music, while attracting ever-bigger audiences. It was during this time that Coltrane searched for the ‘mysterious sound’. He once said that the sound for which he was searching was like holding a seashell to his ear. “However one describes the strange sound, it contained some essential truth for him, existing as an omnipresent background hum behind the faade of everyday life.” With the John Coltrane quartet (pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones, and Reggie Workman on bass), he incorporated tribal music from Africa, India, and the Middle East with that of the new avant-garde movement, ‘free jazz’. Free jazz or ‘the New Thing’, like the counter-culture of the sixties, was a nonconformist movement. It purposely avoided the structured sounds of the cool jazz and bebop movements. Instead, it was devoid of any structure, direction, or tonality, and was characterized by random improvisation. As the sixties progressed, Coltrane experimented more and more with different combinations of sounds and instruments. He became obsessed with trying to communicate his musical vision. In 1968, Alice Coltrane (his wife at the time) stated “I think what he was trying to do in music was the same thing he was trying to do in his life. That was to universalize his music, his life, his religion. It was all based on a universal concept, all-sectarian or non-sectarian.” In the mid-sixties, Coltrane began to take LSD fairly regularly, in an effort to help him explore in greater depth both himself and his music. “For Coltrane and his quest, LSD was a remarkable tool to dig deeper into his own being so he could discover the essential and absolute truth at the center of his being.” Long time fans, however, viewed his music in this period as being too radical, and too far-out. Coltrane felt he was losing control over his music; his experimentation was so far-ranging on that he did not know in ...
