The night John Coltrane blew David Crosby’s mind
David Crosby has a more impressive career than first meets the eye. Though the late musician spent much of his final years taking to Twitter to give his unabashed views on the trials and tribulations of society, his irreverence on the platform belied his mammoth impact on the music industry.
As a founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the singer is a foundational pillar upon which modern rock was built. In the 1960s and ’70s, Crosby’s influence could be heard everywhere. Whether it was his idyllic vocals with The Byrds, which saw him gain widespread commercial fame, or his work with CSNY, which not only saw folk-rock truly explode but delivered arguably the greatest album of the 1970s in Déjà Vu.
But, like any true rock icon, Crosby never proclaimed himself to be a lone titan of music. He believed, like so many other artists that the explosion of rock music in the 1960s was only possible because of the jazz greats who came before him. A lover of jazz, especially the explosive talents of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Crosby would routinely share his adoration for the generation of talent that existed within the jazz genre and would, with the latter, enjoy a more than memorable experience.
Crosby was also a man not afraid to dive head-first into hedonism. On one particular evening, while visiting South Side Chicago club McKie’s in 1963, he sat down to watch Alvin Jones but wouldn’t stay in his seat for too long: “Alvin Jones is an intense mother fucker. And I was very high. He drove me out of my chair,” recalled Crosby as part of the documentary, David Crosby: Remember My Name.
After spending some time standing at the back of the club, things still hadn’t calmed down for Crosby, and he “ducked into the men’s room. I got my head against this puke green tile — I can still remember the colour of the tile — I thought, ‘I it’s gonna be alright, now. Get it together. It’s gonna be OK’ Bam! Somebody kicks the door open. It’s ‘Trane.” Now, for any jazz fan, this experience is likely one that only exists in dreams. However, for an extremely high Crosby, this was a nightmare.
“He never stopped soloing,” Crosby recalls, speaking about one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, John Coltrane. “He’s still soloing. And he’s like burning in this bathroom. He doesn’t even know I’m there. He never even saw me. I’m thinking I’m gonna slide right down this tile. I’m thinking my nose is gonna open, and my brain is gonna rush out onto the floor. It was so intense. I never heard anyone be more intense with music than that in my life.”
Speaking with Jazz Times, Crosby further revelled in the moment, sharing that Coltrane “played in the [restroom] for a couple of minutes because the sound was good—it was echoey—and he was… as good as you think he was.”
Watch David Crosby explain his wild night with John Coltrane below.
