Santana Return to commercial success
 More radio-oriented singles followed from Santana the band. Winning in 1981 and Hold On ( a remake of Canadian artist Ian Thomas's song) in 1982 both reached the top twenty. After his break with Sri Chinmoy, Santana went into the studio to record another solo album with Keith Olson and legendary R&B producer Jerry Wexler. The 1983 album revisited Santana's early musical experiences in Tijuana with Bo Diddley's Who Do You Love and the title cut, Chuck Berry's Havana Moon. The albums guests included Booker T. Jones, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Willie Nelson and even his father's mariachi orchestra. Santana again paid tribute to his early rock roots by doing the film score to La Bamba, starring Lou Diamond Phillips, which was based on the tragically short life of rock and roll legend Richie Valens.
Although the band had concentrated on trying to produce albums with commercial appeal during the 1980s, changing tastes in popular culture began to reflect in the band's sagging record sales of their latest effort Beyond Appearances. In 1985, Bill Graham had to once again pull strings for Santana to convince principal Live-Aid concert organizer Bob Geldof to allow the band to appear at the festival. The group's high energy performance proved why they were still a top concert draw the world over despite its poor performance on the charts. Santana retained a great deal of respect in both jazz and rock circles, with Prince and guitarist Kirk Hammett of Metallica citing him as an influence and his friendship with Miles Davis, who by the 1980s had staged a comeback but was in increasingly poor health.
The Santana band returned in 1986 with a new album Freedom. For lead vocals, He brought back Buddy Miles, who was trying to revive his music career after spending much of the late 1970s and early 1980s incarcerated for drug charges. His onstage presence provided a dose of charisma to the show, but once again the sales of the album fell flat.
Growing weary of trying to appease record company executives with formulaic hit records, Santana took great pleasure in jamming and making guest appearances with notables, fusion group Weather Report, jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, Blues legend John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Living Color guitarist Vernon Reid, and West African singer Salif Keita. He and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead later recorded and performed with Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji, who conceived one of Santana's famous drum jams of the 1960s, Jingo. In 1988 Santana organized a reunion with past members from the Santana band for a series of concert dates. CBS records released a 20 year retrospective of the band's accomplishments with Viva Santana.
The same year Santana formed an all-instrumental group featuring jazz legend Wayne Shorter on tenor and soprano sax. The group also included Patrice Rushen on keyboards, Alphonso Johnson on bass, Armando Peraza and Chepito Areas on percussion, and Ndugu Leon Chancler on drums. They toured briefly and received much acclaim from the music press, who compared the effort with the era of Caravanserai. He released another solo record Blues for Salvador winning a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance
In 1990, he left Columbia Records after twenty-two years and signed with Polygram. In 1991, Santana made a guest appearance on Ottmar Liebert's album Solo Para Ti, on the songs Reaching out 2 U and a cover of his own song, Samba Pa Ti. In 1992, he hired soon-to-be legendary rock band Phish as his opening act. He remains close to the band today, especially guitarist Trey Anastasio.
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