I Always Trusted My Ears And My Eyes

By Michael W Rogers

Let me tell you something about where this all started.

I am a Black kid from Salisbury, Maryland who loved rock and roll. In 1969 that was not the easiest thing to be. I had to sneak away just to listen to Chicago Transit Authority. The first time I heard Terry Kath play guitar I lost my mind. I said to myself — that is a White Ray Charles. I had never heard a white man with soul like that. Not until Terry.

But before Terry, there was Santana. And before everything else, there was a drummer named Michael Shrieve.

The Summer of 1969.

I was in the 9th grade. Going to be a sophomore. That summer my friends started talking about some concert up in New York called Woodstock. Never heard of it. Didn't matter. I was a huge Santana fan and I was a young drummer. And I had fallen in love with Michael Shrieve.

So I asked my mother if I could go.

She said no.

What followed was a very bad argument. One of the worst. And when it was over I waited. And then I snuck out. I told her I was going somewhere else for the weekend. I lied to my mother and I got in that van.

To this day nobody in my family knows this story.

So I paid my $8.50, got in a van, and we drove from Salisbury, Maryland to Bethel, New York.

Got there. It was a free concert.

Richie Havens opened the show.

And somewhere in that crowd of 300,000 people I lost everybody I came with.

I was a kid from Salisbury Maryland. Alone. At Woodstock. Didn't know a soul.

I had no idea what I had just walked into.

When the concert was over I had to figure out how to get home by myself.

And I did.

Nobody in my family knows that part either.

Now here is where it gets good.

I found a camera in the van. I didn't know anything about photography. I didn't care about photography. I grabbed that camera for one reason and one reason only — I thought it would make me look important enough to get girls.

That is the God's honest truth.

So there I am. A 9th grade kid from Maryland. Camera in hand. Standing in a field with half a million people. In the rain. On a Saturday. Waiting for one thing.

Soul Sacrifice.

Michael Shrieve destroyed that drum solo.

To this day, I have watched him play it since. It does not compare to what he did that day. Not even close. There was something in that field, in that moment, that will never be repeated.

The ending of that song hit me so hard I started to cry. Don't know why. I just did.

And I had this camera. I didn't know what it was — something like a Minolta, I could not even pronounce the name. All I knew was it had 24 exposures and when you were done you rewound the film back into the cylinder.

I was shooting Michael the whole time. I had shots of that drum solo.

Then the film jammed.

I didn't know what to do.

So I opened the back of the camera.

Every single shot. Gone. Exposed. Just like that.

But I did get one shot.

Carlos Santana saw me. And he looked at me. Not through me. AT me.

It lasted 10 seconds.

I don't know what he saw. But I have never forgotten it.

From that day I never picked up a camera again.

Fast forward.

Years later I am in Alaska. I am a radio personality. I am standing on a stage at the Alaska State Fair.

And I am introducing Richie Havens.

The same man who opened Woodstock.

I went from a kid in the crowd watching him perform to the man on the mic introducing him to a new crowd. I did not plan that. That was not my doing.

That was a God thing.

Then comes Las Vegas.

I picked up a camera again in 2007. Complete accident. Long story.

And one day I see a headshot of Carlos Santana.

It was a piece of garbage.

That was the moment. Right there. I made a vow that before I die I will get a headshot of Carlos Santana. Even if I have to pay him.

He lives here in Las Vegas. I know where he lives. I have done everything short of knocking on his door. People who said they could make it happen never came through.

I am 71 years old.

I will get that shot. Somehow. Someway.

When I finally stand in front of him with a camera — he will not remember those 10 seconds at Woodstock.

But when we connect, he will see something.

Because I am real. And real people recognize real.

That is what I do. That is what I have always done. I see something in people that makes them bigger than what they are.

Somebody told me once — Michael, you bring real to a make-believe town and that is going to be a problem.

I said GAME ON.

It started with a drum solo on a farm in Bethel, New York, in 1969.

A broken camera.

10 seconds.

And ears and eyes I have trusted my whole life.

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