“It’s more than beauty that I feel in music – that I think musicians feel in music. What we know we feel we’d like to convey to the listener. We hope that this can be shared by all. I think, basically, that’s about what it is we’re trying to do. If you ask me that question, I might say this today and tomorrow say something entirely different, because there are many things to do in music.

            “But, overall, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows and senses in the universe. That’s what music is to me – it’s just another way of saying this is a big, beautiful universe we live in, that’s been given to us, and here’s an example of just how magnificent and encompassing it is. That’s what I would like to do. I think that’s one of the greatest things you can do in life, and we all try to do it in some way. The musician’s is through his music.”
            - John Coltrane, “John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy Answer the Jazz Critics”, Down Beat

 Favorite Excerpts from Ascension, John Coltrane And His Quest by Eric Nisenson

John Cotrane’s life was based on a series of discoveries, most of them a result of both hard work and the deepest introspection. His greatest discovery was that of finding out who he really was. Coltrane was no prodigy and not until he was well into his twenties did he come to realize how truly extraordinary his talent was. The surface of his life offers few clues as to the brilliant fate toward which, at times haltingly, he strode. Unlike many great men, for Coltrane no obvious path led toward inevitable triumph. And because this fate was at first hidden from him, he was able eventually to discover the vast hidden continent of his genius, the exploration of which led ineluctably to his great innovations and triumphs.

Many beat poets began to recite their jazzlike poetry to the accompaniment of a real jazz band, producing, I suppose, a precursor to rap. Beats wrote novels about jazz (John Cellon Homes’s The Horn) or poems honoring the great jazz musicians – there was a cottage industry of poetry about Charlie Parker after Bird’s death in 1955. No one deified jazz musicians more than Kerouac, although he often chose strange jazz musicians to worship, such as, in On the Road, George Shearing (to give Jack at least some benefit of the doubt, it was the early Shearing, before he formed his famous freezingly cool quintet). Norman Mailer, in his famous essay on the hipster “The White Negro,” called jazz the music of orgasm, the sound of orgy roiling beneath the outward calm of American society in the Fifties.

In the early spring of 1957 something happened to John Coltrane, something that would alter his life forever and set him on the great quest that would be at the center of his life form here on. For he had, so he stated, a momentous religious experience.

            It happened when he finally decided to free himself from his addictions. He lay down in a room in his mother’s house and instructed his wife to bring him only water. By this time, alcohol was more of a problem than heroin, and his withdrawal was at first painful and dark. He wife and mother didn’t think he would make it; he became sick and agitated, both physically and psychologically. Early on during this period, he said, he was somehow touched by God, with whom he made a deal of sorts; get him through this torment and he would devote his talent to God, he would make music that would bring people to experience the same kind of revelations he was witnessing. Believe or doubt him, but after this experience he was able to calm down and wait out his cure. He lay quietly in bed, eating nothing, drinking only water, exorcising the demons that had plagued him for years. According to the legend, in less than two weeks he was able to get out of bed a healthy man, completely free of his addictions for the first time in years (with one exception – he was unable to stop smoking). As with any legend – and Coltrane became a genuine jazz legend – the truth was more complicated than the myth. There is no doubt, however, that from this experience Coltrane had a new sense of purpose in his life and even more dedication to his work than he had previously. He was playing for God now. And he was at least on the road to renouncing the demons that had dominated his life for so long.

John Coltrane was plagued throughout his life with dental problems, and extremely painful difficulty for a saxophone player. His alcoholism and drug addiction where forms of self-medication to ease that pain, some have speculated. . . .

He would practice between playing sets at a club and then go home and practice some more. According to his friend the great saxophonist James Moody, when friends would visit, Coltrane would often point out the kitchen and the bathroom and then go back to practicing. There are other stories of those who witnessed him literally falling asleep at night with the horn still in his mouth. To some degree he was undoubtedly making up for lost time. Maybe he had some prescience about his early death. No doubt, in music he saw a path to the profoundest wisdom, and the only way to persevere down that path was through hard work.

A large part of his audience was disappointed by the dissolving of the great Coltrane quartet. Wherever he went, Coltrane had to face the burden of trying to play completely new music with such a brilliant and popular legacy of great music in his past. As even-tempered as he was, he began to lose patience with club owners and patrons who asked, and even demanded, that he play music from his past, occasionally from far in his past, such as selections from Blue Train, recorded almost a decade earlier. For any genuinely creative artist a decade is a long time in his artistic development, but for Coltrane, whose change of style was measured in months and sometimes in weeks, the idea of returning to the music of nine or ten years ago was absurd. Since his career was tied directly to a quest that was personal and metaphysical as well as musical, such demands must have been severely disappointing to Coltrane. They showed that a large segment of his audience was ignorant of the enormous amount of sacrifice and continual inner growth, as well as the purely physical wear, that went into developing an art that he believed would yield great spiritual revelation and ultimate insight into the nature of man and his universe, rather than just a moment’s entertainment.

“What would you say to people who claim that they cannot understand your music?” The question, or ones like it, had been a staple of Coltrane interviews since the Fifties. The difference now was that perhaps Coltrane himself was wondering if his music had become too inaccessible. He answered, “You’d like me to answer this? Well, I don’t feel there is an answer to this. It is either saying a person who does not understand, will understand in time from repeated listening or some things he will never understand. You know, that’s the way it is. There are many things in life that we don’t understand. And we just go on with life anyway.”

I am Christian by birth; my parents were and my early teachings were Christian. But as I look upon the world, I feel all men know the truth. If a man was a Christian, he could know the truth and he could not. The truth itself does not have any name on it. And each man has to find it for himself, I think.

I believe that man is here to grow into the fullest, the best that he can be. At least this is what I want to do. As I am growing to become whatever I become, this will just come out on the horn. Whatever that’s going to be, it will be. I am not so much interested in trying to say what it is going to be. I don’t know. I just know that good can only bring good.

After reviewing and reliving John Coltrane’s incredibly brave career and his burning musical curiosity, which was tied to a desire to know God and the very rhythms of the cosmos, it is especially hard not to be put off by such reactionary music and aesthetics. Wynton Marsalis is becoming a better player every time I hear him, and now there is beginning to be heard some real emotional resonance in his playing. Yet there is something missing, and it is missing in just about all of those neoclassicists that I have heard. Miles would call it “that thing,” and it has much to do with the chances we must take in life in order for our souls to survive. 

Coltrane had a spiritual revelation while kicking his drug habit in 1957 and said years later, "My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it through my music. If you live it, when you play there's no problem because the music is part of the whole thing... My music is the expression of what I am, my faith, my knowledge, my being."

 I was reading a book on the life of van Gogh today, and I had to pause and think of that wonderful and persistent force -- the creative urge. The creative urge was in this man who found himself so much at odds with the world he lived in, and in spite of all the adversity, frustrations, rejections, and so forth -- beautiful and living art came forth abundantly.

            It seems history shows that the innovator is more often than not met with some degree of condemnation; usually according to the degree of departure from the prevailing modes of expression or what have you. Change is always so hard to accept. We also see that these innovators always seek to revitalize, extend, and reconstruct the status quo in their given field, whatever is needed. Quite often they are the rejects, outcasts, sub-citizens, etc., of the very societies to which they bring so much sustenance. Often they are people who endure great personal tragedy in their lives. Whatever the case, whether accepted or rejected, rich or poor, they are forever guided by that great and eternal constant -- the creative urge. Let us cherish it and give all praise to God."
      - John Coltrane, from a letter to a friend

Once you become aware of this force for unity in life you can't ever forget it. It becomes part of everything you do....my conception of that force keeps changing shape. My goal in meditating this through music, however, remains the same. That is to uplift people as much as I can. To inspire them to realize more and more of their capacities for living meaningful lives. Because there certainly is meaning to life.

            There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine, new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give those who listen to the essence, the best of what we are. But to do that at each stage, we have to keep cleaning the mirror.
- John Coltrane interviewed by Nat Hentoff, 1966. From the liner notes to the album Meditations

Finally, not about Coltrane, but thought provoking nonethe less, and on the subject of jazz:

[Miles is]an example of somebody I think was a late arriver, even though he was recorded when he first came on the scene. You can hear how consciously he was soloing and how his knowledge was a very aware thing. He just constantly kept working and contributing to his own craft . . . . And then at one point it all came together and he emerged with maturity, and he became a total artist and influence, making a kind of beauty that had never been heard before or since . . . I always like people who have developed long and hard, especially through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think what they arrive at is usually . . . deeper and more beautiful . . . than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning . . . And yes, ultimately it turned out that these people weren’t able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years to become better and deeper musicians.
            - Bill Evans