Coltrane Quotes

• If there's any such thing as a perfect man, I think John Coltrane was one. And I think that kind of perfection has to come from a greater force than there is here on earth.

  Elvin Jones

  Music, Men, Thinking

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• I like to listed to the adventurous guys - the Coltranes, Miles Davis, the guys who just let it loose.

  Herb Alpert

  Guy, Adventurous, Miles

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• Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

  Maya Angelou

  Beautiful, Falling In Love, Art

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• You know, John Coltrane has been sort of a god to me. Seems like, in a way, he didn't get the inspiration out of other musicians. He had it. When you hear a cat do a thing like that, you got to go along with him. I think I heard Coltrane before I really got close to Miles [Davis]. Miles had a tricky way of playing his horn that I didn't understand as much as I did Coltrane. I really didn't understand what Coltrane was doing, but it was so exciting the thing that he was doing.

  Wes Montgomery

  Inspiration, Cat, Thinking

  Downbeat magazine Interview, 1961.

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• John [Coltrane] was like a visitor to this planet. He came in peace and he left in peace; but during his time here, he kept trying to reach new levels of awareness, of peace, of spirituality. That's why I regard the music he played as spiritual music -- John's way of getting closer and closer to the Creator.

  Albert Ayler

  Spiritual, Trying, Levels

  "As Serious As Your Life". Book by Valerie Wilmer, 1977.

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• Motion Picture Soundtrack on Kid A was another Coltrane inspiration.

  Colin Greenwood

  Inspiration, Kids, Soundtracks

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• John Coltrane - I've been listening to the 'Trane again. It blows you away, because I know more now and I hear more now and I had a life that I've lived!

  Alan Vega

  Blow, Listening, Knows

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• When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone.

  Tom Verlaine

  Records, Saxophone, Grades

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• I remember when A love Supreme was released - I heard it at a friends house. ... Man it was incredible. That record sounded different than the rest. I was trying to gather my spirituality together, trying to get an understanding of life ..... I felt Coltrane was the first musician who made a transition from one side to the other.

  Maurice White

  Men, House, Understanding

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• In America, for a brief time, people who followed John Coltrane were studied and considered important, but it didn't last long. The result is that the kind of music I played in the '60's is completely dismissed in this country as a wrong turn, a suicidal effort.

  Archie Shepp

  Music, Country, Suicidal

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• Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.

  Colin Greenwood

  Musician, Groups, Tools

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Lately, Ive been listening to some jazz albums. I love the new Pat Metheny album. John Coltrane. I still like good metal, though!

  Geezer Butler

  Listening, Albums, Jazz

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• If you try to have a fashion show with Bach fugues and John Coltrane, it doesn't really work.

  Isaac Mizrahi

  Fashion, Trying, Shows

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• I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Listening, Made

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• Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.

  Jan Garbarek

  Moving, Jazz, Miles

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• Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.

  Branford Marsalis

  New Orleans, Talking, New Day

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• In short, [Coltrane's] tone is beautiful because it is functional. In other words, it is always involved in saying something. You can't separate the means that a man uses to say something from what he ultimately says. Technique is not separated from its content in a great artist.

  Cecil Taylor

  Beautiful, Mean, Artist

  "John Coltrane". Book by Bill Cole, 1976.

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• I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues.

  Eric Clapton

  Kings, Jelly, Monk

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• For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.

  Cornel West

  Musician, Tone, Poet

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Who ... what are they?" "My pride and glory," Alex said fondly. "Betty and Lucy Coltrane. Best damned bouncers in the business. Though of course I'd never tell them that. Fiercer than pit bulls and cheaper to run. Married to each other. They had a dog once, but they ate it.

  Simon R. Green

  Running, Dog, Pride

  Simon R. Green (2003). “Something from the Nightside”, p.37, Penguin

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• But you listen to Coltrane and that's something human, something that's about elevation. It's like making love to a woman. It's about something of value, it's not just loud. It doesn't have that violent connotation to it. I wanted to be a jazz musician so bad, but I really couldn't. There was no way I could figure out to learn how to play.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Play, Making Love, Musician

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• Listen to John Coltrane enough and after two bars, just two bars at any place, and you know that's him. We all have signature things that happen to be similar that you can predict and you try to stay away from that except the rhythms: those pauses, they're part of my signature, the part where I know when I say nothing, I already painted enough, led enough and I don't even have to say anything. But those pauses don't belong to me. Jack Benny was one of the first guys in comedy to make the anticipation so great that during the pause people start to laugh before the execution.

  Bill Cosby

  Two, People, Laughing

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• ... We borrowed it all from Coltrane. I started encouraging everybody in the band to listen to John Coltrane - 'Check it out, see what these guys do.' They take one chord, the tonic chord, and just play all over it. 'We can do that too!' I wanted to make our music something really amazing - I wanted it to be jaw-dropping and turn on a dime and do all of those things that I knew music could do, and nobody told us we couldn't do it. I shouldn't say 'I,' though - Jerry Garcia was behind it the whole way.

  Phil Lesh

  Music, Play, Guy

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• I don't consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can't develop any further. But I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself. Take a musician like John Coltrane. He is a perfect musician, who can give expression to all the possibilities of his instrument. But he seems to have difficulty expressing original ideas on it. That is why he keeps looking for ideas in exotic places. At least I don't have that problem, because, like I say, I find my inspiration in myself.

  Thelonious Monk

  Inspiration, Expression, Ideas

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• Bob Erlendson, a local piano player, taught me chord structure and which scales go along with them. Later, I began listening to [pianists] Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner. Then I got interested in [saxophonist] John Coltrane.

  Lenny Breau

  Music, Player, Piano

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