Carlos Santana Reunited With Drummer After Finding Out He Was Homeless For 40 Years

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Guitar legend Carlos Santana says he plans on entering the studio with his old drummer, Marcus Malone, after a California news host recently reunited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee with the now-homeless percussionist.

Malone performed as a member of the Santana Blues Band up until 1968 when he was convicted of a crime and sent to San Quentin Prison, according to Bay Area station KRON4. The next year Santana performed with his eponymous rock group at the first Woodstock music festival in New York state alongside the likes of The Who, Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead, but by then had last contact with his ex-drummer.

Neither Santana nor Malone has seen each other in the four-and-a-half decades since, until just recently when KRON’s Stanley Roberts reunited the two in Oakland, California. Roberts met Malone earlier this year while filming a segment on illegal dumpsites in the area. Malone identified himself as a homeless man who lives in a camper and rummages through garbage for a living. He also told Roberts that he was an original member of the Santana Blues Band, which the legendary guitarist was able to confirm when the two were recently reunited.

“I brought you a friend,” Roberts is heard telling Malone as he walks the homeless man from his camper in Oakland to a pickup truck parked nearby. “Man!” the old drummer exclaims as Santana begins to exit the automobile. “Marcus ‘the magnificent’ Malone,” Santana says in the clip as the two embrace in the first hug between the two in nearly 50 years. The news clips of their latest encounter has gone viral after being published by the station, and now Santana says he wants to work with Malone once again: getting him off the street and back into the studio.
“I want to offer my brother Marcus Malone an opportunity to record on the next album with the original band, with Greg Rolie,” Santana told CNN this weekend. “We wrote a song for him called ‘Magnificent Marcus Malone.’ We want him to play on it and we’re going to start, Lord willing, in January or February. So I would like to get him some congas so he can get his hands hard again because he hasn’t been playing the congas in a while.”

“It’s gone viral,” the guitarist admitted during this weekend’s interview when asked about the reaction so far in the days since the KRON clip has surfaced. “It’s in India, it’s in Malaysia, and people are crying. They don’t mind crying tears of gratitude and joy that two brothers can get back together. We all have people in our family who get misplaced, not lost but misplaced. A lot of people all over the world are connecting with this story. They in return will do something for someone that will bless them.”

“We will offer him whatever we can offer him to get back on his feet with elegance and grace to live a happy life,” he said.

KRON’s Roberts said “This is the biggest story I’ve come across. It all happened by happenstance, being at the right place at the right time. I firmly believe there is a reason for everything and I want to see Marcus perform with the band again.”