John Coltrane - A Love Supreme: The Album Review

This album shouldn’t be so intimidating to us after all, because there is a love supreme in all that we do.

Author’s note: This post corresponds to the A Love Supreme episode of Vinyl Monday, originally posted 2/13/2024. Save for added context and omitting audio/editing jokes that cannot be included in a text format, this is a faithful adaptation of the review chapter. To watch the full episode, scroll to the bottom of this post or visit my YouTube channel here.

John Coltrane: tenor saxophone, vocals

McCoy Tyner: piano

Jimmy Garrison: double bass

Elvin Jones: drums, percussion

Produced by Bob Thiele, engineered by Rudy Van Gelder

Going in: if I thought I was in trouble with In The Court of the Crimson King. If I thought I was in trouble with There’s A Riot Goin On...not to reference the Simpsons, but I’m in danger! In the brilliant words of the “assistant professor” and primary resource of my London Calling episode, frequent YouTube commenter Dr. Insomnia:

“...(I’m) not just dealing with a typical flesh and blood album. This is the gospel according to Saint John, the voice of the holy spirit, made manifest by the prophet called Trane.”

I was SCARED to do this album. And rightly so. Pretentious-type jazz fans are the literal worst! The absolute mammoth of Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin On the week before the original A Love Supreme video took some of the pressure off. But literally as soon as I hit save on that script document for the last time, I felt this lurch in my chest. Jazz authored how a lot of rock-and-roll in the ’60s and ’70s went. Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain inspired Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”. Bill Ward, Mitch Mitchell, Ginger Baker were all jazz drummers. Blind Faith’s “Do What You Like” is basically rock-and-roll’s “Take Five.” Carlos Santana lifted a decent chunk of his style from Hungarian jazz/classical guitarist Gabor Szabo. Both the future and past of psych rock were jazz. Jimi Hendrix allegedly had studio time booked with Miles Davis before he died, and John Coltrane inspired arguably the first psych tune: The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High”. As intertwined as jazz is with my area of expertise, it’s still intimidating as hell. So why not start reviewing jazz with one of the greatest jazz albums of them all? Go big or go home, right?

I go really hard on at least one album every week, and have done so for 3 years now. With all the music I listen to, I don’t have much time to listen to music. And as many albums as I cover, few are actually in my everyday listening rotation. This week was different. I tackled an album more or less a part of my routine.

I have episodes scheduled out months in advance. It helps me prepare for what I’m evaluating, and makessure I don’t cover too much of the same thing (hard rock, psych, folk) in a row. So I had A Love Supremescheduled for a while.

I got to really listening to jazz...because of my favorite band. No matter how hard I try, it always comes back to the MC5 somehow. They openly proclaimed their love of avant-jazz at the height of their mainstream fame. You can hear it on their cover of Pharaoh Sanders’s “Upper Egypt,” the Sun-Ra poem in “Starship,”and some of the more...out there...iterations of set closer “Black To Comm.” Rob Tyner (love of my life) was a beatnik before the 5. He was big into Charlie Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Cannonball Adderly, and of course, John Coltrane. In fact, Rob named himself after the pianist on this very album!

In the weeks since I scheduled this episode, it took on a whole new meaning.

This was the first Vinyl Monday I had to write where I was no longer in the same realm as my fucking hero, Wayne Kramer. The guy who was always trying to push the 5’s sound into jazz. He made jazz records through his solo career; I’m extremely fortunate to own a signed copy of Lexington. Archie Shepp was one of his all-time favorites. Wayne’s band was the reason I paid attention to jazz. I did it all to trace their lineage back, to understand these crazy new sounds I was hearing.

Considering all the times I’ve heard A Love Supreme, I should know it like the back of my hand. But I don’t. John himself said: “You have to come to the music yourself gradually. Not everything must be received with open arms.” I 100% agree. Even Santana and John McLoughlin needed to listen to this many, many times to tackle it themselves on their phenomenal Love Devotion Surrender. Jazz, by nature, is denser than dense. That’s the beauty of it. You can play it as “nothing music.” But if you actively listen, you’ll have an entirely new experience every time. For this reason, A Love Supreme was exceedingly difficult to evaluate. People have written whole books on this record alone. Hundreds of thousands of pages on just 32 minutes of music. The average length of a mid-’60s pop album. As much as I appreciate those authors’ efforts, their books reallyonly make sense to the few people left in the world who can read music. For everyone else – myself included – it’s a foreign fuckin’ language.

2 things that seriously hinder my ability to review this album the way you’re used to me reviewing music:

#1: I am not a musician, let alone at the caliber of a jazz musician. I have little to no knowledge of the technical terms of music. All I have is what I feel. So this review will focus more on the feeling. I’ll referencesuper-basic technical stuff when I absolutely must. There are people who get college degrees in jazz music. There are scholars who devote their lives to this and get doctorates in this shit. I’m just some chick on the internet! I love the music, but will love cover the blind spots in my knowledge? Absolutely not.

And #2: I’m not capital-R religious. I can count the times on one hand I’ve stepped into a church. They were all for family weddings which we “tailgated” (shotgunned beers outside of) because we’re a classy bunch. But I acknowledge the existence of...something. You saw my perfume tray in the “MC5: A Brief History”intermission, I made a joke about my prayer candle. I have meditated. I’ve read the Gita, but I read it for philosophy. My rosary beads hang next to my evil eye. I worship…???

I know there’s something we can’t explain working in tandem with logic and science and Whatever. Politicsthe week before this video, religion now, call it the “topics you shouldn’t bring up at Thanksgiving” miniseries! What I can state in more articulate terms is this: I believe humans have an innate need to devote our lives to something bigger. Humans need to have purpose, whatever we choose. Whether it’s a career, or a family, in my dad’s case staying sober, or in Coltrane’s case his god. It’s human nature.

Rock-and-roll is one of those bigger things. I would say music in general but this is a rock-and-roll focused site. I have to make A Love Supreme relevant somehow. I have a lot of love, and not many places for it to go. But now and again, there are moments in my life. The first time I heard Layla. When I discovered Bob Dylan. When I opened the Kick Out The Jams gatefold for the first time. Where this thing a lot bigger than me called to me. Some feeling that came out of the ether to grab me by the shoulders and said, “This is your purpose. This is your devotion. Rock-and-roll, that is the love supreme.” I’m far from the only one who loves rock-and-roll so much they find it in every facet of their lives without even looking. Roadies! Groupies! Fans! Anyone who’s ever bought the records, and the people who made the records. We are all called to bythis thing so much bigger than us. In that sense...maybe the subject of A Love Supreme isn’t so foreign to me after all.

I first listened to this in hopes of feeling closer to my favorite band, and I was rewarded with a jazz record I truly love. Because it is an expression of ultimate love.

Now that we’ve laid the foundation, on to the music itself. According to Lewis Porter in John Coltrane: His Life and Music, the four parts of ALS “suggest a kind of pilgrim’s progress, in which the pilgrim acknowledges the divine, resolves to pursue it, searches and, eventually, celebrates what has been attained in song.” This is how the Coltrane Church interprets A Love Supreme: “acknowledge your sins, resolve to amend them, pursue that path, and psalm, the final prayer, give thanks to god.” John himself laid out how he related his life’s work with his spirituality pretty precisely: “My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.”

“Being the things you love,” devoting yourself wholly to what you believe in through the medium of music, is the core of the late ’60s counterculture. It’s fucking wild to me that John thought this way. He died in August of ’67. He didn’t get to see the summer of love through. He didn’t get to see jazz “go electric” like Miles Davis did. But philosophically, he was already there.

Acknowledgment: Because of my familiarity with the Bhagavad Gita, I’m probably gonna use this word a lot: enlightenment. To me, “Acknowledgement” feels like the chapter in the Gita where Krishna reveals himself to be a form of the god Vishnu. This lovely little poster – that which inspired the Axis: Bold As Love album cover – is only a fraction of what Arjuna would’ve seen. Vishnu is everything. He reveals his infinite physical forms! We as humans cannot conceptualize infinity! This was Arjuna’s call to rise to the occasion and be a noble leader. It’s the beginning of the hero’s journey. The stories of all the Judeo-Christian prophets follow that arc. Religious or not, if you know the archetype of the hero’s journey, there’s no need to be intimidated by A Love Supreme. You’ll follow the story of the music just fine.

A Love Supreme’s statement of gratitude to A god begins with an awakening. I’ve heard the opening flourish described as “screaming,” but I’ve always found it gentle and warm. Like waking from a deep sleep, covers warm from the sunlight. John did this kind of thing a lot at the beginning of his pieces this period of his career. This is no doubt the most iconic of the bunch. The cymbal wash and bright, but soft piano reminds me of JMW Turner’s paintings of sun over the water.

Tales of Brave Ulysses...JMW Turner, "Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus" (oil on canvas, 1829)

Brilliant and vibrant, but still a little hazy. John pulls back so pianist McCoy Tyner and GOAT drummer Elvin Jones can break the wave on the shore; these mini-crescendos on the cymbal like rippling water.

What made Elvin Jones so great was his understanding of texture and space. My buddy Matthew has some...odd...music takes. Not without grounds to have those opinions, he listens to almost as much music as I do! One of his odd opinions has to do with jazz drumming. He doesn’t like when drummers ride the hi-hat to keep time. Sure, Elvin does that on acknowledgment, but then you have these deep rumbling tones. He was so great because of how he employed texture, dynamics, and space. No stone is left unturned, and it’s done with such effortless intricacy that Elvin himself said something to the affect of “he could never play the same thing twice or write down what he played.”

Anyway. Cue double bass player Jimmy Garrison’s entrance with the ostinato (a repeated motif.) It’s the core of this whole work, the syncopated duh-dum, duh-dah. You know it.

Here we have one of the most interesting things about this whole suite: McCoy playing both a melodic and rhythm part. The chords he plays are sort of the mise-en-scene to the upcoming sax solo, but they also establish the groove. A groove which John absolutely flies all over, above through and below. When I think John Coltrane, this is the solo I hear.

“Acknowledgment” expresses full breadth of emotion that comes with divine love. Peace, fervor, elation, torturous cathartic passion. Just listen to how he makes that sax’s voice crack, and those feverish arpeggios!On the comedown, he jumps on that motif himself, transposing it to each of the twelve keys of Western music. That anticipates the chant, the only vocals we get on the whole record. “A love supreme. A love supreme.”This was the only time he ever cut vocals on one of his records; so this is a big deal. Sounds like chanting a mantra in deep meditation. John, McCoy, and Elvin each gracefully drop out, leaving Jimmy to finish this one off. He strays from the “chorus” into a run, finishing this chapter with a classical flourish. Feather-light, you can almost hear his fingertips on the neck of his instrument. This changes the key to E flat (I think?) which leads us right into “Resolution.”

Resolution: After Jimmy’s anticipatory intro, “Resolution” bursts into action. Blooms, really. Now that the hero is called to action, or the sinner admitted to sinning, he solidifies his intent be on his god’s path. There’s a lot going on in these first 2 minutes. John lobs this chapter’s off-balance motif at us. Like not knowing how to go about your journey quite yet, but knowing you must do it. It’s off-balance, but it always catches its fall with: ta-taaaa! Jesus Christ I don’t even know what Elvin is DOING but it’s brilliant. It makes no sense and that’s why it works. Every part in this song is so disjointed that it somehow locks together. Then comes the first honest-to-goodness piano solo of the record. I can explain what made Elvin Jones so great, I talk about drummers a lot. Every rock band has one. But McCoy Tyner was a pianist, and I don’t have the vocabulary just yet to explain why McCoy Tyner was great. The first part of “Resolution” is a bit darker and all-over-the-place, McCoy guides it to simultaneously brighten it up and cool it down. These flurried runs are ridiculous. They whirl around each other so gracefully I can’t tell where one hand starts and the other hand ends. Maybe that’s what made him such a great player; left and right hands completely untethered. The call-and-response bit is the most grounded part of the solo; a fun little conversational bit before slipping back into the dance.

SOMEHOW, by the end of his second solo Coltrane brings this back to the Resolution chorus. The way he drops in reminds me of the solos changing hands in “Light My Fire” by The Doors. Not so much an elbow in, but an “okay man, I’ll take it from here. You can trust me.” He riffs on some of those ideas McCoy rattled off, somehow. You have to have an incredible memory to be a jazz player.

What’s so interesting for a piece called “Resolution” is that, overall, there’s very little resolution in the music. By looping back around to this central theme, any and all peace in the piano solo is undone. We’ve re-established tension. Which is such a no-no for the music I usually cover! I guess it works when you consider what part of the story we’re in: no path to enlightenment is smooth. There are always trials and tribulations along the way. This is the most concise end of a song on the record: a three-peat, a sweet little sign-off, and a drum roll. We’ve gone from day to night.

Pursuance is the fervor of the journey. Temptation, the ultimate or final test. Once again: Holy Shit Elvin Jones!! He opens up side 2 of A Love Supreme with a total assault on the kit. We careen into a series of truly dizzying rolls which tumble blindly into each other. This sensory overload is in no set meter, keeping us hanging on the edge of our seats for a minute-and-a-half straight. The longest 90 seconds of your life. Then the kick to the pants that sends us flying off the chair: the rest of the guys leap in. John chops up and flips the A Love Supreme chorus, angling it to a steady ascension. This is a rare moment where not everything is so graceful. For these first few seconds after Elvin’s solo, not everyone is on the same page. Jimmy’s still feeling things out. It’s such a beautiful, human moment on a record that feels superhuman. The rhythm section links up asMcCoy paints in the scene. It’s got palpable motion, it’s very gestural. And I love these feverish blasts! He keeps this momentum going for several minutes. Could he earn the title of MVP of this record? I don’t knowman.

After a spectacular final drop, John comes back with a vengeance. He’s pushing his sax to its very limit; straining and breaking its voice as if to cry out in pain or babble incoherently. And he keeps that up for 3 minutes! You gotta appreciate all these guys’ endurance. It ramps up to an impossible pace until the songcrashes back to earth, in the form of more fiery drum rolls and cymbal crashes. “Pursuance” is bookended bythe rhythm section: you have Elvin playing the intro, and Jimmy the outtro. (Side note: if you’re listening on vinyl and through a stereo system, the bass solos can be hard to hear. Some people will get grumpy about this little pointer I have no DOUBT, but headphones will help you hear it! These bass passages will also be a dead giveaway for if your copy’s got a lot of surface noise.) Jimmy’s solo has a dejected twist on the core motif. This is gonna be such a “those drums have such empathy” meme moment, but I feel melancholy from this. The bass all by itself, especially after such a chaotic part of the suite, feels lonely. Enlightenment can be quite lonely, you have to sacrifice a lot. A final pluck and mournful piano chord takes us right into Psalm.

Psalm: The sigh of relief, a celebration of enlightenment finally achieved after much struggle and pain. This song really is John’s tour-de-force. McCoy, Jimmy, and Elvin all step back to let John shine. They fill in the gaps with bubbling cymbal washes, rumbling timpani, a sparse bassline and impressionistic piano. “Psalm” is John’s wordless prayer; that which he wrote words for in the liner notes: “No road is an easy one, but they all go back to God. With all we share God. It is all with God. It is all with Thee.”

“Psalm” is ethereal. There’s no root chord progression, no meter, no central motif. Nothing anchors this thing to the ground. Not to be a Zoomer Internet User, but I feel like the brain meme when I hear this. And I’m reminded of just how much of a moron Ben Shapiro was for saying “rap isn’t music: because it doesn’t have any of the “principles of music” or whatever. This has none of those principles of music, and yet it’s music at the highest caliber!I’m not totally sure which sequence John plays is supposed to be what phrase in hisprayer, but he’s quietly expressive through his note choice and subdued delivery. I’ve always felt bittersweet resignation from the end; the thunder rumbling away into the distance. Rubble is left in the wake, nowsomething new can rise. Maybe that’s just my connection to “creation, stasis, destruction.” In order for creation, there must be destruction. In order for life, there must be loss.

I took great comfort in this idea the week this video went up. That, the picture of rock-and-roll heaven I have in my head, and...just an ungodly roar coming from my turntable. Dammit Brother Wayne, why’d you have to die?! You’re making my neighbors hate me!

One last note: as John had his “spiritual experience” in 1957, there are these smaller attempts at articulating his reverence for god throughout the late ’50s and early ’60s. You might count “Naima” off Giant Stepsamongst those works. All the greatest rock-and-roll love songs ever written, you can’t quite tell if they’re about a god or about a woman. While yes, A Love Supreme is a statement for a god, it had an earthly muse too. John’s love for Alice and their babies. Either way, it’s all ultimate love.

This album was no doubt John Coltrane’s most personal work. It was so sacred, there’s only one or twoinstances of his Quartet playing the whole thing live. It’s a man professing his unique relationship with a higher power. That’s as personal as you can get – ultimate love. That’s human nature.

A Love Supreme is the deepest expression of gratitude ever put to record, only bolstered in its glory by an all-star lineup of the best guys to ever sit at the bench, behind a kit, or…(bass playing mime) The chemistry of this quartet – John, McCoy, Jimmy, Elvin – is a testament to both their greatness and A Love Supreme’s.There’s little more vulnerable than baring your soul like this for all to hear, mortal and divine.

Anything I say to round this thing out will feel like a massive understatement, I know it will. It’s par for the course. But since I’m a rock-and-roller, I’ll borrow some words from the title of rock-and-rollers’interpretation of this piece of music. A Love Supreme is an expression of ultimate love, the deepest of devotion, complete and total surrender. This shouldn’t be so intimidating to us after all, because there is a love supreme in all that we do.

Personal favorites: the whole thing.

– AD ☆

Watch the full episode here!