Meditations: John Coltrane and Freedom

Abstract In May 1957, John Coltrane’s life changed. His career had progressed steadily but—it was whispered—his abuse of drugs and alcohol was making him a risk. While Miles Davis knew that Coltrane could be the sideman to provide him with a lifetime’s worth of musical challenges, he was increasingly concerned that Coltrane simply did not embarrass him on the bandstand by nodding off to sleep. In some ways it was fundamentally perplexing. This was—everyone agreed—a young man who was going places. Moreover, he was positively driven toward mastery of his instrument and jazz tradition. Why get caught up in the madness of heroin? There are no adequate answers, really. Some have speculated that he had begun using it to get relief from physical pain, perhaps dental pain, the product of both excessive practicing and an out-of-control sweet tooth.