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CNN Larry King Live
Fashion Designer Carolina Herrera's Coffee Table Book on Fashion; Actor Jack Klugman's Book "Tony and Me"; Stansfield Turner and Intelligence; New CDs by Santana and Michael Feinstein
Aired October 29, 2005 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LARRY KING, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight, fashion icon Carolina Herrera on designing for Jackie O., Caroline Kennedy, Renee Zellweger and more. Plus Jack Klugman sharing intimate emotional memories of a fifty-year relationship with the late Tony Randall. Plus, two living legends of music. Guitar-great Carlos Santana and Clyde Davis. The man who discovered Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen.
All that and more next on LARRY KING LIVE.
(on camera): Welcome to LARRY KING LIVE. The extraordinary Carolina Herrera.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): This is the new book, "Carolina Herrera," Alexandra Kotur.
I understand you didn't want to do this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAROLINA HERRERA, FASHION DESIGNER: I didn't. I have to tell you why. Because I didn't want my life to be around, you see. But suddenly, my two daughters, Carolina and Patricia, who work with me, decided that why not having a photograph book. So I say all right.
It's not about my life. It's official, like fashions.
KING: Yes, that you and what you wear.
HERRERA: Me with the photographs and clothes with people.
KING: How did it all start for you? Did you always want to be a designer?
HERRERA: Fashion?
KING: Yes.
HERRERA: Well, I started this 24 years ago. And when I was growing up, I didn't even want to be a designer. I didn't know what that was. I think I wanted to be with my horses and my dogs and all that. And it came to me late in life, you see.
KING: Why? What attracted you to it?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HERRERA (voice-over): Because I love fashion. I think fashion is a mystery. You don't know what fashion is. But it's fascinating and it's something so new every time. And it's so incredibly rewarding, you see what I mean?
KING: And what made you famous? What is a dress, a concept? How did the word get to know Carolina Herrera?
HERRERA: You know what made me famous?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
The women who buy my clothes and the men who wear my colognes. The more I do, the more they buy, the more famous I get.
KING: There wasn't one thing?
HERRERA: It was a collection, no.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): It was a collection that was very sophisticated. I want women to look elegant and sophisticated and modern and, I think, it was accepted from the beginning.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Are you expensive?
HERRERA: It all depends. What do you mean expensive?
KING: Would you be considered, you know, are you on the fifth at Saks?
HERRERA: Yes, I am. I'm am in third floor or the sixth floor of Saks. But, I think, they think
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): the clothes are very well made and the workmanship is very expensive. So, maybe.
KING: You put your stamp on everything?
HERRERA: I do.
KING: Nothing goes out with your name that you don't...
HERRERA: Nothing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Because I control my name. It's my name in there so I have to see what's going on and I have to put my name on everything.
KING: How did the relationship with the late Jackie Kennedy begin?
HERRERA: She was fantastic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): She was a very special women that I don't see we're going to find another one like her. It was not only the fashion icon that she became and that thousands of women used to copy her around the word. But it was also how she was. The best friend. She was cultivated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
She loved American history. I mean, it was something else. And she was a very loyal friend.
KING: She wore your outfits? She wore your designs?
HERRERA: She did. Twelve years of her life. The last years of Jackie's, she was wearing them.
KING: You designed her daughter's dress for her daughter's wedding, right?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HERRERA (voice-over): I did. I did. I designed Caroline and that was very nice. She looked beautiful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Somebody told me, one of my spies, that you're doing something for FAO Schwartz, the toy people.
HERRERA: Yes, I am.
KING: What?
HERRERA: I design the wedding dress for the Barbie.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(LAUGHTER)
KING (voice-over): For a Barbie doll?
HERRERA: For a Barbie doll. And she looks devine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
And she is in Schwartz and all these little girls go around and say, "Oh, we want a dress like that when we get married."
KING: So FAO Schwartz is going to have a whole big thing to celebrating this?
HERRERA: Yes, they do. They do. In fact, I'm going to sign the Barbie doll next Saturday in Schwartz in New York. So that's fun.
KING: You know, you're really extraordinary. Have you had designs that you thought couldn't miss that didn't make it?
HERRERA: Many. Do you know why?
KING: Why?
HERRERA: Because sometimes I pick one that I think is so chic and so wonderful. And nobody understands it so it stays behind, and the others sell.
KING: Are you...
HERRERA: You know, fashion is so strnage
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): that you need to be on top of it and you need to close your eyes a little bit.
KING: Caroline, who decides what's in? Is there a guy sitting somewhere, or a woman sitting in Paris, who says, "Purple is the color."
HERRERA: No. Not at all. We designers decide what's in.
KING: But you don't do it collectively. You don't talk to each other on it.
HERRERA: No, and that's a mystery. Because everybody asks me the same question.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
They always come to me and say, "How come all the designers have the same color," more or less. And you know what it is? I think it's when we buy the materials and they come to the collections with their material, maybe they have more white or maybe they have more purple. And we end up, sometimes, doing the same without talking to each other. Because we never talk to each other about collections or designs, no.
KING: Where are you from?
HERRERA: I'm Venezuelan.
KING: You came here when?
HERRERA: In '81. In '80. In the '80s.
KING: Nineteen eighty. So when you came here, design wasn't in your mind? HERRERA: Yes.
KING: Oh, you had designed in Venezuela?
HERRERA: No, I didn't do anything in Venezuela. I opened my designing, my company, in New York and I started doing it in New York. So my first collection was in '81 and I did a collection at the Metropolitan Club, a fashion show. And I was very, very lucky. Because you have to have luck in what you're doing in fashion. In everything in life, no.
KING: You're damn right.
HERRERA: You know that better than I.
KING: Paul Newman said, "Any successful person who doesn't mention the word is lying."
HERRERA: Is lying. Exactly. So, I think, I was very lucky because the press was a little bit against me saying that she's going to be dilettante, she's going to do it for one season and then she will never do it again and own a collection.
KING: A flash.
HERRERA: Yes. And I was lucky because, in the beginning, the women in the audience loved the collection. They opened the doors for me there.
KING: Were you designing for the woman or for the woman to the man?
HERRERA: Do you know, that's a question that I have to say that we women sometimes dress to please the eye of a man.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): But usually, we dress to make the other women very jealous.
KING: Ah, ha.
HERRERA: Because they don't have it before the one who's wearing it.
KING: Finally, it's admitted.
HERRERA: Yes, of course. Sometimes to annoy another women.
(LAUGHTER)
KING: So you think about what the woman is going to like to please the woman and the other woman.
HERRERA: No, they usually are pleased with whatever the men are pleased with. But they want to wear it before the friend wears it. (END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Do you do individual things for famous -- in addition to Jackie -- when you do a dress for a person?
HERRERA: Yes, that I do, because it's made to order.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): I do that. Many times.
KING: Do you do wedding dresses for people?
HERRERA: Yes, wedding dresses I do all the time. I have a collection but I also do them made to order. And, I think, I love to design wedding dresses because they are...
KING: Why?
HERRERA: Because there is a fantasy there as far as...
KING: How do make them different though?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HERRERA: They are different. There are so many details and your can fly, and they're beautiful. And I haven't seen, yet, any bride that doesn't look ravishing.
KING: Are your daughters in the business too?
HERRERA: Yes, absolutely.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): Patricia, my daughter, is in the fashion side and Carolina is in the perfumes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
So I have two daughters with me.
KING: In perfume, you make a men's perfume, right?
HERRERA: Of course.
KING: Men's cologne.
HERRERA: Men's cologne. Very good ones.
KING: I'll wear it. Thank you.
HERRERA: You'll have to wear them.
KING: The book is Carolina Herrera. She's extraordinary. What a story. And it's available now in all bookstores. It's a great coffee table book.
And it's an honor to have you with us.
HERRERA: Thank you so much.
KING: We'll be right back with more LARRY KING LIVE. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We welcome to LARRY KING LIVE, one of my favorite people, Jack Klugman, three time Emmy Award winner.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): Best known for the character of Oscar in "The Odd Couple." His new book, "Tony and Me," about his friendship with the late actor Tony Randall.
There you see it's cover. The Forward by Gary Marshall.
You self-published this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JACK KLUGMAN, ACTOR: Yes.
KING: Why?
KLUGMAN: Because I didn't want anybody else to tell me what to do or what to say. I wrote a couple of scripts back in 1956 for Kraft about old actors. I used to like old actors and now I've became one.
KING: And you are one.
KLUGMAN: They bought it. Then they said we've got to put a couple of young kissable girls in there. I said, "But it's about old actors." They said, "Nobody wants to see a lot of old people?" I said, "Why'd you buy it?"
So I called my agent. I said, "You better give them the money back." He said, "Jack, that's the business." So after that, you couldn't get me to do business with a writer I didn't know. So I put the young kissable girls in, and I hated it. And I said, "No more." So I stopped writing then. Except for Quincy, you know, I did a lot of the writing on that.
But now, so this was my tribute to Tony. And I don't want anybody telling me what to do and what to say.
KING: Explain the -- and you do so well on the book. It's a terrific book, by the way. -- this incredible relationship between the two or you. It was much more than two actors.
KLUGMAN: Yes, Tony came in when I was needing him. We had a good relationship while we were working.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): We respected each other. We both loved the way -- we loved the theater. We loved acting. But it wasn't until I lost my voice, he was the first one at the hospital, besides by kids.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
And I had no sound at all. I said, "I lost my voice." He said, "Hey, let's face it, Jack. You never did sound like Richard Burton anyway."
KING: So it got deeper then?
KLUGMAN: Oh, that's when it really started. And he said, as he left, "If and when you're ready to come back, we'll find a venue for you." I said, "Yes, you're going to find venue for an actor without a voice." But it happened.
KING: But he did, yes.
KLUGMAN: Yes, he did.
KING: You did "Sunshine Boys," which I saw you do.
KLUGMAN: Yes. But "The Odd Couple," that one performance, he raised $1,250.000.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): And I went on and I said, "They won't hear me." He said, "Trust me. They will hear you. They love you. I'm going to mic you and they'll hear." And I went on and they heard me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Was that the best comic play of the 20th century?"
KLUGMAN: "The best comedy play of the 20th century.
KING: Because?
KLUGMAN: Because it wasn't about me. It was about Danny Simon, who was Felix Unger. And he was my story editor when I had done a lousy scene he used to call my with his input.
So Danny, he used to cry a lot. His wife threw him out. And he was doing what an observer was. So he was writing it.
And Neil said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm writing this play about me." And Neil said, "That's a good idea." Then about six months later, Neil called him and said how's it coming. He said, "I can't seem to get it." Neil said, "Let me write it. I'll give you 10 percent." That 10 percent was worth about $15 million. And that's why it came about. So Danny was objective about it. There's no one line of exposition in that show.
KING: And also it wasn't a hit, right. It was never really a hit.
KLUGMAN: It wasn't.
KING: A television hit. No, it was the other way.
KLUGMAN: No, no, we were...
KING: It was a major Broadway hit.
KLUGMAN: We were a flop.
KING: Major comedy and major movie.
KLUGMAN: Yes, but we were a flop. We were, like, 62.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): When we're at number 50 we're a hit. Remember never would topped 40.
KING: But they kept it on.
KLUGMAN: Well, it was cheap. I mean, everything, the license, salaries. Everything was at $125,000. The kids on "Friends" made that in two minutes. So that's what it was.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We're going to show you a bit. This is an out-take from -- by the way, this disc comes with the book, right?
KLUGMAN: Yes, yes. It's a DVD.
KING: There's a DVD that comes with the book. And this is an out-take, meaning this was not seen by the public, right?
KLUGMAN: No. This is something...
KING: This is one of those...
KLUGMAN: This is attributed to a split-take.
KING: OK. A split-take as they call it. Watch.
(VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Did you have a lot of those where you just went off script and had fun?
KLUGMAN: We'll that was just them kidding. They were having fun. But, see, it was hard to break up Tony. He broke up when he fouled up line. But I broke up all the time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): I was, like, terrible.
KING: You were easy to get?
KLUGMAN: Oh, I was easy. And he knew it. He was like a mischieveous kid. He knew when I was breaking up. So then he would break me up. And he'd say, "Come on now. Do it right."
KING: When Tony passed away, I think, you were the first one to fly across the country and go to him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KLUGMAN: Well, I say him right before that. When he was in the hospital in Intensive Care, I went and substituted for him. You know, the Cancer Society gave him that award and I accepted it for him. And then I held the gala. I substituted for him to raise money for his theater. And I visited him every day. And, I thought, that we'd bonded and, you know, I told him how I felt.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): But when he left, when he died, I realized there was void I couldn't fill. There was no closure because he had done so much for me.
He taught me to trust him. I never let anybody in my life. It seemed the other way that he was a loner and that I always like people. But I wasn't that way. He liked to have people around. I was the loner. And he me to trust, to trust my kids mostly. And I have a relationship with my kids now that's just sensational.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: And he helped that?
KLUGMAN: Oh, he told me to trust them. I was so vulnerable when I went to him. You know, I said, "They won't hear me." Well, he got me the menu and we were on doing the play on stage,
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): trying to get a laugh. So when he played "Felix inhaled," he'd look at me with his eyes and they'd say, "Go get them. I know you can do it." He rooted me on. He was just...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: You did "A Great Hour" with his wife. How's she doing?
KLUGMAN: She did great. And the kids are going great.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(voice-over): She won Best for the Box three weeks ago. KING: She's a great girl.
KLUGMAN: She's evolved into something sensational.
KING: And what are you doing now?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KLUGMAN: Well, I'm trying to promote the book. I've got to say that tonyandme.com is our website.
KING: Or you can go to tonyandme.com.
KLUGMAN: Yes, my kid is working out with pods. I don't even know what that means.
KING: ipods your on.
KLUGMAN: I don't know what -- I don't go in the 21st century. I'm staying in the 20th century until I go.
KING: How about the horses?
KLUGMAN: I'm stopping on a two-year-old every year now. I've got to have one. I can't stay out of it.
KING: You're the best, Jack.
KLUGMAN: Thank you.
Jack Klugman. I love him. You'll love the book too. "Tony and Me" and you can order from?
KLUGMAN: Anywhere, the bookstores and everywhere.
KING: Of course, but the .com.
KLUGMAN: tonyandme.com.
KING: tonyandme.com. A DVD comes with it. We'll be right back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE): This is a pressurized cabin. If at any time we should lose our pressure, an oxygen mask will drop down in front of you.
TONY RANDALL, AS "FELIX UNGER": Can I try that please?
(UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE): Oh, sir, this is only a demonstration.
RANDALL: I know. I want to practice with it.
(UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE): That won't be necessary. Just hold it over your mouth and breathe normally.
RANDALL: Yes, but I can't breathe normally. I have a sinus condition.
(UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE): Sir, as long as you have a nose and a mouth, it'll work for you too.
RANDALL: Sarcasm. Certainly inspires confidence.
KLUGMAN, AS "OSCAR MADISON": You inspire sarcasm.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MUSIC)
KING: We now welcome to LARRY KING LIVE from New York Michael Feinstein, four-time Grammy Award nominee, world-renowned interpreter of songs. Has a terrific new album out and there you see its cover. Michael Feinstein and George Shearing. "Hopeless Romantics, the Songs of Harry Warren." Since you're both pianists, Michael, how did this come about?
MICHAEL FEINSTEIN, MUSICIAN: I've known George socially for many years, Larry, and we've always spent a lot of time inevitably around the piano just talking tunes back and forth and me singing and George playing. He plays rhapsodically and we've spoken for years about doing an album and he said, you know, he called me up about a year ago and said it's time that we actually did that recording and we had the best time being able to do just the songs that we love and I got to sing and not worry about what my hands are doing, you know?
KING: What is it like for you as a renowned pianist to sing with someone who is a renowned pianist?
FEINSTEIN: Well, George Shearing is a cut above everybody else alive because he has an extraordinary imagination and spontaneity that really kept me on my toes. Even though I never knew where he was going to go. If he chose to change keys or do something that has an extraordinary imagination and a spontaneity that really kept me on my toes because even though I never knew where he was going to go, if he chose to change keys or do something that would be a left turn, I was right there with him.
So it was a very exciting and wonderful challenge and it made the recording, in the best way, very spontaneous.
KING: Now why the songs of Harry Warren?
FEINSTEIN: I met Harry Warren when I was just a sprout in 1979. I was introduced to him by Ira Gershwin and he is the most successful songwriter of the 20th century. More successful than Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Elton John, Billy Joel, you name. This is the guy, and nobody knows who he is and when you look at the songs that he wrote, "Oscar is the Lullaby of Broadway," "On the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe," "You'll Never Know." He wrote "I Only Have Eyes for You," "An Affair to Remember," "That's Amore," "The More I See You," "A Journey to a Star," "Jeepers Creepers," "Chattanooga Choo- CHoo," "This Heart of Mine."
I mean, the list goes on and on so I felt it was time to pay tribute to him and so did George.
KING: Now picking the songs, was a collaborative or was it you?
FEINSTEIN: Oh, it was totally collaborative because George has his likes of different songs, of course and he would say, we've got to do this one or that one.
It was my choice, though, to reinterpret "September in the Rain," which was a big jazz hit for George in the late '40s. He sold 900,000 copies of his jazz instrumental of "September in the Rain" and reinterpreted it as a very gentle ballad and I loved doing that.
KING: "The leaves of brown came tumbling down, remember."
FEINSTEIN: You know the words to everything.
KING: I know. George is how old now?
FEINSTEIN: George is 86.
KING: Blind since birth.
FEINSTEIN: Yes.
KING: When you're working with someone who is blind, what's -- is there something to overcome or with him nothing?
FEINSTEIN: Well, the only thing is he is so extraordinarily responsive and sensitive to any move that I make that it's uncanny. The thing that amazed me most is that we actually would grieve together with these songs and if anything he is more tuned in that anybody else I have ever worked with musically speaking.
KING: Really?
FEINSTEIN: Oh, absolutely.
KING: And what did you use, a quintet?
FEINSTEIN: No. It was just piano and voice. Both of us feel that so many recordings are so overproduced today and we wanted to do something very simple and honest and beautiful. It's what Liza Minelli calls wooing music. It's just music that is very romantic and something you can put on and just drift away with. And we wanted something very simple and lush.
KING: We'll be right back with more of Michael Feinstein. The album is "Hopeless Romantics." We'll talk about the title right after this.
(MUSIC)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: What a delightful holiday offering. Feinstein and Shearing, "Hopeless Romantics." The title, Michael, explain. FEINSTEIN: I'm a hopeless romantic and for me that means being romantic in spite of everything that's happening in the world these days. I really believe in romance and the survival of love through all. I relieve believe that love conquers all and George feels that way too because he's been able to do the thing he most loves for his entire life and had a magical career for a kid who was blind and whose family was worried about what was going to happen to him, what kind of career he was going to have. He had an extraordinary career.
And so we both call ourselves hopeless romantics and decided that that would be a perfect title for this album.
KING: The obvious question. In this album we have "I Had the Craziest Dream," "You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me," "This Heart of Mine," "At Last," "I'll String Along with You," "You're My Everything," "The More I See You," "Serenade in Blue," "September in the Rain," "The Shadow Waltz," "They'll Never Be Another You," "I Only Have Eyes for You," "You'll Never Know" and then they reprise "You're My Everything."
Why is he not known?
FEINSTEIN: Well, I think one of the reasons Harry Warren wasn't better known was because he worked in the studio system in Hollywood. He worked for movies and so it was either a Busby Berkeley Film or a Ruby Keeler film or a Judy Garland film. The guys who wrote the songs for the movies didn't have the same acclaim as the guys who wrote musicals for Broadway, and therefore he was just, as Levant put it, a cog in the wheel.
And if he had written on Broadway, written Broadway musicals in that same period he would have been a household name, but that never happened.
KING: So in other words, MGM is making a movie, they call up Harry Warren, we need four numbers. Here's the story of the movie. Write the numbers.
FEINSTEIN: That's right. He was given an assignment. When he finished the song they took it and they did what they wanted with it. And on Broadway if he wrote the song he would be involved in the orchestration and every aspect of it but in Hollywood you finish the song, you turn it in, and then they don't want to hear from you again.
KING: How do you maintain your place in a musical world that's so diverse and different from yours where unless it's an oldie or Sirius or XM radio, we don't hear you on the radio.
FEINSTEIN: Well, it's true. My audiences are such that they don't have a lot of outlets with music but one of the great things about technology today is that there's the Internet. You know, I get a lot of hits on my Website which -- michaelfeinstein.com -- where I direct people to different places where they can hear the kind of music that I love to perform. And there's cable music on your cable system, there's 30 channels. There's XM, there's Sirius. There's so many amazing outlets and places that one can find the music that they love that in spite of the fact that there is so much more pop music, there are more choices and truly more opportunities for people to hear classic music now than ever before.
KING: Are you a piano player who sings or a singer who plays piano?
FEINSTEIN: Well I started as a piano player and that was always the first thing for me. But now I think I've become a singer who plays the piano.
KING: Although your rendition of Irving Berlin's "I Love a Piano" is historic.
FEINSTEIN: Oh, thank you. And "Alexander's Ragtime Band" is one where I get to do my ragtime chops still.
KING: That's a famous song, isn't it, "Alexander's" -- famous beyond -- it was an ethnic (ph) song, right?
FEINSTEIN: Yes it was. "Alexander's Ragtime Band" was Irving Berlin's first major hit and he wrote it in 1911 and it had some racist elements in it, which he later cleaned up lyrically. And Berlin was very proud of that song but he actually outlived its copyright. It went public domain and he was furious that he was alive -- he lived to be 101 and he no longer got royalties on the thing.
KING: There were racist aspects to it, the original version, right?
FEINSTEIN: Yes. There were. And as I said, he cleansed those aspects, but Alexander was also sort of a pejorative term, but now the song is not thought of in that way.
KING: "Let me take you by the hand up to the man."
FEINSTEIN: "The leader of the band."
KING: Thank you so much, Michael.
FEINSTEIN: Thank you, Larry. Always a pleasure.
KING: Great CD. Michael Feinstein, George Shearing, "Hopeless Romantics."
We'll be right back.
(MUSIC)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MUSIC)
KING: It's an honor to welcome to LARRY KING LIVE two genuine musical legends, Carlos Santana, the legendary guitarist, the winner of 10 Grammies. He has sold over 90 million records. The new album is "All That I Am." There you see the cover. It hits the stores next week.
And Clive Davis, the prolific record producer, music mogul responsible for discovering such legends as Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, to name a few.
He produced "All That I Am." What's the history, Clive, of this collaboration? This is what, your third CD together?
CLIVE DAVIS, RECORD PRODUCER: Well, we really met -- Carlos was like the fourth or fifth artist that I ever signed going back quite a number of years ago so this is -- we've reunited with Supernatural but basically we met when Bill Graham, who was acting as the unofficial manager of Santana, asked me to go see this hot fiery Latin group with African and rhythm and blues influences. I was knocked out and signed the Santana Band.
KING: What makes -- Carlos, what makes Clive Davis special?
CARLOS SANTANA, MUSICIAN: He has the finger on the pulse, and he's -- like Miles Davis or Coltrane or Bob Marley -- he has passion for the fullness of the moment. Some people who are from the '60s, they stay back there. They don't stay with what's happening today. But he, like Bill Graham, he has the gift of having his finger on the pulse forever and so he knows music and how to touch people hearts with the resonant sound vibration of today.
KING: So if he says, I like this, you go with him, right?
SANTANA: Well, I confer also with my heart, but I do know that if you're honest with yourself, you know when to defer when somebody knows something that you don't know. So I defer to him when I know that he knows something that I don't know.
KING: What makes Carlos special?
DAVIS: He's unique. He's a man of spirituality, nobility, dignity and grace, but he also is a man of sensuality, sexuality -- fiery hot music that makes him unique. He's a guitar god.
As a human being, he defines grace. He defines giving back. He defines sensitivity but onstage he is like a fiery animal. When you hear that guitar soar, I mean, it lifts 15, 20,000 people a night to --
KING: He has rebirths, right? There are times, Carlos Santana, you don't hear a lot about him and then suddenly, boom, Carlos Santana is in again.
DAVIS: Well, I would say about seven years ago, after we had not seen each other, we had had great success with "Oye Como Va," with "Black Magic Woman," with "Evil Ways" and of course he soared. But he is a man that follows his heart, so that he is influenced by John Coltrane and Miles Davis. So he really had to explore all of the avenues of music that he wanted to.
KING: And that wasn't mass appeal. DAVIS: That was not mass appeal. He didn't care. He was -- that's why he's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, because he is true to his heart. But seven years ago we met after I saw him at Radio City Music Hall and we got together right out here in Beverly Hills and he said, you know, I'm ready to go to the radio again and through my wife, through a spiritual connection, they said I've got to reconnect with you.
We reconnected. We set a path whereby he would do what he does unique in the world over the years with his music, and that I would find those artists, those writers, who really were influenced by him so that it was a natural evolution extension of his talents. And we did "Supernatural" and the rest is history.
KING: And the rest is history, yeah.
Where did you grow up?
SANTANA: I grew up in Tijuana and in San Francisco.
KING: Poorest part of Mexico, right? Isn't Tijuana one of the ...
SANTANA: Yes it is.
KING: You were a poor kid.
SANTANA: Yes, I was.
KING: Did you take to the guitar right away?
SANTANA: Yes. I started learning to play the violin but I didn't really want to pursue the violin because I felt it was an instrument that just didn't feel right with me. The tone, the sound and the feel and the smell, I just didn't get past the ...
KING: The smell?
SANTANA: Well everything smells because it's so close to you, the wood, you know. So I learned later on in Tijuana about the blues -- Muddy Waters, Little Richard, of course, John Lee Hooker and people like that. That's the music that I felt I needed to immerse myself.
KING: What was your first hit?
SANTANA: I think, thanks to Mr. Clive Davis, I believe it was "Jingo."
KING: Was it Jingo?.
DAVIS: Yeah.
KING: Did you know that that would be a hit? You never know know.
DAVIS: With his music, it's not formulaic. So it was really treading into frontiers, into making "Oye Como Va" and "Black Magic Woman," they stand up today because they're not formulaic.
KING: When I come back, I'll ask you about the new one, "All That I Am." We'll be right back with Santana and Clive Davis. Don't go away.
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KING: In the new CD, Carlos Santana does, as in a series of collaborative efforts -- this is the third one -- you collaborate with other artists. Why?
SANTANA: I love learning and growing. My body is 58 but there is a 17-year-old person who longs to coexist with Yo-Yo Ma or Aliya Barkhan (ph) or Placido Domingo or Justin Timberlake. Because to me it's all here now. It's not like it's over here and down there. It's all right here.
Can I complement? Can I learn? Can I bring something to the session to make people's hairs stand up. And I think the main goal that we have is to -- how many people's hearts can we touch?
KING: So you like working with others?
SANTANA: Oh yes. Absolutely.
KING: Now on this one he works with Bo Byce who was just on this show recently from "American Idol." He works with Mary Blige ...
DAVIS: Mary J. Blige and Big Boi of Outkast.
KING: Aerosmith's Steve Tyler.
DAVIS: That's an incredible pairing of Carlos Santana and Steven Tyler. I mean legendary.
KING: ... these pairings?
DAVIS: Well, we talk -- we confer all the time and so therefore when a song came in that really was just perfect for the voice of Steven Tyler, and considering Carlos' respect -- I had a connection; I signed both of them originally. I signed Aerosmith in my career as well. The excitement in music circles all over the world that Carlos Santana and Steven Tyler, two Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, are appearing on the same album with a great cut.
So this is the first single in Europe and it will be the second single in the U.S.
KING: It's not true, is it, that because two artists are great they will necessarily collaborate well.
SANTANA: It's the song first. The song is what made the Beatles, and even John Coltrane played "My Favorite Things" until the day he passed and Miles Davis played "Time After Time" or "Human Nature" from Michael Jackson or Cindy Lauper.
What is the song? The whole -- when people try to find out what's the shtick or the gimmick or the formula or whatever it is that we have together -- first of all, it's passion, it's passion in my intentions, and you put together the songs --
KING: Are you saying with the right song you could work with any artist who is good?
SANTANA: Exactly the song has to be -- DAVIS: Who's good.-
KING: Do you agree with that?
DAVIS: I agree, but these collaborations -- he does a song called "Trinity" with Kirk Hammett and Robert Randolph, two of the other of the three best guitarists in the world today. He stretches out. For him to work with Big Boi of Outkast and Mary J. Blige --
KING: Would he work with Bruce Springsteen?
DAVIS: I think so, absolutely.
KING: Do you think you could?
SANTANA: It would be a great honor. It depends on the song.
DAVIS: How exciting would that be? Bruce?
KING: I think you'd do that one.
DAVIS: Oh, in a second.
KING: Do you still do concerts everywhere? Are you still out on the tour?
SANTANA: Yes. We do three weeks on the road, three weeks at home, because to me it is important to be daily (ph) husband in the balance of it. And this is why I'm not burnt out, because we found a way to do three weeks at home, three weeks on the road, four weeks at home, four weeks on the road, so that it's a balance.
DAVIS: You and your wife should go to see him in concert. It's like no other concert. They come on stage. Everybody stands up. Every ethnic, every age, you see the world in front of you and you see fervor and passion. I mean, he is the hero.
KING: Have you done in person CDs, concert CDs?
DAVIS: We haven't done a live album, but god, it's a good idea.
KING: I've given you two ideas.
DAVIS: We'll give you credit. KING: Why not do a live -- capture live energy.
SANTANA: It's not out of the realm of possibilities. Hopefully we can do that with Mr. Clive announced (ph) in Montreaux next July.
KING: Clive, keep on keeping on. This is amazing, both of you. You don't to have to wish them luck. You don't need it.
Santana, "All That I Am." Produced by Clive Davis. You couldn't get two better collaborators. Carlos Santana and Clive Davis. We'll be right back.
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KING: A terrific and important new book has just been published. There you see its cover. "Burn Before Reading." The author is Admiral Stansfield Turner, director of Central Intelligence, 1977 through 1981 in the Carter administration. Presidents, CIA directors and secret intelligence. Our friend Bob Woodward of the "Washington Post" says about this book, "A fabulous history by one who has been there, but also has enough distance in time to offer a sound analysis of where the CIA needs to go."
Why did you write this, Stan?
STANSFIELD TURNER, FORMER DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE: Larry, terrorism is a problem that's going to be with our country for some time to come, and intelligence is the key to defeating terrorism. We've got to know what's going to happen before it happens so we can cut them off at the pass. I think the intelligence organization of our country is dysfunctional today; it's not prepared to do the job. And I want to try to help us straighten that out.
KING: Why is it not functional?
TURNER: First of all, because it's not a corporate arrangement. There is not cooperation between the various -- or the fifteen different agencies that comprise our intelligence community. We need to do something to get them working together better.
KING: So your faith in this current CIA is not high?
TURNER: No, I'm afraid I feel that our intelligence is not well enough organized to give you and me as citizens a sense of protection against terrorism today. We need to --
KING: When you -- go ahead. I'm sorry.
TURNER: We need to take the human spying element out of the CIA, move it in with the technical spying elements from the military and have one person coordinate the whole collection of intelligence effort for our country. It's now just dysfunctional.
KING: When you ran that agency, did it have conflicts with the FBI and other national security agencies? We always heard those stories.
TURNER: Well, there's always been too much competition between them, but President Carter gave me more authority over the intelligence operations of our country than any director of intelligence has ever had before or since.
In addition, the director of the FBI during most of my time at the CIA was William Webster, and we just happen to have been college classmates and good friends, and so we worked together well. I think that's broken down sometimes since then.
KING: Your book relates strains -- a lot of strains in the past between presidents and CIA directors. Why?
TURNER: Because CIA directors don't have -- if they don't have a close relationship with the president, if they haven't got a good working relationship, they're hanging out on a limb. They're not in positions of power like the secretaries of Defense and the secretaries of State. And therefore, this relationship that I describe in my book between each president, from Franklin Roosevelt to George W. Bush, with his director of Central Intelligence is critical to how well our country is prepared to deal with terrorism.
KING: Was Porter Goss, therefore, a poor selection?
TURNER: Well, Porter Goss was a poor selection only in that I don't think it's a job where a highly-partisan politician should be there. He's a good man and he's doing a good job, I believe, but this is a position where people should not worry about whether the intelligence is being slanted to help the Republicans or help the Democrats or whomever.
KING: Now this is kind of revolutionary, and as I'm saying, anybody interested in staying alive should read this book. You say we should break up the CIA. Break it up into what?
TURNER: Two pieces: The human spying element should go along with the technical spying elements of the Pentagon -- that is, photographic satellites from the Pentagon and electronic listening systems from the Pentagon, they all should be working together with the human spying element of the CIA. What one of those systems gets as a clue, leads the next system to focus itself better and get more clues. They need to be under one person so that they can be coordinated much better than they are today. They go off very independently. They sometimes don't share information with each other. We need to make a definite coordination effort here.
KING: When we get something like recently happened in Baltimore, before that in New York -- false alarms. What's the cause of that?
TURNER: Intelligence is never clear cut. You always have to make judgments, you have to make analyses and decide just what the evidence tells you. And in this case, I feel very sympathetic to people like Mayor Giuliani -- they have some evidence that there's going to be an attack on the subways of New York. If they don't put people on alert and something happens, it's very catastrophic. So we get little tidbits of clues and it's up to somebody, in the intelligence world first, but then in the political world second, to judge how much we react or don't react to that.
KING: You say that another terror attack is not a matter of if, but when. Why are you so sure of that?
TURNER: The problem today is that we don't have a good enough intelligence system to be sure we can cut them off, we can anticipate them and keep them from wreaking their damage upon our society.
KING: What do you think of Mr. Negroponte at DNI?
TURNER: It was a very good move to create a director of National Intelligence, now Mr. Negroponte, because the old job of director of Central Intelligence and director of the CIA, which were combined in one person up until just recently, was too much for one person to do. Negroponte now has overall charge of the entire operation. The difficulty with his position is, the law that was created, because of military opposition, did not give him adequate authority to do that job. I'm very pleased, though, that he seems to be acquiring that authority. In time, we've got to regularize that by either having the president issue an executive order that gives him the right authority, or amending the law so that he does have the authority that he really needs.
KING: He was a great director. This is a terrific book. As the flap says, "In this groundbreaking book, a former Central Intelligence director offers a riveting glimpse into the complicated relationship between United States presidents and their chiefs of intelligence."
Good seeing you, Stan.
TURNER: Thank you. Always nice to be with you, Larry.
KING: Admiral Stansfield Turner, and the book is "Burn Before Reading." The publisher is Hyperion. We thank all of our guests tonight for joining us.
We invite you to stay tuned for more news around the clock on your most trusted name in news, CNN. Good night.
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