from James Gavin, Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker:

Wilson (critic for the New York Times), 1973: 'His playing is still laconic to the point of listlessness, delivered in a stark, rather unshaded monotone'.

Gavin writes of a concert in 1974: 'Few who head it could forget Chet's version of 'The Thrill is Gone', which he counted off at a tempo so slow that the music seemed to float in space'. 'This is the end, so why pretend …', he sang, pulling listeners into the black hole of desolation where he seemed the happiest. Then came a trumpet chorus so drawn out and full of silence that it felt as though he were groping through the dark for the next note'.

And of one in 1976: 'Baker wrapped himself in a cocoon onstage: eyes closed, head and shoulders curled in, utterly withdrawn from the audience, whom he barely acknowledged. Only the most pained and fleeting smile ever crossed his lips as he visited some hazy inner place'.

And one in 1978: 'Every tempo had slowed to the "junkie beat" of his 1959 album Chet, made at the peak of his early addiction'.

Endress: 'The music is the only thing that kept him alive. I didn't dare approach him. He seemed so broked and sad'.

Gavin evokes ' A chilingly stark musical skeleton', and writes of 'his hollow, otherworldly singing'.

Norris: 'everything was closing in on him. He knew this'.

Stilo: 'He was a man completely lost, you understand? Asking someone to show him minimum reason to live'.

Masy: 'I saw death in his eyes. He was awake, but in another world'.

Baker to Weber: 'You can't help me. I'm too far out'.

Fevre: 'Taking speedballs the way he was, I think he was trying to escape from himself or from life'.

Gavin: 'The implication that he had committed a sort of passive-aggressive suicide – opening a window and letting death come to him – perfectly fit the profile of a man who, by his own admission, had never had the courage to confront tough decisions'.