John Coltrane

In a 1981 Musican magazine interview with Jerry, Jerry says:

I never sat down and stole ideas from him; it was more his sense of flow that

I learned from. That and the way his personality was always right there, the

presence of the man just comes stomping out of those records. It's not

something I would've been able to learn through any analytical approach,

it was one of those things I just had to flash on.

In a 1981 interview for BAM! magazine with David Gans and Blair Jackson (as found in Gans' book Conversations with the Dead, p. 65-66), Jerry elaborates Coltrane's influence:

I've been influenced a lot by Coltrane, but I never copied his licks or sat down, listened to records and tried to play his stuff. I've been impressed with that thing of flow, and of making statements that to my ears sound like paragraph--he'll play along stylistically with a certain kind of tone, in a certain kind of syntax, for X amounts of time, then he'll like change the subject, then play along with this other personality coming out, which really impresses me. It's like attitude's changing. But it changes in a holistic way, where the tone of his axe and everything changes.

Perceptually, an idea that's been very important to me in playing has been the whole "odyssey" idea--journeys, voyages, you know? And adventures along the way. That whole idea has been really important to me...

 I can't remember where I read it, but Jerry once said his favorite Coltrane album was The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings. Here is "Impressions (A)."

According to an interview with Reverb Music, Coltrane was a big influence of Bobby's, age 19:

The John Coltrane record that had ‘Tunji’ on it, ‘Coltrane,’ had me hugely enamored with his rhythm section –- Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison –- and the way they worked together. It was great the way they played off McCoy Tyner. Whereas a lot of guitarists cite other guitarists as primary influences, I listened to a lot of McCoy Tyner and what he had to say. It was Phil (Lesh) who turned me onto Coltrane.

McCoy Tyner was a huge influence on Bobby.