Charles Lloyd

continued

After a yearlong stint with another popular group of the day, the Cannonball Adderley Sextet, he went out on his own and formed a quartet that included two relative beginners, drummer Jack DeJohnette and pianist Keith Jarrett.

Forest Flower, a live recording of this quartet's performance at the 1966 Monterey Jazz Festival, became one of the best-selling jazz LPs ever and made Lloyd a star of the love-in generation. The group opened for some of the leading rock acts of the day and toured all over the world, including Poland, where I heard them as a teenager. This kind of success rarely comes to jazz musicians, but it did not satisfy Lloyd's spiritual needs. He withdrew from public performance and went into seclusion. As he put it many years later, "I had dreams and aspirations of changing the world with music, and of course I didn't do that. So at the age of thirty, I went away into the forest and lived in Big Sur. After having incredible experiences playing music all over the world, I decided to try to change myself and to work on my sound and go deeper into my spiritual life. I think, fortunately, that has been a strengthening process for me."