In the annals of Ween's storied, ever-eclectic catalog, the 2003 full-length, Quebec, is a standout entry.
Starting out with a bang with the roaring opener, It's Gonna Be a Long Night (ed. note: Mötorhead fans would do well to give it a spin), Quebec was by all accounts a difficult record to make.
Colored by physical and emotional turmoil (drummer Claude Coleman was involved in a serious car accident during its creation, and Ween co-leader Gene Ween was in the midst of a divorce at the same time), the album took well over a year, and a multitude of sessions in all manner of studios and rehearsal spaces, to wrap up.
It was in the midst of one of these endless sessions that the group's other co-founder, Dean Ween, received an eyebrow-raising call from his roadie.
“My roadie (nameless) also worked for a backline company (nameless) that supplied amps, drums, lights, etc. to bands touring in the Northeast,” he wrote in a lengthy Facebook post in 2014.
“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.
“What needed to be done was immediately clear to me,” the guitarist recalled. “I had an opportunity to play the solo on Transdermal Celebration through Carlos Santana’s amplifier and guitar.”
Now, this wasn't just a case of punk disrespect. In the post, Dean Ween cited Santana as one of his all-time favorite players: “As a guitarist he has aged like a fine wine. Only Neil Young, Prince, and a small handful of others can make that claim as they become members of the AARP.”
Respect or not, though, the image was the one that every musician who's ever gotten a single road mile under their belt dreads – a group of people sitting around, trying to figure out how to roll up to the location where your gear is stored in the middle of the night, undetected. As the perpetrator himself put it, the plan “resembled an early morning bank heist.”
“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,” Dean recalled. “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 through Carlos Santana’s guitar, pedalboard, and amplifier.
“The whole thing 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 really fast after that.”
Someone in the band's camp was wise (or unwise, some might say) enough to capture the clandestine operation for posterity, lest readers or listeners call BS. Can't mistake that PRS Santana model, the sticker on the 'board, or, more distantly, the vintage Mesa in the back.
Ween ended the anecdote with a plea. “Don’t tell anyone about [this] please.”
