When you mention the name Michael Shrieve, there's one image that immediately comes to mind: a 20-year-old drummer sitting behind an enormous drum kit at Woodstock, delivering one of the most electrifying performances of the entire festival with Santana.
It's an iconic moment in rock history—and one that would be enough to define most musicians' careers.
But Michael Shrieve's story is much bigger than Woodstock.
After helping Santana create some of the most groundbreaking music of the early 1970s, Michael made a decision that would shape the rest of his life. Rather than simply following the path that fame and success had laid out for him, he left Santana and began exploring music—and himself—in an entirely different way.
That journey has taken him around the world and across musical boundaries, collaborating with an extraordinary range of artists and exploring jazz, rock, electronic music, improvisation, and the musical and spiritual traditions of other cultures.
That lifelong curiosity can be heard beautifully on his recent album, Drums of Compassion, a deeply personal project that brings together musicians and musical traditions from around the world. In many ways, it feels less like another chapter in Michael's career than the culmination of the journey he began more than fifty years ago.
And now Michael has put another part of that journey into words with his book, Invisible Rhythms.
It's not simply a rock-and-roll memoir. Michael writes about intuition, creativity, spirituality, ambition, success, and the importance of recognizing those moments when something inside us is telling us that it may be time to change direction—even when the road ahead isn't obvious.
Those ideas help explain why a young man who had already achieved something most musicians could only dream about chose to leave Santana and take the road less traveled.
And you don't have to be a musician to appreciate that story. There are lessons in Invisible Rhythms for anyone who has ever wondered whether success means continuing down the path you're already on—or having the courage to discover where another path might lead.
Today we're going to talk about Woodstock, Santana and some remarkable music—but we're also going to talk about the journey that came afterward.
Stan and the Fan is honored to welcome Michael Shrieve.
