There once was a note, pure and easy/Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.

Pete Townshend of the Who did not have Carlos Santana in mind when he wrote those lyrics in the early 70s. But he might as well have.

Since emerging from the San Francisco musical melting pot of the late 60s with a fiery blend of Latin music, blues, jazz and psychedelia, Santana has been on a singular quest to find the purity of tone that marks his conception of the eternal, transcendent note.

More often than not, hes succeeded in that quest. Its not surprising, then, that when it came time to write his memoirs, Santana would write with the same searing intensity and blatant honesty displayed throughout his 45-year career in music.

You will get a bit of the usual rock star memoir stuff here frank discussions of drug use, though Santana was never much of a druggie, really; recollections of playing Woodstock when he was barely past his teens; and reminiscences of just what it was like to be at the cultural epicenter that was San Francisco at the end of the 60s.

But Santana is a different breed of man than most rock musicians, so those common autobiographical tropes do not form the core of the book. What we are treated to instead is the anatomy of a life lived in music, one steeped in the belief that playing music is a noble calling and that the role of the musician is to seek enlightenment, so that enlightenment might be shared with the listener.

This will be rough going for hippie-haters, for Santana is clearly a card-carrying hippie. Yet his take on values we might, sadly, write off as hippie tenets the concept that all men and women are brothers and sisters, that music might awaken us to our true purpose in life, that borders and nationalities and even the idea of race are merely constructs crafted by the hands of unenlightened men and women are run through the authors long-held Eastern-tinged spiritual beliefs.

Those beliefs are of the wholly selective variety; Santana is a devout reader of texts on the religious impulse, and he spent a decade as a disciple of the Indian spiritual pedagogue Sri Chimnoy, leaving only when he felt that his discipleship had served its purpose. Along the way, he constructed a personal spiritual code that suited his own needs, based on what he learned over the decades.

I believe there is a supreme being, a supreme creator, and whether its Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, or Allah, its as John Coltrane said: All paths lead to God, he writes. Divinity has many names but only one destination. God is all harmony not just one chord or one note. To say that one of them is the only one, and that everyone who worships another is wrong and going to hell, is mummified and petrified thinking.

Referring to John Coltrane is something Santana does often throughout the book, for the late spiritual seeker and jazz giant is clearly a role model for Santana. Similarly, Miles Davis, a longtime friend dubbed by Santana a divine rascal, is another source of continuing inspiration. The book details the friendship nurtured by the two musicians, and also delves into the relationships between Santana and jazz icons Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin and Herbie Hancock, all of whom grew to respect Santana over the years, getting past the perceived barriers between jazz and rock musicians in order to find a common ground where some truly transcendent music was created.

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Carlos Santanas memoirs celebrate music as spiritual quest