WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.779 You hear the name John Coltrane, and you probably 00:00:03.779 --> 00:00:06.019 picture a very specific scene, right? Oh yeah, 00:00:06.059 --> 00:00:08.699 usually like smooth jazz. Right, smooth jazz, 00:00:08.880 --> 00:00:11.759 maybe a smoky, dimly lit club, the clinking of 00:00:11.759 --> 00:00:15.140 glasses, and this guy just, you know, effortlessly 00:00:15.140 --> 00:00:17.620 playing a saxophone. It feels really relaxed. 00:00:17.839 --> 00:00:20.739 Yeah, it feels like background music to a very 00:00:20.739 --> 00:00:24.179 sophisticated evening. Exactly. But the source 00:00:24.179 --> 00:00:26.280 documents we are looking at today for this deep 00:00:26.280 --> 00:00:30.570 dive reveal a life and really a creative process 00:00:30.570 --> 00:00:33.530 that was anything but relaxing. Anything but. 00:00:33.530 --> 00:00:35.149 It's actually kind of jarring when you look at 00:00:35.149 --> 00:00:36.789 it. It really is. Yeah. I mean, we were talking 00:00:36.789 --> 00:00:38.609 about crushing addiction or radical spiritual 00:00:38.609 --> 00:00:41.909 awakening and, well, a musical obsession that 00:00:41.909 --> 00:00:44.869 was so extreme, it fundamentally broke the rules 00:00:44.869 --> 00:00:47.369 of Western music. Yeah, the gap between that 00:00:47.369 --> 00:00:49.649 relaxing background music that some people associate 00:00:49.649 --> 00:00:52.469 with jazz and the actual ferocity of Coltrane's 00:00:52.469 --> 00:00:55.009 life and his work. It's just massive. It's night 00:00:55.009 --> 00:00:57.549 and day. Right. When you dig into these sources, 00:00:57.789 --> 00:01:00.450 it really is a complete dismantling of the perception 00:01:00.450 --> 00:01:03.149 that most people have of him. And why should 00:01:03.149 --> 00:01:06.269 you, our listener, care about this? Well, because 00:01:06.269 --> 00:01:08.730 regardless of whether you even listen to jazz, 00:01:09.170 --> 00:01:12.390 this deep dive is a masterclass in how someone 00:01:12.390 --> 00:01:16.010 takes immense, almost unbearable personal suffering 00:01:16.010 --> 00:01:18.730 and figures out a way to translate it into a 00:01:18.730 --> 00:01:21.989 universal language. OK, let's unpack this because 00:01:21.989 --> 00:01:23.909 to really understand the genius of culturing. 00:01:24.170 --> 00:01:26.489 We had to start with his work ethic. Yeah, and 00:01:26.489 --> 00:01:28.849 work ethic almost feels like, I don't know, too 00:01:28.849 --> 00:01:31.209 mild a term for what the sources actually describe. 00:01:31.390 --> 00:01:33.450 Yeah, it wasn't just spontaneous magical inspiration 00:01:33.450 --> 00:01:35.849 falling from the sky. No, not at all. It was 00:01:35.849 --> 00:01:38.709 brutal math and it was a lot of sweat. So can 00:01:38.709 --> 00:01:41.170 you walk us through his early years, like specifically 00:01:41.170 --> 00:01:45.989 that 1945 Navy service? Absolutely. So to understand 00:01:45.989 --> 00:01:48.049 his incredible drive, you really have to look 00:01:48.049 --> 00:01:51.879 at the environment that forged it. In 1945, Coltrane 00:01:51.879 --> 00:01:55.040 enlists in the Navy, primarily to avoid being 00:01:55.040 --> 00:01:57.579 drafted by the Army. Makes sense. Right. And 00:01:57.579 --> 00:01:59.480 he gets shipped off to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. 00:02:00.099 --> 00:02:02.959 Now, his musical talent is already totally undeniable 00:02:02.959 --> 00:02:05.040 at this point, and it's quickly recognized by 00:02:05.040 --> 00:02:07.120 his superiors. So he ends up playing in the bass 00:02:07.120 --> 00:02:09.340 swing band. Melody Masters, right? The Melody 00:02:09.340 --> 00:02:13.259 Masters, exactly. But there is a glaring systemic 00:02:13.259 --> 00:02:16.360 obstacle here. The Melody Masters was an all 00:02:16.360 --> 00:02:19.020 -white band. And he was stationed at a base that 00:02:19.020 --> 00:02:21.479 at the time was the largest posting of African 00:02:21.479 --> 00:02:23.879 -American servicemen in the entire world, right? 00:02:24.419 --> 00:02:27.960 Yeah. So he is navigating this highly segregated 00:02:27.960 --> 00:02:31.020 military environment. Precisely. The military 00:02:31.020 --> 00:02:33.439 was strictly segregated. So to get around these 00:02:33.439 --> 00:02:36.740 rules, the band basically treated Coltrane as 00:02:36.740 --> 00:02:40.219 a guest performer. Wait, a guest performer? Yeah, 00:02:40.259 --> 00:02:42.099 which basically meant he was being smuggled into 00:02:42.099 --> 00:02:44.639 the band's performances just to hide his raise 00:02:44.639 --> 00:02:47.219 from the superior officers who, you know, might 00:02:47.219 --> 00:02:49.199 just shut the whole thing down. Wow. And when 00:02:49.199 --> 00:02:51.099 he wasn't playing, he wasn't being treated like 00:02:51.099 --> 00:02:53.599 some star musician. He was doing kitchen duty, 00:02:53.960 --> 00:02:56.419 washing dishes and standing on regular security 00:02:56.419 --> 00:02:59.770 details. Just normal grunt work. Exactly. But 00:02:59.770 --> 00:03:02.169 the documentation shows that even in that really 00:03:02.169 --> 00:03:05.349 hostile, marginalized environment, he was already 00:03:05.349 --> 00:03:07.849 assuming a leadership role musically, like he 00:03:07.849 --> 00:03:10.250 was organizing rehearsals and actively pushing 00:03:10.250 --> 00:03:12.610 the band's boundaries. I mean, that level of 00:03:12.610 --> 00:03:14.789 dedication in that kind of environment is just 00:03:14.789 --> 00:03:18.189 astonishing. But that drive, it only compounded 00:03:18.189 --> 00:03:20.770 when he got back to civilian life. Oh, absolutely. 00:03:21.229 --> 00:03:23.949 The source text has this quote from fellow musician 00:03:23.949 --> 00:03:26.490 Jimmy Heath, who noted that Coltrane practiced 00:03:26.840 --> 00:03:30.439 25 hours a day 25 hours a day right and there 00:03:30.439 --> 00:03:32.979 is this one specific anecdote from a hotel in 00:03:32.979 --> 00:03:35.039 San Francisco that I just keep thinking about 00:03:35.039 --> 00:03:37.979 so Coltrane is in his room practicing the saxophone 00:03:37.979 --> 00:03:41.340 and Obviously a tenor sax in a standard hotel 00:03:41.340 --> 00:03:44.840 room is incredibly loud deafening Yeah, so someone 00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:46.979 complains to the front desk and management knocks 00:03:46.979 --> 00:03:50.400 on his door telling him to stop So does he pack 00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:53.219 up his instrument? No? Nope. He just takes the 00:03:53.219 --> 00:03:55.439 horn out of his mouth and practices the fingering, 00:03:55.800 --> 00:03:58.319 just silently pressing the keys for a full hour. 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:00.780 And the physical toll of that obsession, I mean, 00:04:00.860 --> 00:04:03.199 it was severe. The documentation shows it was 00:04:03.199 --> 00:04:05.419 really common for him to just fall asleep from 00:04:05.419 --> 00:04:07.280 pure exhaustion with the horn still in his mouth. 00:04:07.319 --> 00:04:09.860 That's wild. Or, you know, he would sit in a 00:04:09.860 --> 00:04:12.620 chair and practice a single solitary note, just 00:04:12.620 --> 00:04:14.860 adjusting his breath and his embouchure for hours 00:04:14.860 --> 00:04:17.569 on end. Hours on one note. Yeah, just to see 00:04:17.569 --> 00:04:19.730 how many different tones he could extract from 00:04:19.730 --> 00:04:22.230 one single fingering. It totally reminds me of 00:04:22.230 --> 00:04:25.569 a coder or like an elite athlete who gets locked 00:04:25.569 --> 00:04:28.490 into this flow state that honestly borders on 00:04:28.490 --> 00:04:30.430 mania. Right. Yeah. They forget to eat. They 00:04:30.430 --> 00:04:32.889 forget to sleep. The entire world just shrinks 00:04:32.889 --> 00:04:35.790 down to the screen or the corridor, in this case, 00:04:35.829 --> 00:04:39.470 the brass tube. But I have to ask about the timeline 00:04:39.470 --> 00:04:42.689 and the biography here. In 1938, when Coltrane 00:04:42.689 --> 00:04:45.790 was just a 12 year old kid. His father, his aunt, 00:04:45.970 --> 00:04:48.410 and his grandparents all died within a few months 00:04:48.410 --> 00:04:51.050 of each other. Yeah, it was tragic. Was this 00:04:51.050 --> 00:04:54.990 intense, relentless obsession with the saxophone 00:04:54.990 --> 00:04:59.089 a trauma response to losing his entire foundational 00:04:59.089 --> 00:05:01.269 support system? If we connect this to the bigger 00:05:01.269 --> 00:05:03.410 picture, it's a very compelling psychological 00:05:03.410 --> 00:05:06.029 framework. Profound loss, especially in such 00:05:06.029 --> 00:05:08.730 a young age, often leaves a person feeling completely 00:05:08.730 --> 00:05:11.129 powerless. Right. The world is suddenly chaotic. 00:05:11.170 --> 00:05:14.680 It's unpredictable. It's cruel. What practicing 00:05:14.680 --> 00:05:16.939 does, especially the way Coltrane did it, you 00:05:16.939 --> 00:05:19.579 know, obsessing over the absolute physical mechanics 00:05:19.579 --> 00:05:23.839 of an instrument, is it funnels that grief into 00:05:23.839 --> 00:05:26.819 relentless controllable repetition. Oh, that 00:05:26.819 --> 00:05:28.779 makes a lot of sense. He couldn't control who 00:05:28.779 --> 00:05:31.300 lived or died in his family, but he could control 00:05:31.300 --> 00:05:34.319 exactly how the air moved through his horn. He 00:05:34.319 --> 00:05:36.439 was essentially building a universe where the 00:05:36.439 --> 00:05:39.300 rules actually made sense to him. He was seeking 00:05:39.300 --> 00:05:43.050 absolute control. But if he is practicing 25 00:05:43.050 --> 00:05:45.949 hours a day, building this incredibly disciplined 00:05:45.949 --> 00:05:49.250 world of musical mechanics, how does he end up 00:05:49.250 --> 00:05:52.029 hitting rock bottom? Because the sources show 00:05:52.029 --> 00:05:54.750 a massive derailment in the 1950s. Because you 00:05:54.750 --> 00:05:56.730 can practice all you want, but you cannot out 00:05:56.730 --> 00:05:59.670 practice your personal demons. Wow. Yeah. The 00:05:59.670 --> 00:06:01.810 obsession for control eventually collided with 00:06:01.810 --> 00:06:03.790 the reality of the jazz club environment of the 00:06:03.790 --> 00:06:07.569 50s and, well, his unhealed trauma. That relentless 00:06:07.569 --> 00:06:10.129 drive became intertwined with the severe heroin 00:06:10.129 --> 00:06:12.329 addiction. Which was so common in that scene. 00:06:12.629 --> 00:06:15.810 Very common. And by the mid -50s, he is playing 00:06:15.810 --> 00:06:18.850 with Miles Davis in what historians call the 00:06:18.850 --> 00:06:21.230 first great quintet. I mean, that is jazz royalty. 00:06:21.550 --> 00:06:25.269 It is. But Coltrane's addiction becomes so debilitating, 00:06:25.449 --> 00:06:28.269 his behavior gets so erratic, that Miles Davis, 00:06:28.290 --> 00:06:31.149 who, by the way, was no stranger to the darker 00:06:31.149 --> 00:06:34.170 side of the jazz scene himself, actually fires 00:06:34.170 --> 00:06:36.620 him. which has to be a devastating wake up call. 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:39.160 Being fired by Miles Davis is like being kicked 00:06:39.160 --> 00:06:41.300 out of the musical equivalent of the Apollo space 00:06:41.300 --> 00:06:43.939 program. It was a pivotal crisis. He loses his 00:06:43.939 --> 00:06:46.160 spot in the absolute most important band in the 00:06:46.160 --> 00:06:48.540 country. And this sets the stage for what the 00:06:48.540 --> 00:06:51.800 sources describe as his 1957 spiritual awakening. 00:06:52.259 --> 00:06:54.319 OK. Coltrane goes back home to Philadelphia and 00:06:54.319 --> 00:06:56.980 he decides to kick heroin and alcohol cold turkey. 00:06:57.199 --> 00:06:59.399 Which from a purely physiological standpoint 00:06:59.399 --> 00:07:02.139 is incredibly dangerous and agonizing. Absolutely. 00:07:02.300 --> 00:07:05.180 Going cold turkey off heroin. involves violent 00:07:05.180 --> 00:07:08.980 tremors, sweating, muscle spasms, and just this 00:07:08.980 --> 00:07:11.980 deep psychological dread. It is a total system 00:07:11.980 --> 00:07:15.779 shock. It is a harrowing physical ordeal, but 00:07:15.779 --> 00:07:19.540 he locks himself away and endures it. And during 00:07:19.540 --> 00:07:22.259 this withdrawal, he experiences a really profound 00:07:22.259 --> 00:07:26.420 clarity. He makes A pact. A pact. Yeah, he writes 00:07:26.420 --> 00:07:28.500 about this later in his life stating that during 00:07:28.500 --> 00:07:31.959 that agonizing period he humbly asked for the 00:07:31.959 --> 00:07:34.540 privilege to make others happy through his music. 00:07:34.750 --> 00:07:37.029 Wait, I want to clarify something here, because 00:07:37.029 --> 00:07:40.250 there is this very pervasive cultural trope of 00:07:40.250 --> 00:07:42.089 the tortured artist. Oh, sure. We see it all 00:07:42.089 --> 00:07:43.769 the time, right? Yeah. The idea that the drugs, 00:07:43.889 --> 00:07:46.490 the misery, the chaos, those are the actual ingredients 00:07:46.490 --> 00:07:49.269 for genius. Does the timeline suggest that the 00:07:49.269 --> 00:07:51.269 heroine fueled his most groundbreaking work? 00:07:51.449 --> 00:07:53.709 Not at all. And that is a really crucial distinction 00:07:53.709 --> 00:07:56.389 to make. The addiction was an obstacle. It wasn't 00:07:56.389 --> 00:07:59.029 the fuel. OK. The fuel was the spiritual mission 00:07:59.029 --> 00:08:00.689 he found on the other side of the addiction. 00:08:01.350 --> 00:08:03.329 Getting clean didn't dull his edges. It gave 00:08:03.329 --> 00:08:07.199 him a renewed terrifyingly clear focus. What's 00:08:07.199 --> 00:08:09.279 fascinating here is the complete psychological 00:08:09.279 --> 00:08:13.000 shift. How so? Well up until 1957 you could argue 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:15.279 he was playing to master the instrument or maybe 00:08:15.279 --> 00:08:18.199 to prove himself among his peers or just to simply 00:08:18.199 --> 00:08:21.240 outrun his childhood trauma. But after that awakening 00:08:21.240 --> 00:08:24.500 he stopped playing for his ego. He started playing 00:08:24.500 --> 00:08:27.259 entirely as an act of devotion to a higher power. 00:08:27.480 --> 00:08:30.040 But how do you translate a spiritual pact into 00:08:30.040 --> 00:08:33.500 jazz? Like with a newly cleared mind, he realizes 00:08:33.500 --> 00:08:36.340 the old rules of the genre are suddenly too small 00:08:36.340 --> 00:08:38.559 for the massive concepts he wants to express. 00:08:38.799 --> 00:08:41.960 Exactly. He needed a completely new musical vocabulary. 00:08:42.659 --> 00:08:44.600 And the sources point to this era where critics 00:08:44.600 --> 00:08:47.360 start describing his playing as sheets of sound. 00:08:47.519 --> 00:08:50.159 How exactly does a horn player create a sheet 00:08:50.159 --> 00:08:52.379 of sound? It comes down to musical physics and 00:08:52.379 --> 00:08:55.159 time. The critic Ira Gitler actually coined that 00:08:55.159 --> 00:08:58.539 term in 1957. Traditional jazz usually operates 00:08:58.539 --> 00:09:02.139 in a standard four time signature, so four beats 00:09:02.139 --> 00:09:04.779 to a measure. Musicians typically play notes 00:09:04.779 --> 00:09:06.700 that fit symmetrically into those beats, like 00:09:06.700 --> 00:09:09.279 eighth notes or sixteenth notes. Standard math. 00:09:09.580 --> 00:09:12.139 Standard math. But Coltrane told an interviewer 00:09:12.139 --> 00:09:14.940 that he had this massive number of chord progressions 00:09:14.940 --> 00:09:17.509 he was hearing in his head and standard notes 00:09:17.509 --> 00:09:20.230 wouldn't fit in the allotted time. So he started 00:09:20.230 --> 00:09:22.370 grouping notes asymmetrically. Wait, hold on. 00:09:22.450 --> 00:09:25.090 Grouping them asymmetrically? Yeah. How do you 00:09:25.090 --> 00:09:28.129 cram an uneven number of notes into a space built 00:09:28.129 --> 00:09:30.409 for an even number without the whole band just 00:09:30.409 --> 00:09:33.190 falling apart? It requires an unbelievable level 00:09:33.190 --> 00:09:36.490 of breath control and finger dexterity. He would 00:09:36.490 --> 00:09:39.149 force five or seven notes into a single beat. 00:09:39.330 --> 00:09:42.190 Five or seven. Yeah. So instead of individual 00:09:42.190 --> 00:09:45.629 distinct melodies, the listener experiences this 00:09:45.629 --> 00:09:48.490 cascading, overlapping wall of continuous notes. 00:09:48.549 --> 00:09:51.429 Oh, wow. He was playing so fast and packing so 00:09:51.429 --> 00:09:53.690 much harmonic information into a single second 00:09:53.690 --> 00:09:56.029 that the human ear basically blends it together 00:09:56.029 --> 00:09:58.230 into a single sheet. It's almost like he was 00:09:58.230 --> 00:10:00.250 trying to bend the physics of time itself. He 00:10:00.250 --> 00:10:03.190 really. was. And this intense mathematical approach 00:10:03.190 --> 00:10:07.549 peaks in 1960 with the album Giant Steps. The 00:10:07.549 --> 00:10:10.049 title track is famous for what musicians call 00:10:10.049 --> 00:10:13.149 Coltrane changes. The sources say it's considered 00:10:13.149 --> 00:10:15.990 a rite of passage or like a harmonic labyrinth 00:10:15.990 --> 00:10:19.289 for musicians to even attempt. Why is it so difficult? 00:10:19.500 --> 00:10:22.980 because it completely breaks the standard rules 00:10:22.980 --> 00:10:26.019 of resolution. In traditional songwriting, chords 00:10:26.019 --> 00:10:28.700 resolve in predictable steps. It's like walking 00:10:28.700 --> 00:10:30.879 smoothly down a staircase. You know where your 00:10:30.879 --> 00:10:33.519 foot is going to land? Exactly. But Coltrane 00:10:33.519 --> 00:10:36.720 changes jump around in major thirds. It's the 00:10:36.720 --> 00:10:39.259 musical equivalent of taking an elevator that 00:10:39.259 --> 00:10:41.940 stops at completely random floors, but the floors 00:10:41.940 --> 00:10:44.600 are spaced out using a highly complex mathematical 00:10:44.600 --> 00:10:46.799 formula. That sounds exhausting. It forces the 00:10:46.799 --> 00:10:49.019 soloist to constantly pivot their tonal sense. 00:10:48.840 --> 00:10:51.120 without any warning. So he essentially built 00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:54.320 a mathematical puzzle. But the peak of this structural 00:10:54.320 --> 00:10:57.240 architecture comes a few years later, in 1964, 00:10:57.860 --> 00:11:00.720 with the masterpiece album A Love Supreme. Here's 00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:03.440 where it gets really interesting. A Love Supreme 00:11:03.440 --> 00:11:06.539 is a four -part suite, serving as an ode to his 00:11:06.539 --> 00:11:09.379 faith in God. But the fourth movement of this 00:11:09.379 --> 00:11:13.179 suite is titled Psalm. And the source text reveals 00:11:13.179 --> 00:11:15.679 how he constructed this. This part is amazing. 00:11:15.899 --> 00:11:18.340 It really is. Coltrane wrote an original poem 00:11:18.340 --> 00:11:20.899 to God, which he printed in the album's liner 00:11:20.899 --> 00:11:23.639 notes. And when he plays the saxophone on that 00:11:23.639 --> 00:11:27.139 track, he isn't just improvising jazz. He is 00:11:27.139 --> 00:11:30.379 playing almost exactly one note for every single 00:11:30.379 --> 00:11:33.700 syllable of that written poem. He dictates his 00:11:33.700 --> 00:11:36.179 entire musical phrasing based on those hidden 00:11:36.179 --> 00:11:38.919 words. It is an astonishing compositional choice. 00:11:39.450 --> 00:11:42.210 He is quite literally speaking through the horn 00:11:42.210 --> 00:11:44.710 syllable by syllable. It's like taking a standard 00:11:44.710 --> 00:11:46.769 written sentence, renewing all the spaces, the 00:11:46.769 --> 00:11:49.110 punctuation, and all the vowels and forcing the 00:11:49.110 --> 00:11:51.330 listener to find the deep emotional meaning just 00:11:51.330 --> 00:11:54.070 in the harsh raw consonants. Right. You strip 00:11:54.070 --> 00:11:56.029 away the comfortable structure to force an immediate 00:11:56.029 --> 00:11:58.309 emotional reaction. You don't need to know the 00:11:58.309 --> 00:12:00.629 hidden words to feel the power of the song. But 00:12:00.629 --> 00:12:02.769 knowing that the constraint is there, well, it 00:12:02.769 --> 00:12:05.210 changes how you hear it. That analogy perfectly 00:12:05.210 --> 00:12:08.379 captures the paradox of this era. Coltrane was 00:12:08.379 --> 00:12:11.559 using extreme, almost suffocating mathematical 00:12:11.559 --> 00:12:15.379 constraint, matching exact syllables of a poem 00:12:15.379 --> 00:12:18.740 to specific notes in order to achieve ultimate 00:12:18.740 --> 00:12:21.480 spiritual freedom. It's brilliant. He believed 00:12:21.480 --> 00:12:23.460 that if he could perfectly align the math of 00:12:23.460 --> 00:12:25.700 the music with his spiritual intention, he could 00:12:25.700 --> 00:12:28.460 tap into a universal frequency. But the wild 00:12:28.460 --> 00:12:31.480 thing is, even that perfect architecture eventually 00:12:31.480 --> 00:12:33.759 felt too restrictive for him. Yeah, he couldn't 00:12:33.759 --> 00:12:37.409 stay there. Because to find true unedited with 00:12:37.409 --> 00:12:40.289 the universe. He decides he has to completely 00:12:40.289 --> 00:12:42.309 dismantle the music he had just spent his entire 00:12:42.309 --> 00:12:45.330 life perfecting. Yes, he enters what is widely 00:12:45.330 --> 00:12:48.269 considered his avant -garde or free jazz period. 00:12:48.830 --> 00:12:51.690 The standard quartet format just wasn't generating 00:12:51.690 --> 00:12:53.409 enough energy for him anymore. So what does he 00:12:53.409 --> 00:12:55.970 do? So he starts heavily augmenting his band. 00:12:56.009 --> 00:12:58.509 He brings in Pharaoh Sanders on tenor saxophone. 00:12:58.789 --> 00:13:00.929 And Sanders wasn't playing traditional scales. 00:13:01.289 --> 00:13:03.330 The sources note he was drastically expanding 00:13:03.330 --> 00:13:05.990 the vocabulary of the horn, primarily using a 00:13:05.990 --> 00:13:08.529 technique called multifonics to produce sounds 00:13:08.529 --> 00:13:11.309 that mimicked a human cry and shriek. OK, I've 00:13:11.309 --> 00:13:14.309 always wondered about that. A saxophone is designed 00:13:14.309 --> 00:13:16.509 to only play one note at a time, right? Right. 00:13:16.990 --> 00:13:20.269 So how does a single reed instrument produce 00:13:20.269 --> 00:13:23.129 multiple notes at once to sound like a shriek? 00:13:23.309 --> 00:13:25.629 It's incredibly difficult. To play multifonics, 00:13:25.789 --> 00:13:30.039 the musician has to really contort their embouchure, 00:13:30.159 --> 00:13:32.399 which is the way their mouth grips the mouthpiece 00:13:32.399 --> 00:13:35.519 and the reed and use highly unconventional fingerings. 00:13:35.600 --> 00:13:38.440 OK. By doing this, they force the air column 00:13:38.440 --> 00:13:41.980 inside the brass tube to literally split. The 00:13:41.980 --> 00:13:44.299 instrument is fighting its own acoustic physics, 00:13:44.320 --> 00:13:47.700 and as a result, two or more distinct clashing 00:13:47.700 --> 00:13:50.240 pitches ring out at the exact same time. That 00:13:50.240 --> 00:13:52.340 sounds intense. It sounds like a scream, because 00:13:52.340 --> 00:13:54.879 the metal itself is practically under acoustic 00:13:54.879 --> 00:13:57.980 stress. Wow. And he didn't stop at the Warrens. 00:13:58.299 --> 00:14:00.559 The sources say he starts using two bass players 00:14:00.559 --> 00:14:03.320 at the same time. Yes, two basses. The text notes, 00:14:03.340 --> 00:14:05.860 they did this to mimic the sound of an East Indian 00:14:05.860 --> 00:14:09.700 water drum. One bass would act as a stabilizing 00:14:09.700 --> 00:14:12.700 hypnotic pulse, while the other was totally free 00:14:12.700 --> 00:14:16.240 to improvise over it. Then he adds multiple drummers, 00:14:16.580 --> 00:14:18.860 bringing in Rashid Ali alongside his longtime 00:14:18.860 --> 00:14:22.129 drummer, Elvin Jones. Why two drummers? Well, 00:14:22.389 --> 00:14:24.730 because Coltrane stated he felt the need for 00:14:24.730 --> 00:14:28.350 more time, more rhythm all around me. He needed 00:14:28.350 --> 00:14:31.389 the rhythm to be multi -directional. He was weaving 00:14:31.389 --> 00:14:34.169 polyrhythms that completely broke the boundaries 00:14:34.169 --> 00:14:36.470 of Western musical tradition. I mean, he was 00:14:36.470 --> 00:14:39.330 deconstructing the four -time signature entirely. 00:14:39.490 --> 00:14:41.950 But this radical shift did not go over well, 00:14:42.029 --> 00:14:45.519 did it? No. There was a massive Highly vocal 00:14:45.519 --> 00:14:48.320 backlash right downbeat magazine famously published 00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:50.840 an article calling what Coltrane was doing anti 00:14:50.840 --> 00:14:54.460 jazz It bewildered the critics and it really 00:14:54.460 --> 00:14:57.500 alienated his own bandmates It did pianist McCoy 00:14:57.500 --> 00:14:59.559 Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones who had been with 00:14:59.559 --> 00:15:01.779 him through his most celebrated successful years 00:15:01.779 --> 00:15:04.779 They both ended up quitting Tyner said all he 00:15:04.779 --> 00:15:06.539 could hear was a wall of noise. He couldn't even 00:15:06.539 --> 00:15:08.720 hear his own piano over the two drummers. And 00:15:08.720 --> 00:15:11.000 Elvin Jims had that incredible quote about his 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:13.840 departure. He said, you wouldn't expect Einstein 00:15:13.840 --> 00:15:17.059 to be playing jacks, would you? He deeply respected 00:15:17.059 --> 00:15:19.980 Coltrane's genius, but the music had become so 00:15:19.980 --> 00:15:23.080 dense, so chaotic that Jones felt he could no 00:15:23.080 --> 00:15:25.480 longer meaningfully participate in the experiment. 00:15:25.919 --> 00:15:28.220 It's like a scientist who discovers a brand new 00:15:28.220 --> 00:15:31.179 theoretical element. but to prove to the world 00:15:31.179 --> 00:15:33.559 that it exists, he has to completely blow up 00:15:33.559 --> 00:15:35.700 his own laboratory. That's a great way to put 00:15:35.700 --> 00:15:38.460 it. And I want to ask you, the listener, to really 00:15:38.460 --> 00:15:40.460 think about the psychology of that for a second. 00:15:41.320 --> 00:15:44.440 How willing would you be to alienate your own 00:15:44.440 --> 00:15:47.220 colleagues, watch your biggest fans walk out 00:15:47.220 --> 00:15:49.600 of your concerts, and endure critics calling 00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:53.019 your life's work anti -jazz, all just to chase 00:15:53.019 --> 00:15:55.870 a truth that only you can hear? This raises an 00:15:55.870 --> 00:15:57.850 important question about what Coltrane actually 00:15:57.850 --> 00:15:59.629 believed he was accomplishing with this chaos. 00:15:59.789 --> 00:16:01.970 Yeah, why do it? Well, this wasn't destruction 00:16:01.970 --> 00:16:04.929 for the sake of being edgy or avant -garde. The 00:16:04.929 --> 00:16:07.389 source text details his deep dive into world 00:16:07.389 --> 00:16:09.769 religions during this period. He was obsessively 00:16:09.769 --> 00:16:12.809 studying the Quran, the Bible, Kabbalah, astrology, 00:16:13.210 --> 00:16:15.389 Hinduisms, and Buddhism. Just searching everywhere. 00:16:15.669 --> 00:16:19.039 Like everywhere. In 1965, he recorded an album 00:16:19.039 --> 00:16:21.639 called Om, which featured chants from the Hindu 00:16:21.639 --> 00:16:23.700 Bhagavad Gita and the Buddhist Tibetan Book of 00:16:23.700 --> 00:16:27.220 the Dead. He literally believed that music had 00:16:27.220 --> 00:16:31.460 physical, mystical power. Exactly. The text quotes 00:16:31.460 --> 00:16:33.879 him saying that he wanted to discover a method 00:16:33.879 --> 00:16:36.259 where if he wanted it to rain, he could play 00:16:36.259 --> 00:16:38.840 a song and it would start to rain. If a friend 00:16:38.840 --> 00:16:41.659 was ill, he could play a specific song and cure 00:16:41.659 --> 00:16:44.299 them. It wasn't noise to him. It was an attempt 00:16:44.299 --> 00:16:47.580 at musical alchemy. From an acoustic theory standpoint, 00:16:47.720 --> 00:16:50.360 he was exploring resonance and vibration. He 00:16:50.360 --> 00:16:52.519 believed that everything in the universe vibrates 00:16:52.519 --> 00:16:55.220 at a specific frequency. If he could find the 00:16:55.220 --> 00:16:57.820 exact frequency of an illness or the exact frequency 00:16:57.820 --> 00:17:00.659 of a storm cloud, he could play the counter frequency 00:17:00.659 --> 00:17:04.000 on his saxophone and physically manipulate reality 00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:06.640 for the betterment of humanity. He was trying 00:17:06.640 --> 00:17:08.960 to speak directly to God and alter the fabric 00:17:08.960 --> 00:17:11.839 of nature. But if he is playing with that level 00:17:11.839 --> 00:17:15.019 of physical intent, blowing out multiphonics 00:17:15.019 --> 00:17:17.759 and touring relentlessly, did that alchemical 00:17:17.759 --> 00:17:20.460 pursuit wear him down? It did, and it brings 00:17:20.460 --> 00:17:22.940 us to the profound and really tragic irony of 00:17:22.940 --> 00:17:27.900 his life. In 1967, at the age of just 40, John 00:17:27.900 --> 00:17:30.819 Coltrane died suddenly of liver cancer. And the 00:17:30.819 --> 00:17:33.000 shockwaves in the music community were just massive. 00:17:33.660 --> 00:17:35.819 Miles Davis is quoted saying, I didn't know he 00:17:35.819 --> 00:17:38.819 was that sick or even sick at all. Coltrane had 00:17:38.819 --> 00:17:41.690 kept his illness largely a secret. touring and 00:17:41.690 --> 00:17:44.170 recording at a furious pace right up until the 00:17:44.170 --> 00:17:46.390 end. Yeah, he didn't stop. But the detail in 00:17:46.390 --> 00:17:48.289 the source material about the root cause of his 00:17:48.289 --> 00:17:50.789 death is really heartbreaking. Biographers and 00:17:50.789 --> 00:17:52.670 medical professionals speculate that the liver 00:17:52.670 --> 00:17:55.230 cancer was likely brought on by a severe case 00:17:55.230 --> 00:17:58.410 of hepatitis. Yes, specifically hepatitis contracted 00:17:58.410 --> 00:18:00.450 from sharing dirty needles during his heroin 00:18:00.450 --> 00:18:03.390 addiction in the early 1950s. He had his spiritual 00:18:03.390 --> 00:18:05.609 awakening. He endured the withdrawals and got 00:18:05.609 --> 00:18:08.869 clean. He dedicated his entire existence to making 00:18:08.869 --> 00:18:11.960 people happy and exploring the divine, but the 00:18:11.960 --> 00:18:13.980 physical seeds of his destruction were sown in 00:18:13.980 --> 00:18:17.000 his bloodstream years before his awakening even 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:19.140 happened. The physical body eventually caught 00:18:19.140 --> 00:18:21.740 up. The human body couldn't outrun the past, 00:18:21.839 --> 00:18:23.960 even if his spirit had completely transcended 00:18:23.960 --> 00:18:27.369 it. but the impact of his spiritual quest outlived 00:18:27.369 --> 00:18:30.430 his physical body in a very tangible way. Oh, 00:18:30.430 --> 00:18:33.269 so? Well, after his death, a congregation in 00:18:33.269 --> 00:18:35.910 San Francisco formed called the Yardbird Temple. 00:18:36.289 --> 00:18:38.849 This group eventually evolved and was officially 00:18:38.849 --> 00:18:42.309 recognized as the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox 00:18:42.309 --> 00:18:45.450 Church. They canonized him as a saint. They did. 00:18:45.630 --> 00:18:48.390 The church uses his music and his specific lyrics 00:18:48.390 --> 00:18:51.730 from A Love Supreme as prayers in their weekly 00:18:51.730 --> 00:18:55.150 liturgy. He is even painted in traditional Byzantine 00:18:55.150 --> 00:18:58.109 iconographic style, complete with a golden halo, 00:18:58.589 --> 00:19:00.750 holding his saxophone as one of the 90 saints 00:19:00.750 --> 00:19:03.470 in the Dancing Saints icon at an Episcopal church. 00:19:03.690 --> 00:19:05.829 It's incredible. So what does this all mean? 00:19:06.710 --> 00:19:08.910 We've tracked this incredible arc from a marginalized 00:19:08.910 --> 00:19:11.450 young man hiding his race in a Navy band in Hawaii, 00:19:11.970 --> 00:19:14.809 to a heroin addict hitting rock bottom, to an 00:19:14.809 --> 00:19:17.009 avant -garde pioneer searching for the frequency 00:19:17.009 --> 00:19:20.160 of God, to a painted icon in a church. If you 00:19:20.160 --> 00:19:22.660 look at the framework of historical saints across 00:19:22.660 --> 00:19:25.200 various world traditions, Coltrane's path is 00:19:25.200 --> 00:19:28.880 remarkably consistent. Yeah. Saints are rarely 00:19:28.880 --> 00:19:31.599 born perfect. In fact, they are usually deeply 00:19:31.599 --> 00:19:34.039 flawed human beings who experience a radical 00:19:34.039 --> 00:19:36.539 transformation almost always through intense 00:19:36.539 --> 00:19:38.839 personal suffering and a dark night of the soul. 00:19:38.980 --> 00:19:40.619 That fits perfectly. And on the other side of 00:19:40.619 --> 00:19:42.599 that suffering, they leave behind a framework. 00:19:42.880 --> 00:19:45.500 In Coltrane's case, he left a sonic framework 00:19:45.500 --> 00:19:48.940 for others to find meaning, healing, and transcendence. 00:19:49.420 --> 00:19:51.660 The church isn't a novelty or a gimmick. It's 00:19:51.660 --> 00:19:54.660 a sincere recognition of a man who functioned 00:19:54.660 --> 00:19:57.140 musically as a religious figure. It really is 00:19:57.140 --> 00:19:59.880 profound. When you step back, Coltrane squeezed 00:19:59.880 --> 00:20:04.000 multiple lifetimes of innovation, failure, redemption, 00:20:04.400 --> 00:20:07.660 and spiritual seeking into just 12 years of sobriety. 00:20:07.740 --> 00:20:12.180 Just 12 years. From 1955 to 1967, he completely 00:20:12.180 --> 00:20:15.000 reshaped the geometry of music. Hearing about 00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:17.339 that level of dedication, it honestly forces 00:20:17.339 --> 00:20:19.220 you to look at your own life and consider what 00:20:19.220 --> 00:20:21.660 you are applying your own 25 hours a day toward. 00:20:22.119 --> 00:20:24.480 Are you building a vocabulary that matters? It 00:20:24.480 --> 00:20:26.720 absolutely does make you think. The sheer volume 00:20:26.720 --> 00:20:28.900 and depth of his output during that short 12 00:20:28.900 --> 00:20:31.200 -year window is staggering and, you know, it 00:20:31.200 --> 00:20:33.700 continues to reveal itself. And that output is 00:20:33.700 --> 00:20:36.609 still finding us today. The source text notes 00:20:36.609 --> 00:20:39.289 a lingering mystery that proves his reach isn't 00:20:39.289 --> 00:20:43.029 over. In 2018, more than 50 years after he died, 00:20:43.609 --> 00:20:46.910 a lost album from 1963 called Both Directions 00:20:46.910 --> 00:20:49.569 at Once was suddenly discovered and released 00:20:49.569 --> 00:20:52.269 to the world. I remember that. The master tapes 00:20:52.269 --> 00:20:54.910 were thought to be destroyed, but a copy survived. 00:20:55.670 --> 00:20:59.289 And now, in 2026, marking the 100th anniversary 00:20:59.289 --> 00:21:02.130 of his birth, new reinterpretations of his work 00:21:02.279 --> 00:21:04.839 like a love supreme revisited with the Danish 00:21:04.839 --> 00:21:08.099 radio big band, are charting and finding entirely 00:21:08.099 --> 00:21:10.559 new audiences. It just doesn't stop. It really 00:21:10.559 --> 00:21:12.460 doesn't. And it leaves us with a final thought 00:21:12.460 --> 00:21:14.519 for you to mull over as you go about your day. 00:21:15.200 --> 00:21:17.680 If a musician's recordings can literally be resurrected 00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:19.559 from the ashes decades after they were thought 00:21:19.559 --> 00:21:22.339 to be lost forever, at what point does a human 00:21:22.339 --> 00:21:24.200 being actually stop speaking to us?