[Dixielandjazz] Fwd: Phillip Larkin on Coltrane

[Joe Carbery]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joe Carbery <joe.carbery at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 2:53 PM
Subject: Phillip Larkin on Coltrane
To: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>


English poet and writer on jazz Phillip Larkin had this to say about John
Coltrane:
"Well, I can't imagine how anyone can listen to a Coltrane record for
pleasure. That reedy, catarrhal tone, sawing backwards and forwards for ten
minutes between a couple of chords and producing 'violent barrages of notes
not mathematically related to the underlying rhythmic pulse, and not
swinging in the traditional sense of the term' (*Encyclopaedia of Jazz in
the Sixties*); that insolent egotism, leading to forty-five-minute versions
of 'My Favourite Things' until, at any rate in Britain, the audience walked
out, no doubt wondering why they had ever walked in;that latter-day
religiosity, exemplified in turgid suites such as 'A Love Supreme' and
'Ascension' that set up pretension as a way of life; that wilful and
hideous distortion of that offered squeals, squeaks, Bronx cheers and
throttled slate-pencil noises for serious consideration."
There's another opinion! Garvin Bushell wasn't enamoured by him either.
Taste differs and it's not worth arguing over.