Is there a statute of limitation on temporary guitar theft? In nostalgic Facebook post about some of the craziest moments from Ween’s glory days, Dean Ween shared the story of the time he “collaborated” with Carlos Santana, without ever informing Santana.
In the Facebook post, Dean recalls receiving an unusual call from a roadie while in the studio recording for 2003’s quebec:
So, we’re in the middle of this session and I get a phone call from my roadie (nameless) who also worked for a backline company (nameless) that supplied amps, drums, lights, etc. to bands touring in the Northeast. My roadie told me that Carlos Santana’s equipment (including his guitars) had arrived via a trucking company that night at their depot. Carlos was recording an appearance on “Good Morning America” the next morning and his equipment was to be delivered to the set in NYC in a few hours.
You might be able to guess what happened next, but luckily for us, Dean keeps going.
What needed to be done was immediately clear to me, I had an opportunity to play the solo on “Transdermal Celebration” through Carlos Santana’s amplifier and guitar. I had one shot at it, it meant taking a hard disk recorder to a storage space where all of Carlos’ stuff was sitting in transit. I arrived at 2am. We (very carefully) unpacked his equipment and set up his stage gear and in one take I recorded the guitar solo for “Transdermal Celebration” (the one that appears on the album, playing thru Carlos Santana’s guitar, pedalboard, and amplifier. The whole think took 10 minutes and we were terrified we were going to get caught. A lot of people would have lost their jobs. We got the fuck outta there relly fast after that. So the solo on “Transdermal Celebration” was played thru all of Sanatana’s shit in what resembled an early morning bank heist or something…
And that is the story of legends pranking legends in the most entertaining, Easter-egg-esque way. Let’s just hope Santana takes the joke in stride.
Now that you’re in on Dean Ween’s secret, listen to “Transdermal Celebration” in a completely new way below:
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