Top 100 Quotes About Coltrane
#1. An original first pressing of Coltrane's Giant Steps,
A.E. Via
#2. Does one ever play Coltrane for the uninitiated without subconsciously hoping for the worst?
Ken Kesey
#3. Coltrane had a sax, Dale Earnhardt drives a race car and everybody has their tools.
Talib Kweli
#4. 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
#5. 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.
Paul Bley
#6. 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.
Miller Williams
#7. Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.
Colin Greenwood
#8. I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.
Wynton Marsalis
#9. I took LSD and listened to Coltrane a lot; a lot of people did.
Sam Andrew
#10. Some musicians, man, you hear the note almost before they hit it. Jimi, Coltrane and Charlie Parker were like that ...
Carlos Santana
#11. 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.
Alex Clare
#12. 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.
Wynton Marsalis
#13. I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of weird jazz record, but I don't know ... It's on my list of things to do. I don't want to have to then go promote it.
Kim Gordon
#15. 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
#16. With you in my hand I can travel across the universe in one verse and skip moons to the tunes of Miles or Coltrane.
Brandi L. Bates
#17. To me John Coltrane was like an angel on earth. He struck me that deeply.
Elvin Jones
#18. 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.
Daniel Radcliffe
#19. I remember when my father was dying, I remember listening to Bjork, and listening to John Coltrane, and these things, and I don't know why but music has the power to transcend your physical being and take you up just a little bit.
Wayne Coyne
#20. 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
#21. Now listen for your song. Everybody's got a song. When I used to chase the Trane - John Coltrane that is - he used to tell me, 'If I know a man's sound, I know the man.' Do you hear the melody playing in your mind? Does it move you, nudge you off your seat?
David Mutti Clark
#22. Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!
Miles Davis
#23. 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
#24. Coltrane's labyrinthine solo plays on in my ears, never ending.
Haruki Murakami
#25. 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.
Patrick DeWitt
#26. 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.
Bill Dixon
#27. John Coltrane was an addict; Billie Holiday was an addict; Eugene O'Neill was an addict. What would America be without addicts and post-addicts who make such grand contributions to our society?
Cornel West
#28. I think John Coltrane is one of the great American heroes, like Abraham Lincoln and Emily Dickinson.
Simon Van Booy
#29. I love nineties stuff like Alice in Chains and Nine Inch Nails. It'd be my dream to have a Radiohead-themed episode of 'Glee.' I also love jazz greats like Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock.
Mark Salling
#30. I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft.
Cornel West
#31. It was exciting just to stand in front of the hallowed ground of Birdland that had been blessed by John Coltrane, or the Five Spot on St. Mark's Place where Billie Holiday used to sing, where Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman opened the field of jazz like human can openers.
Patti Smith
#32. He didn't say nothing. He would just do things. He never said nothing or explained nothing. He just would do it and that was it. You were on your own. You had to be very independent being around John [Coltrane].
Pharoah Sanders
#33. Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, Paul Chambers, Bill Evans, and Jimmy Cobb playing "All Blues," a moody, blues form piece in 6/8, off the 1959 album Kind of Blue.
Blake Crouch
#34. 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
#35. When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone.
Tom Verlaine
#36. I try whistling to fill in the silence. The soprano sax from Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," though of course my dubious whistling doesn't come anywhere near the complex, lightning-quick original. I just add bits so what I hear in my head approximates the sound. Better than nothing, I figure.
Haruki Murakami
#37. 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.
Frederick Lenz
#38. If you try to have a fashion show with Bach fugues and John Coltrane, it doesn't really work.
Isaac Mizrahi
#39. 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.
Kenny G
#40. 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.
Herbie Mann
#41. A teenage girl creaming while she listens to some boy-band, a monk digging on the God he hears in Gregorian chants, or John fucking Coltrane himself climbing up into the sky on a staircase made of sixteenth notes, it's all the same. If it takes you there, it's good.
Tad Williams
#42. A Love Supreme' is Coltrane's best-known and best-selling album.
Lewis Porter
#43. For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.
Cornel West
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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.
Robert Glasper
#47. Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.
Jan Garbarek
#48. Motion Picture Soundtrack on Kid A was another Coltrane inspiration.
Colin Greenwood
#49. I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.
Carlos Santana
#50. Style to me is incidental. The British are very adept at creating it for its own sake, but the best style is incidental. John Coltrane had a style but it was totally incidental to what he was.
Tom Verlaine
#51. Out of Coltrane's whole history, there are things which I think are great from all the periods.
Lee Konitz
#52. Make no mistake, this music is for everyone. Jazz is not an exclusive, elite club. Go ahead, listen to your Snoop Doggy Dog, Pearl Jam, Garth Brooks, but add a little Ellington, Basie and Coltrane to your life as well.
Christian McBride
#53. 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.
Archie Shepp
#54. I have tons of jazz records: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis. I could go on and on.
Ted King
#55. My dad was a huge big band and jazz fan, and we both sort of enjoyed be-bop, but man, it required so much skill to play it. And then there was cool jazz, the era that Miles, Coltrane, and Ornette ushered in, and that found a home in me. It turns out that that music was just really where I breathed.
J. D. Souther
#56. [John Coltrane] liked my qualities as a person and that's the reason why he let me play with him. It wasn't what I was doing musically or my instrument or anything like that. He let me play whatever I wanted to play.
Pharoah Sanders
#57. Lately, I've been listening to some jazz albums. I love the new Pat Metheny album. John Coltrane. I still like good metal, though!
Geezer Butler
#58. Change is inevitable in music - things change.
John Coltrane
#59. God breathes through us so completely ... So gently we hardly feel it ... yet it is our everything.
John Coltrane
#60. The backgrounds in Lord of the Rings are all explained.
Robbie Coltrane
#61. Everyone knows marriage is hard work. So if you've chosen the shackles, quit whining and get on with it.
Karina Bliss
#62. The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.
Ellar Coltrane
#63. I wasn't a child star, so hopefully I can keep my head on straight.
Ellar Coltrane
#64. Invest yourself in everything you do. There's fun in being serious.
John Coltrane
#65. See, what you're meant to do when you have a mid-life crisis is buy a fast car, aren't you? Well, I've always had fast cars. It's not that. It's the fear that you're past your best. It's the fear that the stuff you've done in the past is your best work.
Robbie Coltrane
#67. I've struggled so much, growing up, with just feeling that my life is valid because it's not filled with these hyper-dramatic moments, and I think a lot of people of my generation feel that way. We're so inundated with hyper-drama that people crave everyday life.
Ellar Coltrane
#68. There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself ... I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need.
John Coltrane
#69. All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.
John Coltrane
#70. I think the shocking thing to discover is the owls are not stupid and very feral, very hard to train.
Robbie Coltrane
#71. I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.
John Coltrane
#72. My aunt was a fashion model and I happened to go to her agency with her, one day, when I was five. A talent agent said, "You should come talk to us." I did a few things. I did an indie movie and commercials, and stuff.
Ellar Coltrane
#73. I was a pretty alert kid, and I, you know, I was very interested in arts.
Ellar Coltrane
#74. I think I know what it is but don't ask me to play it
John Coltrane
#75. I mean, I'm obviously not one of those people who's so beautiful women take their clothes off when I walk into the room. I didn't become a star overnight.
Robbie Coltrane
#76. My dad? He died when I was 19, which is a bad time for your dad to die, because there's an awful lot of things you have to resolve with your parents past your teens if you've been a difficult teenager.
Robbie Coltrane
#78. 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.
John Coltrane
#79. The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe.
John Coltrane
#80. I had a very bad time with acid. I did that classic thing of looking in the mirror by mistake and seeing the devil. But I took it several times, because you always think that next time you might have the wonderful time that everyone else is having.
Robbie Coltrane
#81. Why is it trivia? People call it trivia because they know nothing and they are embarrassed about it.
Robbie Coltrane
#82. I've got two young kids. I don't know what the future holds.
Robbie Coltrane
#83. The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.
John Coltrane
#84. I think a lot of people were like, "Oh, you're 13, you're gonna rebel." But I was never in public school and I was never really forced to do much of anything, as a kid.
Ellar Coltrane
#85. Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft
John Coltrane
#86. Ninety percent of people's nightmares is standing in front of 1,000 people. Did you know that? And having to speak. You would have thought it would have been a madman tying you up and taking your eyes out.
Robbie Coltrane
#87. One positive thought produces millions of positive vibrations.
John Coltrane
#88. That's the trouble with anything which essentially has a lot of bits that are physically impossible: You're left, stuck, in the studio. And that's a shame. You're making a movie. You don't want it to stay put, you want it to be a movie - to move.
Robbie Coltrane
#89. I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.
John Coltrane
#90. The reason I play so many sounds, maybe it sounds angry, is because I'm trying so many things at one time, you see? I haven't sorted them out. I have a whole bag of things that I'm trying to work through and get the one essential.
John Coltrane
#91. I never watched a frame of the film until it was finished.
Ellar Coltrane
#92. Believe me, my children have more stamina than a power station.
Robbie Coltrane
#93. What you do is get the right director and the right screenwriter and the right cast. It's a fantastic job.
Robbie Coltrane
#94. When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hang-ups.
John Coltrane
#95. After all the investigation, all of the technique-doesn't matter! Only if the feeling is right.
John Coltrane
#96. I love films where the world seems to be going a bit faster and everything's a bit brighter and more in focus.
Robbie Coltrane
#97. My mom comes from a really out-there upbringing, so for her, the way she raised me is pretty disciplined. I was home-schooled but more really unschooled, really.
Ellar Coltrane
#98. The real risk is not
changing. I have to feel that I'm after something. If I make money, fine. But
I'd rather be striving. It's the striving, man, it's that I want.
John Coltrane
#99. I didn't have my parents to rebel against, but I had society, and that definitely is what they taught me. Just: Trust nothing.
Ellar Coltrane
#100. I'm not interested in being famous or anything, but I'm definitely interested in expressing emotions, and acting and filmmaking can be great outlets for that. Filmmaking is an incredible art.
Ellar Coltrane
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