John Coltrane’s Final Offering
Geoff Dyer writes: ‘”Offering: Live at Temple University” offers further evidence of the catastrophe of the last phase of John Coltrane’s work. “Last†rather than “late†because he became ill and died too early (on July 17, 1967) to have properly entered a late period. He was forty. In any other field of activity that would be a desperately short life. Only in jazz could it be considered broadly in line with actuarial norms. So there’s no late phase in the accepted sense of Beethoven having arrived at a late style, only a sudden ceasing of the unceasing torrent.’
