Benny Green on Ornette Coleman

In an essay about Coleman Hawkins, Benny Green says: 

“In any case, objective criticism is a platonic impossibility which would not even be desirable even if it were possible. The only criticism which is readable is the fiercely prejudiced, fiercely subjective criticism by a man who cares enough to show his enthusiasms.” 

With that “fiercely prejudiced, fiercely subjective” attitude, he writes about Ornette Coleman.   
Before writing anything about Coleman, Benny Green talks about critics and their mistake at the beginning regarding Charlie Parker. Then: 

“The frame of mind in which most critics trooped down to Scott’s Club to hear the ageing enfant terrible may best be described by reciting the false syllogism which had become the 1st rule of conduct for all jazz reviewers. ‘Parker sounded mad, and he turned out to be a great musician. Ornette Coleman sounds mad. Therefore Ornette Coleman must be a great musician.’” 

I myself haven’t heard much of Coleman, but my experience not only hasn’t been very favourable, it also makes me indifferent to everything else he has created. I have a strong dislike of the screeching noise in “Lonely Woman”, which is more painful than hearing a fork scratching a plate. 
Now that you’ve seen Benny Green tear apart Dave Brubeck, prepare to see him flinging a knife at Ornette Coleman. Slash slash. 

“… in the past 2 or 3 years, Coleman had become a multi-instrumentalist. Part of his early fame had rested on the fact that he preferred blowing a plastic alto saxophone, although why this should have contributed to the legend of his genius it is hard to say. So far from being a crazy novelty, plastic saxophones had been tried and found wanting many years before Coleman took up their cause. In any case, it is difficult to understand on what basis a man can see something spectacular about a plastic instrument who had never handled a metal one. […]
But Coleman had come to London armed not only with his plastic saxophone, but with a trumpet and a violin as well, and if it is true to say that he was at least reasonably familiar with the technical problems of playing jazz on a saxophone, it is also true to say that he apparently had only the most rudimentary of how to handle the 2 new instruments. Coleman as a saxophone player is a fascinating curiosity, an artist whose technique is a bewildering patchwork of dexterity and the most shocking ineptitude. […]
But what of Coleman the trumpeter or Coleman the violinist? What he actually succeeded in doing at Scott’s was to defy all rational criticism. Once he began to struggle with the trumpet or to saw savagely at the violin, the process of ratiocination collapsed entirely. There was no criterion by which to judge. It was not so much bad playing as no playing at all, not so much poor music as antimusic.” 

Such fun. 
This essay was written in 1966, in case anyone’s wondering. Benny Green quotes himself in another review: 

“It ought to be clear to anyone visiting Ronnie Scott’s Club in the last few days that it is not possible to criticise the playing of Ornette Coleman. The act of criticism is necessarily connected with what the artist is supposed to be doing, and as I haven’t the remotest idea what Ornette Coleman is supposed to be doing, all criticism is stilled. It remains only to report in factual terms what happens when he arrives on the bandstand. 
Coleman begins with what might be laughingly called an alto saxophone solo at a fast tempo, brief and to the point, lasting, say, 10 or 15 minutes, in the course of which both harmony and melody are given the brush. Next comes a change of mood, that is to say, the same thing is played slow instead of fast. The violin interlude which follows is even more startling. Coleman staggers through some mysterious pattern of his own devising, sawing away with a ferocity which belies the dolorous expression in his face. 
[…] He is not, however, completely without shrewdness. By mastering the useful trick of playing the entire chromatic scale at any given moment, he has absolved himself from the charge of continuously playing the wrong notes. Like a stopped clock, Coleman is right at least twice a day.” 

Ha ha ha. 
What a devastating review. Benny Green is my new model.