The Beginning of the End

John Coltrane & his bandmates for a few years running - McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass & Elvin Jones on drums - were using the recording studio as a workshop to try out new compositions; not only that, but Coltrane in particular sought to see how far he could take his music, even if they played only two notes worth of stuff. In 1965, the studio seemed like forever as Trane virtually recorded on a biweekly basis, as if he was itching to get music out the very instant he heard it mentally. At the same time, he added fresh faces into the scheme of things, raw & untried talent which he felt could take the music to new & more intense heights, heights never reached before.

In the late summer of 1965, the Classic Quartet lineup was not only in a state of flux but also in constant tension as well, given how much accumulated change was taking place in the music they were performing. If Sun Ship & First Meditations reveal this group sitting on a supersonic powder keg, Meditations would prove to be the final breach in the dam, as it were, this lineup near the brink of permanent disintegration.


Yet Meditations is also the last cry of glory for the Classic Quartet, a cry which continues to resonate & speak volumes well over 40 years later. Featuring tenor saxman Pharoah Sanders (whose appearance on Ascension was the first groundbreaking work he did with Trane) & Jones' future replacement, drummer Rashied Ali, this album despite what its title suggests is as aggressive & turbulent as much as it is serene & peaceful, intense as much as it is calm. By the same token, it was the start of something big, as it were, for Trane's last quintet (of which Ali & Sanders were members) which would spring into life just over a short time later.



Trane's soloing on such tracks as "The Father And The Son And The Holy Ghost" & "Love," as always, is intense, charged-up, passionate & violent on occasion...everything you ever wanted to know about Trane's playing in an emotional aspect. But then, his sidekick Sanders on the former track & "Consequences" might come across as a furious screamer, scribbling out some supersonic mayhem on his horn; yet Sander's playing, in all of its majorly vocal glory, is equally forceful & inventive, a perfect study of contrasts. Tyner on "Compassion" & "Consequences" is at the top of his game on the ivories, pushing everything out tonality-wise; Garrison on his solo in "Love" shows why he was one of the better bass soloists of his day when going it all alone, questing & probing for a spell before JC makes his grand entrance. What of the drumming duo of Ali & Jones? Well, Ali proved to be a brilliant polyrhythmic counterfoil to Jones' thunder-&-lightning approach to his kit...thrown together, they perform up to the task, however charged up the atmosphere at Rudy Van Gelder's studio may have been at the time of this monumental recording.

In retrospect, Meditations would not only mark the last hurrah for the Classic Quartet; it would also prove that if Trane's bandmates for four years running were to go out gracefully, it would be through this album that they would leave in style. For 40 minutes, Trane & company did exactly that, leaving a trail of supersonic debris in their wake & a fresh trail from which the man himself would begin his last & far freer musical journey.