being a Christian. The same one who always
03:35bitterly tells me how he could hear from his cell the firing squads at dawn."
03:39De Rivera also likened Santana's performance to, quote,
03:41"'a slap in the face' to those young Cubans who in the 60s had to hide to be able to listen
03:45to your records."