How does one memorialize John Coltrane? Posing that question to the music critic is a little like asking a devoutly religious person how s/he praises God. Endlessly, I suppose. Yet, in both cases, all forms of worship seem inadequate. How does one express thanks and appreciation for your creator and source of guidance? Certainly any linguistic expression feels inert. After all, you are often conveying meaning with a language your deity has generously given to you. That somehow seems shallow, uncreative.
Ironies abound in my struggle to find a new language appropriate for Coltrane. The legendary jazz saxophonist actually viewed his career in the same way I view this introduction: as an extension to a god, spirituality and some sense of righteousness. As Eric Nisensen recounts in his wonderful new book on Coltrane, "He saw in his vision of God a unity of all people and all things. All paths that led to the Absolute, ultimate reality, were equally valid. His religion was not doctrinaire but ultimately one of profound simplicity, a desire to be part of the "force that is truly good," in his own words. He believed that his humanity, his music, the material world and God were all one, and that feeling of unity governed his life. He believed that discovering this unity was man's best hope."
Nisensen's work, Ascension: John Coltrane and his Quest, revolves around this understanding of Coltrane's life and practice. It is more musical and cultural landscape than biography. And thus arises the second irony of my introduction. Nisensen struggles to find that worshipful language, that appreciative tone, that exaltation. Above all, Ascension is a form of Coltrane tribute, with near-religious overtones. Of course, there are the predictable practices of the cultural critic. Nisensen, a highly-respected jazz writer and author of `Round About Midnight, meticulously chronicles the creation of Coltrane's music, the development of his musical style, the critical reception to his work (mostly horrific) and the legend's personal traumas and triumphs. Nisensen's work is sometimes taxing; the amateur listener and/or non-musician might find Ascension painfully technical. Nonetheless, Nisensen provides enough points of entry to communicate Coltrane's artistic and spiritual mission to any reader.
The book's common thread is the author's understanding of Coltrane's quest: "like trying to push a boulder uphill", Coltrane, Nisensen argues, forever found himself searching for a more revealing, more enlightening form of musical expression. The saxophonist's 1957 religious revelation, a catalyst for his recovery from heroin addiction, served as a metaphysical call to arms. Coltrane recorded virtually non-stop for the next (and last) ten years of his life. The world, of course, will never be the same.
R&R recently had the pleasure of talking with Ascension author Eric Nisensen...
R&R: How did you initially conceptualize your project? How did it give birth?
Eric Nisensen: Talking about it from a creative point of view, what I wanted to do with this book, which I think is the most interesting part, is that the raison d'etre for Coltrane's art, the reason he did what he did with his life and his career had never really been carefully explained. A lot of the criticism on Coltrane has been very self-serving, a lot of it has just been beside the point. And a lot of garbage has been written about Coltrane. And he's considered the last great innovator and I thought that's interesting too. I thought that's very important. Why is he the last great innovator?
R&R: Well, do you agree with that assessment?
EN: Well, I don't know who you would say who has come after him who is nearly as important. I don't think you could scarcely say Wynton Marsalis. It's a tough thing to say because if that's so, he died in 1967 which is a long time ago. To say that no one has come since who's as important makes it seem that jazz has, in its purest form, come to the end of its history. That it's going to be mutated into other forms. There's so little going on that I consider creative. I don't consider playing music from 30 years ago creative, which is what jazz musicians have generally done. One of the reasons I wanted to write the book--it's such a great contrast between Coltrane and his need to continue innovating, almost to a ridiculous point, compared to the guys these days who are almost horrified at innovating, as if it's vulgar or something...it's merely being able to reflect one's times. Jazz is music played in the moment. You've got to be very aware of the moment, where you are in that moment. Jazz musicians always have been. And if you're playing music from basically 30 years ago, you are living in the past.
R&R: Who do you think is the most conspicuous example of that phenomenon?
EN: Well, Wynton obviously. Actually, Wynton's a little bit better than the rest; he's trying to do some more interesting things. But all these people followed him who are called the neo-classicists. I think I understand why they're doing what they're doing. They're the first generation of jazz musicians to be trained rather than living "the jazz life," paying your dues by sitting in with musicians, playing jam sessions, big bands, which are dead now, and playing beside masters like Miles Davis or Coltrane and so many are gone now. They have been trained in universities and they've been taught by guys who are teaching them the jazz which they like and they're saying, "This is the way to play." Now in jazz, the only tradition is no tradition. You can't teach people something like that in a university. It's based on tradition, saying, "Alright, this is the traditional way to play saxophone, this is the way you play it." But if that had been so, we never would have had this plethora of styles.
R&R: Do you see anything hopeful in inspiration for jazz coming from outside of the discipline? Like jazz/hip-hop fusion projects?
EN: Well, I don't like the jazz/hip-hop fusion, but I think a lot of what's happening in rock is a lot more interesting than what's happening in jazz. I think groups like Sonic Youth and a lot of alternative bands like that are playing far more interesting music than anything that's being heard in jazz.
R&R: Sonic Youth of course played with Sun Ra at one point in their career before he died.
EN: Sure. They're doing what jazz musicians used to do...in order to play jazz, you have to play based on what's happening in the culture today. Jazz has always done that. The jazz they're playing now has nothing to do with the music we're hearing today--on the street. And the people who are playing interesting music are these really adventurous pop groups like Sonic Youth. Even someone like Prince to me is doing more interesting stuff than anything you're hearing in jazz. If Prince had been born 20 years earlier, his father was a jazz pianist, he would have been an important jazz musician. Just the way they're experimenting with sound, and building layers of sound is so much more interesting to me than people just playing be-bop licks.
R&R: So, in some ways, you feel like people like Prince and Sonic Youth are the real legacy of Coltrane, et. al.
EN: I would say so, yeah.
R&R: Can you tell me why you have an aversion to the jazz/hip-hop experiments?
EN: Because it's what I refer to as pretty lame. Just having someone play a little jazz over some rap is just lame. And then say this is a real fusion, that's just superficial crap.
R&R: I was wondering if you could talk more about the ways in which your book is not a biography and how it functions as a musical landscape, instead.
EN: Well, musical and cultural. I didn't want to just give a new sketch of Coltrane's life. There are other biographies that are supposed to be coming out; they can do that. What's interesting about Coltrane to me is his inner life and what went on in his inner world...the drama of Coltrane's life is his interior life. It's this quest he was on, this religious quest. It was a spiritual quest. He had such a global feel for things. He could see how stuff like Einstein tied in with his beliefs and all kinds of things. It was a little too much at times. Often when people wrote about Coltrane they wrote about him as if he was a black militant. "Coltrane was the '60s and of course that was the time of black militants." Coltrane I'm sure was aware of what was happening to black people and was concerned about it. But I think his main concerns were very personal. Well, they were personal and on the other hand, he believed that if people would get on a spiritual plane that he could uplift people through his music. And then they wouldn't be racist anymore because they'd be spiritually uplifted. People were good if they were put on the right path. He believed that music could do that to people...this is a guy who really was not interested in money or anything. He made money, you know, he did pretty well for a jazz musician, but no one was making him play solos that were two hours long. He did that because he just had to put all in. He was so dedicated to his music. People are so cynical these days about stuff like that.
R&R: Well, didn't people have a hearty cynicism for what he considered his spiritual project back then also? Or was that really just his musical experimentation?
EN: I don't know how people felt about his spiritual life, but people were skeptical about his music. Some people thought it was just noise.
R&R: You go out of your way to document this thoroughly--why do you think critics were so, so critical of him?
EN: Some critics were, yes.
R&R: But the criticism that was anti-Coltrane was violent in a way that you very rarely see, I think.
EN: It's a very interesting question. You know, the '60s was a time of great polarization. I think he scared people. I really do. I think his music was very powerful and I think he literally scared people. The first time I saw him, it was scary. I think that some critics were making assumptions about his music, that he was expressing anger. Now Phillip Larkin, the poet, he said out loud what I think a lot of critics were thinking. He wasn't afraid to be racist, you know, he was proud of his racism. He said, negroes used to be nice people who would play for the white man and entertain the white man. Now they just want to show the white man their rage with people like John Coltrane. So I think that they thought that Coltrane was expressing black rage and I think they interpreted it that way. And Coltrane was puzzled by this. He didn't feel he was expressing rage. He thought he was reaching toward God. He was always puzzled when people called him "the angry tenor man". In the '50s they called him that. He hated that. And then when they called it "hate music" in the '60s, that really upset him. I think that had a lot to do with it. I think the critics took the music personally, like this was anti-white. There was so much fear back then about black power...That was not what he was trying to do, though. And he was very upset about it because they weren't hearing what he was trying to do. So if you're trying to express ecstasy and instead people hear anger, that means that you're not really reaching them. So that can be a big letdown to an artist.
R&R: In terms of defining the racial tensions involved in jazz, how do you think he felt about the kind of "Crow Jim" politics you talked about in your book and how do you think he dealt with being placed on a pedestal as a black militant figure?
EN: [In the '60s] it was very easy to let on what side you were on about certain issues. Back then, if you were for Malcolm X that meant you were one way and if you were an acolyte of Martin Luther King, that carried a lot of baggage with it, a lot more baggage than it might seem now. The fact that Coltrane wrote a tune dedicated to Martin Luther King to me means an awful lot. Because I think he knew what he was doing. A lot of musicians who were in the avant-garde were writing compositions for Malcolm X long before he even died. And that was their politics. I think Coltrane felt very strongly about the injustice to black people, I mean how could he not? On the other hand, he believed, as he said over and over again, in the unity of all people and of all things. So I think that his philosophy was much closer to Martin Luther King's who had this religious point of view that was based to some degree on Indian religion and non-violence. That was much closer to Coltrane. Everyone who knew him said he was a very gentle, very sweet man.
R&R: In terms of evaluating the way he dealt with world music and global politics, what sort of importance do you think other cultures had in his life? And how did he feel about the response he got overseas? And how important was it to him?
EN: In Japan, he was really amazed about the outpouring. I think I tell in my book that when his plane landed he saw this huge gathering of people and he thought there was some dignitary on board the plane. He couldn't believe that was for him...But I think as far as other cultures went, using Third World music in particular, I think he very consciously was trying to make jazz a more Third World type music. And get it further away from European music. By doing that, he brought in elements of Indian, African and Arabic music. I think he did that very consciously, and very successfully. I think there was an element that you could call political, that he was making a statement about what jazz should be. I think a lot of it just had to do with musical curiosity. But ultimately he always went back to the jazz tradition itself for inspiration. To move ahead, not to get stuck in the past like today's generation, but to move ahead.
R&R: Do you think it was devotion to the jazz culture that reared him? Or do you think it was just really where his fascinations lay?
EN: In jazz there's a line of thought and there's a way of approaching music that was very special and very different from anything the world has ever known. It was different from music based that much on improvisation. I know people say Indian music was based on improvisation but it can't compare to jazz. You're very restricted when you improvise stuff in Indian music. In jazz you have tremendous freedom to produce your own music completely, your own melodies. You have to. And there really has been nothing like it, before or since. To be on the bandstand and to not know what you're going to play until you play it, that's a very unusual cultural phenomenon.
R&R: How would you explain the impact of a live John Coltrane experience to someone who had never seen him?
EN: It just wasn't like any musical or aesthetic experience I ever had. It was like a living experience, like the first time you had sex or taking a pyschedelic drug or being bashed over the head for that matter. It got to you on every level, which makes it different from classical music because you felt it in your body, as well as your mind and your soul. You were shaken, you were just shaken by this music. It was one of the great experiences of my life. Anyone who saw him, if you didn't run out screaming, I know some people hated it because it was just so loud. Elvin [drummer Elvin Jones] played really loud. It was like going to a rock concert. It was just something you have the rest of your life. It was one of the great experiences.
R&R: How do you think Coltrane was able to seem like he was in a transcendent state and keep time at the same time?
EN: I have no idea. I have no idea. For a solo that went on for an hour and a half and to know where he was in each cycle. I don't know because he was a genius. And that's all I can say.
R&R: Did Coltrane envision his "quest" as something that was unattainable?
EN: He heard something in his head and I think he thought there was some kind of ultimate music that was out there and that he would know it when he played it, but I don't think he ever played it. Everything he did along the line was a way of trying to reach that point. Like that early stuff when he played music in pure harmony. Just playing a bunch of chords, one on top of another--that was the way. Forget about melody, play nothing but harmony and that would be nirvana...I shouldn't use nirvana. It's a sad day to use that word.
R&R: Yeah, definitely.
EN: That was a great band, by the way. You can tell that he really believed in what he was doing when he played. He wasn't just trying to sell records. It sounded new and fresh. It sounded like 1994 too, you know. He was singing about our times now, not the '60s. It was really, really tragic. Although you listen to his records and you kind of understand it. Anyway, I think that every step of the way Coltrane produced that ultimate music he produced in his mind...I really think that he felt that if he played that music that it would actually change the world. I think he really believed that. That God would come down and it would be the apocalypse.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.