"I follow the school of thought that says there are basically three phases in Coltrane’s musical life. I would identify his activities from the beginning up to 1961 as one phase. From ‘61 onward to ‘65 or ‘66 there is the period where he was leading his own group, especially what’s now often referred to as the classic quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. At the end of this phase, there is the transition period where Coltrane’s determination to keep moving forward, finding new possibilities, strained the quartet to the point where Elvin was unhappy with the addition of other drummers and McCoy Tyner probably couldn’t hear himself anymore. These are all matters of public record and I don’t think it’s wrong to talk about them. This transition led to the late period of Coltane’s life which, although you would think that the area that I might be most expert on, it is actually the area that I know least about. That’s partly because it overlaps with my own entry into a full-time relationship with music, attempting to be a professional musician, which, for me, started probably around ‘65, and ’66. There was no clear beginning for me between playing with student bands and then gradually earning some money by doing that and then gradually meeting the players that I thought I wanted to play with. All of this was happening during the last period of Coltrane’s life. At that time, his music from that period was available to us only through recordings. The last tour that Coltrane was supposed to have made of Europe was scheduled for 1966 but it was cancelled. His health was already suffering at that point and that’s probably the reason that last tour was cancelled. So we in Europe never got to hear those late Coltrane performances, the type that were documented during the tour of Japan. It’s hard to imagine what the response would have been in England; but I’m fairly sure that itwould have been pretty hostile. By then, Coltrane’s music was a step too far for many people. (...)".