On a visit to 2200 Studios not long ago, Carlos Santana looked around the room and said something that stopped everyone cold. "This place is more important than the Vatican." He wasn't being glib. He's been saying versions of that for fifty years, mostly with his guitar.
Santana's relationship with this building isn't the story of an artist who passed through. He lives in Sausalito. The studio was built, in part, for artists like him. That proximity turned into something deeper than convenience. It became a creative home base that outlasted record labels, ownerships, and a federal takeover.
From the beginning
In its first year, the studio worked on projects by Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix' Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles. The Plant opened in October 1972. Santana was there almost immediately. That wasn't an accident. The studio was built to serve Bay Area bands and give artists from Los Angeles a place to escape. For Santana, it was simply down the road.
The Bay Area music scene in the early seventies was unlike anything else in the country. Santana sat at the center of it. His band's Latin-rock fusion had already changed what popular music sounded like, and the Plant gave him a room serious enough to match his ambitions. He kept coming back through the decade, building a familiarity with the rooms and the engineers that would pay off later in ways nobody anticipated.
First customer after Club Fed
In 1985, federal agents raided 2200 Bridgeway. The studio's owner at the time faced serious criminal charges, and the government seized the building and its contents. The studio acquired a new nickname: Club Fed. Santana was its first customer after it reopened. That detail says something real about loyalty. The building was under federal management, its reputation in flux, and the artist who showed up first was the one who'd been working there longest.
The Record Plant reopened under U.S. government control with the original staff retained to keep sessions running. It operated that way for roughly fourteen months and generated close to three-quarters of a million dollars for the government. 2200 Bridgeway remains the only recording studio in American history to have been owned and operated by the federal government — and Santana was the artist who walked back through the door first.
On the back of a Santana album recorded during that period, the liner notes carried a single line: Special thanks to Club Fed. It's the kind of in-joke only an artist with deep history in the building would think to make. The studio had been raided, seized, and reopened under federal management, and Santana — already more than a decade into his relationship with the rooms — answered with a thank-you in the credits.
Blues for Salvador
Blues for Salvador was recorded at The Plant in Sausalito using analog tape. Production was overseen by Carlos Santana, with co-production credits going to drummer and keyboardist Chester Thompson on most tracks. The title track emerged from collaborative studio jams between the two — the kind of unhurried, in-the-room development the building was built to support.
The sessions leaned on the core touring band Santana had built up through the mid-eighties: Chester Thompson on keys, Alphonso Johnson on bass, Armando Peraza on percussion, and Leon "Ndugu" Chancler on drums. They cut to two-inch tape, stretched out on extended instrumental passages, and treated the studio less like a clock and more like a workshop. Several tracks were essentially captured live in the room with minimal overdubs.
The record was released by Columbia in 1987 and won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1989 for the title track. It wasn't a commercial breakthrough, but it confirmed that Santana's relationship with the Plant wasn't just about hit records. He used it to work, to experiment, to push — and to make the kind of guitar record that justifies a building like 2200 Bridgeway.
A supernatural comeback nobody saw coming
By the mid-1990s, Santana's commercial standing had faded. After his record deal with Columbia ended in 1991, his subsequent albums failed to attract strong sales. He was still one of the most respected guitarists alive, but radio had moved on. He needed the right label, the right record, and the right room.
He found all three in Sausalito. Engineer Glenn Kolotkin, whose relationship with Santana went back to the classic albums of the seventies, got a call asking him to come out and help record what would become Supernatural. Kolotkin started recording at The Plant, close to where Santana lives, and the sessions covered 60 or 70 minutes of material across a dozen tunes.
The process was methodical. They'd work four or five days at a time, twelve hours per session, take three days off while the band toured, then return to record. The opening track "(Da Le) Yaleo" was one of the first things cut, with the band running through it a few times before they found the take.
The sessions drew attention well before the album was finished. A record label executive came to the Plant for two weeks just to be in the room. Not to consult. Not to supervise. Just to watch it happen.
What Supernatural became
Supernatural debuted at number 19 on the Billboard 200 and reached number one in October 1999. In the final week of the year it sold 527,000 copies in a single week. After winning nine Grammy Awards in one night, it sold another 441,000. It spent twelve non-consecutive weeks at number one and went thirty times platinum.
It's one of the best-selling comeback albums in recording history. The sessions that built it happened here, in these rooms, a few blocks from where Santana has lived for decades.
Why it matters
Most recording studios are neutral containers. Artists rent them, make records, and leave. What happened here was different. Santana didn't use this building because it was convenient. He used it because something about the rooms, the quiet of Sausalito, and the people who ran the place suited how he worked.
The old Santana sessions used to have the whole band jamming while the engineer rolled tape, searching for fifteen or twenty seconds of magic they'd develop into a song. By Supernatural, the process had changed, but the room hadn't. Same walls, different decade, different way of working. The place absorbed it all.
That continuity is what Santana was pointing at when he made the Vatican comparison. He wasn't talking about grandeur. He was talking about a place that held something real, and kept holding it, through every change that came.
Carlos recently filmed a short video promotion for his Milagro Foundation charity in Studio A. Mark Knopfler showed up and the two had a chance to hang out in Studio A. Both legends are always welcome at the studio with open arms.
