I first went out to find a John Coltrane record as a teenager when someone said something, it might even have been Roger McGuinn himself, on the radio, talking about The Byrds trying to sound like Coltrane on Eight Miles High, I had little idea at the time about what he might be talking about, I had to go find out. There surely comes a point when anyone who’s started to think seriously about music wonders about John Coltrane and I say this today, early in the morning on September 23rd 2026, for today is John Coltrane’s 100th birthday and right now on his birthday I find myself listening to Elin Forkelid’s new album Plays For Trane Vol. 2  

Now I’m not going to claim I know than much about Jazz or John Coltrane, I probably could get away with stroking my chin and bluffing for a while, I could tell you this rather fine album is a follow up to 2020’s Plays For Trane, that this is Plays For Trane Vol. 2, an album in which the rather respected Elin Forkelid and her band dive further into John Coltrane’s catalogue, and as they themselves say, go about “turning it inside out, bending it, holding it with care”. Says here that “Forkelid, together with Mattias Ståhl, David Stackenäs, Vilhelm Bromander and Jon Fält, revisit the jazz giant in a celebrated transformation, reimagining the sounds of John Coltrane”. Right now I could tell you how she’s making me want to paint when I really need to go get some sleep…

My own story of the Byrds and Eight Miles High (a tale that probably dates from around 1979) illustrates how most of us have, even if we don’t know it, kind of grown up in a musical world heavily influenced by that love supreme. We lost Coltrane in 1967, the year Van Der Graff formed, he is always here though; some of us listen to Magma’s Christian Vander going on (and on) about ‘trane, you hear John Coltrane being name-dropped by all kinds of people, about how The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh pushed the band to study Coltrane and how his modal and collective improvisational approach became an “omnipresent and permanent” foundation for their live jams (see told you I could bluff for a bit), how he influenced people like Carlos Santana or John McLaughlin (both big influences on younger musicians themselves), how bands like the MC5 or The Stooges and guitarists like Wayne Kramer or Fred “Sonic” Smith fashioned their aggressive, high-energy guitar solos after jazz horns, treating Coltrane’s intensity as a blueprint for their proto-punk wildness. Indeed Patti Smith is said to have “viewed Coltrane and abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock as two of the vital forces that gave her generation permission to shatter conventional three-minute rock ‘n’ roll structures….”

Then of course there Jaxon, or David Jackson, the legendary saxophonist from what we’d call the the greatest rock band ever, Van der Graaf Generator, a man clearly deeply influenced by John Coltrane. Actually Van Der Graaf’s Guy Evans has said that the rhythms of Coltrane’s quartet (particularly drummer Elvin Jones) completely redefined how Van der Graaf Generator treated rhythm, shifting them away from a simple time-keeping foundation into what he described as untamed waves of energy. 

And, before we even get to some of those early Pink Floyd shows, there’s Hawkwind and their very first gigs at the end of the 60s and how you could say the band’s entire sonic blueprint was built on those legendary 20-minute heavy jam sessions of theirs. According to band lore, that career-launching improvisation at their very first gig in 69 was based entirely on John Coltrane’s India (or alternately, The Byrds’ Eight Miles High).

Put simply, Coltrane is everywhere, we all live in a John Coltrane world and well I have no idea what it must have been like to actually be there to hear him for the first time in New York in 1961? No idea what kind of lights that might have switched on or how exciting that would have been, I can tell you what it was like that first time I heard Flying Luttenbachers, no doubt about the Coltrane flavours there but by then his influence was clearly everywhere…

Back to Elin Forkelid and her band and what we have here for it is rather good, no, more than that, this is a rather excellent album and right now it is kind of sounding like David Jackson let loose with Van Der Graaf or Nik Turner at Stonehenge in the Mid 80s pulling an all-nighter, Plays For Trane Vol. 2 is a little less rock orientated though, it is very much a jazz thing and in other places on this album it is rather soothing, rather beautiful, it does flow is a rather stylish way. She is one of Sweden’s most renowned saxophone players, a serious name on that jazz/free jazz scene, we have covered some of her Sol Sol material before and right now this, as wild as it is, is kind flowing in a rather beautifully easy jazzy way. No, I can’t really bluff about these things, I don’t know the source material well enough to tell you what her band have done with it, I don’t know how much they’re “turning it inside out or bending it”, I can tell you they’re certainly “holding it with care” and I can tell you that it sounds like a rather fine labour of (supreme) love, a rather thrilling tribute to the great man and a fine play on his colour, a fine fine album to be playing on the day of John Coltrane’s 100th birthday. I can (with a tiny little bit of authority) tell you that these interpretations sound very (very) fine indeed to these ears here in the early hours of the great man’s birthday, that this album and this collection of pieces sound more than wonderful but I really don’t have the knowledge to really tell you more than how I feel, to tell you about the gut feeling, the joy, the need to paint to it. I really (really) like the album Elin Forkelid and her band have made… Happy birthday Mr Coltrane, thank you….

There’s an album listening party on Elin’s Bandcamp page on Friday September 25, 2026 at 6:00pm GMT+1

“Hi all, Join me for a listening party on September 25th. I’ll answer whatever questions you may have and we’ll talk about the music. Looking forward to seeing you! In the meantime, you can pre-order the album (LP/CD/DI). Cheers, Elin”

Plays For Trane Vol. 2 is released on September 25th, there is also Volume One from 2020…

And while we’re here…

and…

and of course…