Courtesy of Ravi Coltrane







RCA Victor

A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH RAVI COLTRANE


For a man who has the collective weight of all the expectations of the jazz world, Ravi Coltrane is true gentleman, in every sense of the word, and his humility is remarkable. As the son of an icon, the young Coltrane must feel his father's long shadow each and every time he steps onto the bandstand. Most men would crumble under such pressure, but Coltrane takes it in stride. I sat down with Coltrane to talk about some of those pressures, his legendary father, his new record on RCA Victor, and the future. It is a candid conversation between two sons, both unedited and in their own words.


FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.

RAVI COLTRANE: I used to play the clarinet. I started playing clarinet, I guess, in high school. I played basically up until my second year of high school. I was in the marching band. I wasn't listening to much jazz, which is to say that I wasn't listening at all. I was familiar with the music. I had heard the music just because my household, my mom and everything, always playing in the house and playing records for me, but I never really as a young person had a real desire to seek out the music or try to play it or whatever. I stopped playing it all together for about four years and it was around 1986 that I started playing just my father's records just to kind of get an idea about just some of the technical history, when it was recorded and who played on this record, just for a little more knowledge of what he did in his life. I just started hearing the music differently around that time. It just had an effect on me like it never had before. I decided to maybe go to school and see if being a player was something that I wanted to do. So I started basically studying in 1986 at the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts). I studied there with Charlie Haden and a lot of musicians that are hanging out and working around here like Scott Colley, Ralph Alessi, Michael Cain. Those guys were at Cal Arts at the time. It kind of led me to where I was going and where I am at or where I am going. I don't know. It was never planned in other words. It wasn't like I went there with the intention that I was going to be a musician and that I was going to play jazz. One kind of led to the next.


FJ: But you had a steady diet of your father's music in the house.

RAVI COLTRANE: Yeah, we heard a lot of music, a lot of it all the time. When you are young, I always enjoyed it. I always thought it was cool. I always enjoyed this music, but it never took hold of me until I got older, when it changed basically my life. I stopped listening to all the records that I had been listening to growing up, certain kinds of pop music and things like that. It became a part of my life. It wasn't just something that I thought was cool.


FJ: What was the catalyst?

RAVI COLTRANE: Well, I think that there are a lot of reasons I think. I had an older brother who passed away when I was in high school. It was 1982 and that was when I stopped playing the clarinet and I basically stopped everything and basically just kind of floated around for a few years, just trying to figure things out. It was around that time. I was a little older. It was 1986. I was turning twenty or twenty-one and it was around '85 or '86 when I started playing those records and I just think that I needed something in my life. I think that now. It wasn't anything that I even thought of about. It was an idea that I felt maybe was taking place only recently, maybe a couple of years ago. At that point in my life, it just had an effect on me that it never had before. I think it is because that I needed something in my life.


FJ: Don't you think it would have been easier for you to return to the clarinet, rather than pick up the instrument associated with your legendary father, the tenor saxophone?

RAVI COLTRANE: Well, it was because I started listening to John Coltrane records and that led to Sonny Rollins records and that led to Bird's records. I got hooked with music and the saxophone.


FJ: When did you leave Cal Arts and move from the laid back lifestyle of Southern California to the grind that is New York?

RAVI COLTRANE: I went to school from about '86 to '90. Unfortunately, I didn't get my degree because I was trying to spend more time practicing and I didn't get to all the academics that I needed to get, but it was around that time that I met Elvin Jones. I met him in my adult life I should say. He asked me to be in his group and play some gigs with him. Through him, I guess, it made it easier for me to move. I moved there in '91.


FJ: Elvin was the drummer in your father's influential quartet, did you feel a kinship there?

RAVI COLTRANE: Well, I was more in awe of him than anything else, just like everybody around us. He is such an amazing figure in life and in music. His stature is, you wouldn't assume anybody could have that much physical presence. So much of that is partly in the way that we view him and the way we feel about him and the things that he has done. He is just a great, great person. I did feel like, yeah, he was kind of like an uncle. I just felt like he was definitely like family.


FJ: Elvin is a dramatic physical presence, with his huge hands and glowing smile that it is almost shocking to see just how gentle and soft-spoken he is.

RAVI COLTRANE: Oh, yeah, this is something special. When he asked me to be in the group, I said, "Thank you, but I'm not really ready. I'm still in school and I'm still trying to learn how to play. It would be just too distracting to have me in his group. The name Coltrane would be too distracting for me and for people in general." I did not want to bring that element to his band. He was like, "I'm not worried about that. I just want you to be out there." I had reservations on a personal side, but then I knew that this is one of the greatest musicians living and just to spend any amount of time with him is going to be a great lesson in life and in music. It was really a good period for me. Because of Elvin, I was able to travel a lot and meet a lot of people. They could kind of see that I was trying to get somewhere and people assume that if you have a horn, a saxophone and your last name is Coltrane, that you are just a freak or something or completely out of it. I think I just tried to convey that I am just like a regular guy and I'm just trying to learn my thing and I think people could kind of get with that. I did get a lot of help from other musicians after I left Elvin's band. They just kind of helped me to progress more. Jack DeJohnette kind of took me under his wing in a lot of different ways. I did some work with him. He called me for one of the first record gigs that I did in 1991, a record that he produced. I just found these different people to play with. Kenny Barron called me for some things. I worked with Joanne Brackeen a bunch. I still work with her now.


FJ: Although other musicians are willing to accept your development, I am certain people, as a rule, would have a tendency to have lofty expectations.

RAVI COLTRANE: I think it kind of goes across the board. It is just people I think. Usually musicians are the toughest. A lot of musicians are cool, but people are people. I would say the same thing if I saw the son of Miles with a trumpet or something, I would have all kinds of bizarre things going through my head. It is like a natural reaction really. My job is to just to kind of say, "Look, I understand. I can see how you feel about that, but this is what I'm trying to do and this is how I got into what I'm doing and I'm not trying to be somebody that I'm not or take advantage of who I am." Look at everything that I have done since I have started working and you will see that's always been the case with me.


FJ: Record companies must have been breaking down the door to get you into the studio.

RAVI COLTRANE: I won't say breaking down the door, but, yeah, it was obvious that that type of thing, especially the past decade, if you had a story or something that they could put on a bio or even better, put on a sticker on your record, it didn't matter what you sounded like. If they had some type of storyline that they could put to you, that was big. Any record that I did as a sideman, the producer might come up to me afterwards and say, "Oh, are you signed? Do you have a deal?" They would always have the dollar signs.


FJ: Is that why it took you nearly a decade to release your debut as a leader?

RAVI COLTRANE: I think I got to New York in '91 and I put the record out, Moving Pictures came out in '98. I felt that I was in no rush. When I got to New York, I could see this trend of these young musicians kind of getting swamped up by record companies and media and getting a lot of attention and two years later, they were nowhere to be seen. They would lose their deals and a backlash would be created. Guys who were way more talented than me, I was just like I don't want to follow this path. I'm not playing music so that I can be popular, so I can make money, or so I can be recognized. You want recognition. You don't want it despite everything that you represent or what you stand for. You do want people to appreciate your music, but there are things that you have to do. Rushing into something and doing things for the wrong reason can be detrimental to people's, not only their music, but obviously their careers. I just took my time. I just said that when it happens, it happens. If I write the music or if I feel that I have something that I have to say. That was the whole bunch of it too, I didn't feel like I, I was just so tired of hearing records with guys just making records just because they had a deal. I like to hear a guy who is really doing something personal, not some record company's idea of what a jazz record should sound like. You have to have this tune on it. You have to have a fast tune on it and stuff we can play on the radio. I think a lot of records were getting made like that by very talented guys that they were like canceling each other out. They didn't seem to be that personal and I didn't want to make a record like that.


FJ: If not for the glitz, if not for the glamour, why do you do it?

RAVI COLTRANE: (Laughing) Because, Fred, it's fun. Music is a beautiful thing. It is an awesome thing. It is great just to be able to play. It is fun. There isn't that much glitz and glamour involved in jazz, especially. If you try to become a rocker or something, smooth jazz guy, or rapper, anything, if that were the key element in it. Like I said, all people do want to be recognized. All artists want their work to be viewed or heard or acknowledged or bought or whatever. But for me, I think that there are two sides. It is a balance. It is a balance of staying true to your beliefs and the things you truly want to accomplish as a musician and also feeling that I am agreeing to be a part of the commerce world, selling what I do, or charging money if I play live, or signing my name on a record contract. You need to be a part of this world. It brings you a little bit to the other side of the coin. That has always existed even within great art. It is just about finding the balance.


FJ: Have you found that balance?

RAVI COLTRANE: (Laughing) Well, it is tough, Fred. It is definitely tough. I was talking with Greg Tardy, who is a good saxophone, great saxophone player and a good friend of mine. We have to laugh sometimes at just the hoops that you have to jump through sometimes just to do the things that you want to do, just to play music, just to get your band a job. It can be hard and sometimes the balance does get off. You find yourself on the phone for a longer part of the day than you find yourself with your saxophone. One thing kind of feeds the other. You still have to be a saxophone player first, but I do have a band and I am trying to record projects and you want to get that out to the people and so the business element always comes in. It is a hard balance. I think the longer you do things, you can hopefully get a breather. You can hopefully get to a certain place in your career where you don't feel that you have to struggle so much to be heard or just to get a gig here or there. The hustling years, they can seem to kind of linger.


FJ: The hustling years for you is not nearly in the same ballpark as Joe Smith from Seattle, you are and forever will be the son of John Coltrane and that has to proceed you through every door and has to weigh heavily on your shoulders?

RAVI COLTRANE: I think it is more of an exterior weight. I think it is with people. I have no control of what people are going to view. I can't make anybody forget that I am the son of John Coltrane. It is not what I am actually trying to do. That is always going to be who I am and part of who I am. I am only trying to be honest in terms of the work that I am doing and hopefully, that will filter through. The way I grew up, it was essentially that way. I didn't have this person in my house that I envied everyday and said that I have to be just like him. That would be a lot of internal pressure to go through it that way. I grew up just like a regular guy doing regular guy stuff. I didn't get any perks either way, negative or positive, for being the son of this musician. Nobody knew who John Coltrane was for the most part, growing up in the Seventies in Southern California. I never had these ideas of I have to be something that I am not. It was just about being myself. I am in this jazz world, where I have been for the last ten years or so and people have that thing, but the only thing that I can do is to say that this is what I am trying to do and this is what I am about.


FJ: Growing up in New York, that pressure would have been noticeable, but having been brought up in Southern California that is understandable, but credit has to go to your mother for raising you in an environment that did not subject you to such things.

RAVI COLTRANE: Yeah, most definitely, mostly definitely. She wanted to just have our regular stuff. My mother still has the same furniture in the house. She has a lot of stuff that she had when we lived in the first house in New York, the house we left in '71. She is not an extravagant person by any means. We were never spoiled on meant to think that we were any different or better than anybody. We had a very standard type of thing growing up.


FJ: I have run into many sons of famous fathers and your humility makes you stand apart from the mindset that by virtue of your birth you have an entitlement.

RAVI COLTRANE: Yeah, like that sense of entitlement, it is not really that cool. I'm very, very fortunate and lucky that we were regular people, real shy and just into doing our thing. My mom was very cool about teaching us who we were and what we should be thinking about, more than being just a decent person.


FJ: Let's touch on your new release on RCA Victor, From the Round Box, with the bad ass Eric Harland on drums. How is From the Round Box different from Moving Pictures?

RAVI COLTRANE: I feel that in a way, it is just a bridge. For me, there is a thread between the two things. On the surface, obviously, they're different records, but I think the intention and whatever it is that I am trying to convey within my thing is, you know, it is just honesty. It is not more than that. I think the first record is basically the feeling that I got when it was all done. It is a composite of many components that sometimes don't feel that related when you go in. You have to kind of find a thread either as you are doing it or after it is all done. With both recordings, I recorded a little bit more things than that were going to go on, just to have things to kind of piece together, like these songs really fit together and this song doesn't really fit with this song and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. I just always feel like I am trying to do something that is personal. I never want a record to sound like here is this tune and here is that tune and it doesn't have anything to do with that tune. I don't want it to sound like a compilation record. I have actually done some records like that and early on, I could kind of see that these guys were trying to do so much. They are trying to show every side to their whole thing and the record ends up not having any core sound or any core theme or continuity really. It just sounds broken up and jagged. I always wanted the records to sound like this one program of music, sweet, but it all kind of works.


FJ: So no calypso on your records?

RAVI COLTRANE: (Laughing) Not yet. That will be the calypso thread when we get to that. I think it is like the first record in those types of ways, in the kind of general, below the surface ways. I am just trying to play with honesty and do things that are personal.


FJ: On both records, you document persons whom you have worked with frequently, why not call on Elvin and ask him to join you in the studio and do an all-star project? It would have been easier to sell to the label.

RAVI COLTRANE: I think that to do a record like that, it is a certain thing. If I did a record with Elvin, I would not want to treat it like most of the records that you heard Elvin on as a sideman. People kind of have this star kind of thing in their eyes and they say, "Oh, God, I have to do something with Elvin" or the record company says, "Why don't you hire some names? The record will move better." Usually what happens is that you might rehearse once with this legend because he is not going to give you weeks and weeks of his time to learn some complicated, crazy music. Because of that, the music will go a certain way. There will ways be something special that he brings to it, but you tend to have this kind of problem when you have an all-star band. Things don't really sound that connected. It can be kind of a contrived thing. People just want to get these big named stars on their thing and it is usually they always sound great together. I have heard records where there would be like Ron Carter, and Herbie, or Jack and Dave Holland and then some guy that I have never heard of as the leader and these two veterans are smoking, sounding great together and they don't sound connected. It is very hard to do that. Number one, you are scared shitless when you go into the studio with these guys and you start to clam up a little bit. Different generations, different backgrounds sometimes doesn't work.


FJ: Knowing A&R people, someone must have approached you about doing a tribute record to your father, John C.?

RAVI COLTRANE: That is the first thing they ask. I remember I had lunch with Bob Theile and he produced all of my father's records on Impulse! and was a great supporter of jazz musicians during that time when it was pretty ballsy to have an artist like my father. He was a great, great person, but that was one of the first things he asked me. "Ever think about just recording some of your father's stuff? It would be so great. It would be so nice." I think people look at it in different ways. The feeling tha they have and the regard that they have for his music is so genuine and some people when they see me, they channel part of that toward me, which is cool, but I feel the same way. I feel the same way about his music, even more so. And then you have people who are strictly thinking money. So that is a definite no. I like to play his music during gigs and jam sessions. Somebody calls "Giant Steps," it is like, great. It is beautiful music. It will always be beautiful for me that way, but those records are so important for me that just recreating them on record is really not tribute enough. I feel like I give tribute to him everyday, every morning when I get up, every time I hear one of his records. Probably two days doesn't go by when I am not listening to him in some capacity. As a saxophone player, you have these things in your ear. This is why you do what you do. I wouldn't have to do some public tribute thing for myself to know the love that I have for him. Although, we did record "Leo" with my mom. It is a thing that he did on Interstellar Space and it is one piece my mom likes to play. That is the closest that I will probably get to it, is just doing things with my mom. She still loves to play his music, so whenever she asks, I normally always oblige.


FJ: Tour plans?

RAVI COLTRANE: We are going to be on the West Coast in July. We will be in Hollywood, at Catalina's from July 5-9. We are going to play Yoshi's and do a gig in San Jose. We have a gig in Kansas City in July and a few things in New York in August.


FJ: The record is out on RCA Victor, one of the many labels that make up the behemoth that is BMG. BMG just recently shut down their jazz division in the States, essentially compromising every North American artist on the label. Now, you are first and foremost an artist, but being an artist in the new century means being a businessman as well, and as a businessman, this can't be the best of news? With all the consolidation that is going on with Impulse! becoming Verve and now Warner Bros. set to merge with Blue Note, isn't it only a matter of time before audiences are left with one giant label and no choices?

RAVI COLTRANE: Well, they're, God, there is no easy or polite way of saying it. Things are very messed up. That is definitely not a hard question to answer there. Things really suck right now for lack of a better word. Things just aren't happening. The companies are getting bigger and bigger and the bottom line is always about how many sales, how many records are being sold, regardless of departments, regardless of having the prestige of having jazz or having classical music.


FJ: But should it be about prestige? Shouldn't it be about preserving an art form that is essentially the one musical legacy that this country can take credit for? There are fundraisers for the spotted owl and the rain forest, shouldn't there be one for jazz music? Save the jazz fund or heal the jazz project?

RAVI COLTRANE: But these things don't really matter once you move up the echelon of accountants and bosses, the people running these companies. There might be some great, great people on this one floor who are totally dedicated to putting jazz out on the major label, but they have about seven bosses who have never heard of Charlie Parker and could care less. They are interested in how the departments are selling. There used to be an idea that they had their pop music and N Sync can sell five billion records and then it should be cool if they have a jazz department and classical department to sell to that type of audience. But now, they don't see it that way. They don't see it that way and it is a shame. It is a total shame.


FJ: Any thoughts on starting a boy band of your own?

RAVI COLTRANE: (Laughing) Yeah, we have got all boys in the group now. Basically, we just have to start dressing alike. That might work, Fred.


FJ: And the future?

RAVI COLTRANE: As a matter of fact, Fred, I recorded a record with my mom, Alice Coltrane and with Jack DeJohnette. It is a project that we've been talking about for a couple of years now. My mom, who considers herself retired, still is very active in music and she has been pursuing spiritual practices, I guess I should say, for almost thirty years now, probably even longer than that. But she has started an ashram in the Seventies. It started with one person and now, I don't know how many families are there. This basically takes all of her time. She will only do a gig or sit in every now and then, but it is really with a lot of begging that I get her to come and play someplace. I did a gig in New York, Town Hall, and it was probably the highlight of my musical career. The gig was at Town Hall and I was opening for Ravi Shankar. It was my group and it was basically the Moving Pictures band and my mother as special guest with my group. So she flew to New York to do this and she hadn't played publicly in New York for about ten years and she sounded amazing. She sounded great and people were just raving about her. Wherever I go, people will always ask about my father, but a lot of people will ask about my mom. How is she doing and is she going to record again and how they remember seeing my mom in the Seventies. I always tell her that a lot of people have been asking about you and you should do something and so we finally did. It is a trio record that should (laughing) come out on BMG next year at some point. We are going to do a few more sessions this year, kind of space it out.


FJ: Your impression on it thus far.

RAVI COLTRANE: I think it sounds great. I'm probably more excited about this than I have been about the other two. To do something with your mom, it just takes me back. She used to play organ in the house everyday growing up and the piano and things like that. This is like what I've been hearing for such a long time.


Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and was pardoned by Clinton. Comments? Email him.