Top 124 Coltrane Quotes & Sayings

To me John Coltrane was like an angel on earth. He struck me that deeply.

My dad was really into avant garde jazz: Archie Shepp, John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders.

I'm an old Coltrane disciple just like I'm a Christian.

I don't think we listened to any rock n' roll at all in the early days. It was Miles Davis and John Coltrane 95% of the time.

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

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.

Some musicians, man, you hear the note almost before they hit it. Jimi, Coltrane and Charlie Parker were like that.

I love, you know, a lot of jazz, John Coltrane.

When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.

My own musical background is based in the blues, and in classical composition. I grew up listening to Muddy Waters, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Beethoven and Bach.

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

Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!

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

John Brown was the abolitionist to end all abolitionists. People thought he was crazy. He was like John Coltrane playing free jazz, exhausting all possibilities in his approach to harmony and improvisation.

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.

Out of Coltrane's whole history, there are things which I think are great from all the periods.

The people I really admire, like William Blake and John Coltrane and Richard Wagner, had these ridiculously full universes that took their entire lives to describe.

Well, Grover Washington was my main influence and when I went to college, I started listening to more of the jazz masters like Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley, and John Coltrane.

In America, for a brief time, people who followed 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.

Motion Picture Soundtrack on Kid A was another Coltrane inspiration.

Growing up, I listened to a lot of jazz and blues records - John Coltrane and Etta James. I was also really into Radiohead and the BeeGees.

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!

All John Coltrane's records are amazing.

It wasn't until I got out of the Army and I heard Coltrane's record 'Coltrane,' when he was doing 'Inch Worm' and 'Out of This World,' that I thought, 'Oh my God, you can do that?' And then I thought, 'OK, I better go back and listen to Eric Dolphy a bit.' And then I said, 'Hmm, I better pull out these Ornette Coleman records.'

The chords in 'Light My Fire' are based on [John] Coltrane's version of this song. He just solos over A minor and B minor, which is exactly what we did. Coltrane had played with Miles on Kind of Blue and took the idea of modal soloing over one or two chords farther out than anybody. He was a real pioneer - he just kept evolving, going where no one had ever gone. He could always attain this state of ecstasy when he played. Live, there was so much energy, you couldn't believe it. He would play for hours. It was indescribable.

The fact of the matter is that nobody understands what John Coltrane is doing except John Coltrane. And maybe not even him. So we're all experiencing it on this subconscious level.

When Coltrane died, a void appeared in this music that has not been filled yet. He maintained a forward motion in his work and did not look back.

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

I try to make my flow sound like a John Coltrane solo.

My thing has always been that the clothing we make is kind of like music. There are always critics that don't understand that young people can be into Bob Dylan but also into the Wu-Tang Clan and Coltrane and Social Distortion.

Listen to John Coltrane. When he plays 'A Love Supreme,' that guy is totally into himself.

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

When I have to compete with John Coltrane and Miles Davis and Louie Armstrong on iTunes, which I'm doing now, that's a problem. That means that jazz is not being heard by younger audiences.

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

I think John Coltrane is one of the great American heroes, like Abraham Lincoln and Emily Dickinson.

I don't like totally free jazz, unless it's done by somebody like Coltrane, who did bebop and cool jazz, so he was allowed to go out there.

I took LSD and listened to Coltrane a lot; a lot of people did.

It's easy to mock a man who has founded a religion based on John Coltrane, who considers 'A Love Supreme,' whatever its merits as a jazz album, to be holy scripture.

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

Grover Washington was my main influence, and when I went to college, I started listening to more of the jazz masters like Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderley, and John Coltrane.

Jazz is very important. It's not something I can put my finger on. When I'm writing at my favorite time, I like to have the gentle side of Coltrane or Brubeck on the CD player. It creates sort of a spiritual space in which I write best.

Bjork's album, 'Homogenic,' it's got beats, strings, traditional Icelandic stuff. That's my benchmark for what an album should sound like, right up there with Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' and Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On.'

I think we've all had enough of Coltrane saxophonists. There's a case of someone ruining a generation of saxophonists, as Louis Armstrong may have ruined a generation of trumpeters.

As much as I think John Coltrane belongs on the list, I think without Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, both of whom defined improvising on the tenor sax, there would not have been the evolution of the craft by John Coltrane.

I skipped school one day to see Dizzy Gillespie, and that's where I met Coltrane. Coltrane and Jimmy Heath just joined the band, and I brought my trumpet, and he was sitting at the piano downstairs waiting to join Dizzy's band. He had his saxophone across his lap, and he looked at me and he said, 'You want to play?'

... 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.

I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft.

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

I haven't been afraid of John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock. Why would I be afraid of the Beatles?

I hear many extra-musical things somehow in Coltrane.

For me, the bold jazz of John Coltrane and Miles Davis reflected the bold attitude in African-Americans finding their political identity and voice.

Everyone on the set has a mobile phone, and I found by pushing a few buttons, they could be programmed into different languages. I fixed Robbie's Coltrane to speak in Turkish.

Dilla was a John Coltrane-type dude. He was always on a higher level. He inspired my music to become looser and more soulful.

I have tons of jazz records: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis. I could go on and on.

When you're 8 years old, and you've become subconsciously familiar with the layout and design of Black Sparrow books, and you know the difference between Miles Davis and John Coltrane, something is bound to stick.

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.

I'm aware of Yusef Lateef and Sun Ra and John Coltrane. My music cup runneth over. I try to encourage people: don't cut anything off, don't limit yourself. Give it a good listen: you might find something in that goofy Sun Ra noise, that dissonance. Before I learned 'official musicality' - which you should avoid at all costs - I listened to some Sun Ra and Yusef Lateef and John Coltrane and that's where 'Journey to the Center of the Mind' came from. When you intentionally and aggressively pursue musical communication with those powerfully impactful musical geniuses, you will pick up something.

My aunt Ruth Brown was a jazz musician. I got hooked on it at a young age, understanding what John Coltrane was doing playing two notes on the saxophone at the same time, which is impossible.

Coltrane had a sax, Dale Earnhardt drives a race car and everybody has their tools.

I've been listening to a lot of John Coltrane. I don't know if that would or wouldn't surprise anybody. I go through different phases - sometimes I want to listen to music that's just pummeling.