What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?: Remembering John Denver

Originally published in Discoveries magazine, December, 1997

In 1974 and 1975, the only shirts I wore were those pseudo-western white button up ones with a yoke on the shoulders and a pattern that matched the cuffs. They were quite in vogue for the time, and there was only one reason for it: John Denver wore them on his album covers and the frequent TV appearances he made. He was everywhere. Both kids and adults liked him for his wholesome attitude, appearance, and those beautiful songs.

Those shirts, and indeed everything about John Denver, became extremely uncool just a few years later. Warm and fuzzy was forever replaced by dark and brooding in the pretentious styles and music of youth. The other day, I saw a teenager walking around with one of those giant Cat In The Hat-type hats towering a foot above his head, just like that current pop hit-maker Jamiroquai wears in his videos. Somehow, I suspect that kid will look back someday and realize just how silly he looked (as will his contemporaries with their multiple piercings, ghostly makeup, and “heroin chic” appearances).

I look back on my period of the John Denver look and am thankful that I spent those formative years being influenced by an image that represented love of life, love of nature, love of everything. I thought of that style and image and that time upon hearing of John Denver’s death at 53 in his own small experimental aircraft on October 12. And like so many others, I pulled out all my Denver albums that I’d kept all those years, listening to them and remembering the hopeful and positive words I thought I’d forgotten.

John Denver was, of course, far more than just a symbol of all things happy. He was a musician, a thoughtful one, with great depth of character and meaning in his lyrics, beauty in his memorable melodies, and sincerity in his voice. Those songs, “Rocky Mountain High,” “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “Sunshine on My Shoulders” cheered America up. They came at the precise time that we were being bombarded with too much information, an era with dramatic social change, increased racial tension, an unpopular and inexplicable war, and political scandal that would permanently harden this nation’s view of government. Denver’s songs were a cheerful distraction, a reminder of happier times and feelings, the musical equivalent of the “Calgon, take me away” commercial.

Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., the son of an Air Force pilot, moved around a lot as a child, as military families do. He adopted the name Denver just as he adopted the beautiful
state in which that city resides. As a young musician, he was
fortunate enough (chosen from over 250 singers) to become a member of the well-known Chad Mitchell Trio, and from that position, had the great honor of Peter, Paul, and Mary
recording his song “Leaving On A Jet Plane.” It became a huge hit for the folk superstars, and became a springboard for Denver’s own recording career. Things then happened very quickly for the young man. His first album was 1969′s “Rhymes and Reasons”, and within a few years, he was selling millions of records and his name became a household word.

His charming personality came through in the songs that celebrated life and love. His refreshing naivete was focused entirely on The Big Picture; the reasons for life itself and the beauty of nature. Why sing about all the subtle nuances and complexities of frenzied life in the twentieth century when you could draw people’s attention to overlooked important things like “a night in a forest, like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain, like a storm in the desert, like a sleepy blue ocean”?

The music of John Denver truly did “fill up (the) senses” of an entire generation. It was an era in which your favorite musicians would actually release several albums a year (and even smile on the cover photos!), and Denver was no exception to the rule of the day, with over a dozen records in the first half of the Seventies. In addition to the fine songwriting found in “Sunshine on My Shoulders,” “Follow Me,” “Looking For Space,” and so many others, he proved to be a worthy interpreter of other songwriters of the pop music era. His remarkable voice, a clean and pure tenor, added entirely new dimensions to songs like Michael Murphey’s “Boy From the Country,” Buddy Holly’s “Everyday,” Jerry Jeff Walker’s “My Old Man,” and especially the Beatles’ “Mother Nature’s Son.”

As John Denver the Singer became John Denver the Celebrity, it became apparent that he didn’t just sing about love and the beauty of our world, he also lived a life accordingly. He became a zealous activist, a symbol for all things natural and cerebral, a badge he wore proudly his entire public life. The songs were just a vessel, a means to getting his message across, a message that he delivered fully two decades before terms like “global warming,” “environmentalist,” even “recycling” became part of our everyday vernacular.

Also, at the height of his popularity, he starred in a box-office hit with George Burns, “Oh, God!,” in which Denver was perfectly cast as an Everyman, dealing once again with that Big Picture, in a comical and endearing film speculating on the nature of God Himself. During this period, he also appeared on numerous TV shows, guest-hosted the Tonight Show, made memorable television and record appearances with Jim Henson’s Muppets, and collected many awards, including eight platinum albums, 13 gold albums, and the U.S. Jaycees’ Ten Outstanding Men of America Award.

By the end of the Seventies, a weary, more cynical America lost interest in songs about sunshine and mountains and began listening to music of every other type, as new styles developed and the audiences became more fragmented into specific categories (upon the news of Denver’s death, only the public station in my city would play his music; he simply didn’t fit neatly into any of the narrow current radio formats). John Denver disappeared from the television, the radio, and the major record label (RCA) for whom he’d brought so much success, selling more than 10 million albums (John Denver’s Greatest Hits is still one of the largest selling albums in the history of RCA Records).

But that didn’t affect Denver’s enthusiasm. Neither did it change his single-minded purism and dedication to his poems and prayers and promises, the things that he believed in.  He continued to release albums on his own label, reaching his core audience that had never stopped listening. And he continued to involve himself in the hunger and preservation causes that were so dear to him and had been so spiritually connected to his music.

By 1997, his tremendous body of work included over 35 albums and many years of involvement in the work of UNICEF and the World Wildlife Fund. He’d also helped to found other charitable organizations: the Plant-It 2000 Foundation is dedicated to planting trees where needed, and the Windstar Foundation is a nonprofit environmental education and research center working toward a sustainable future for the world. He was also on the advisory board of many environmental organizations including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Cousteau Society, Friends of the Earth, and the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies. He continued to receive recognition for his ongoing work, like the Presidential World Without Hunger Award, the National Wildlife Federation Conservation Achievement Award, the NASA Medal For Public Service, the Albert Schweitzer Music Award, and many others. This musician truly put his money and time where his mouth and his heart were. His passion for life was apparent in all his work, musical and charitable, and was even apparent in the way in which he died.

When another of my favorite singer/songwriters was lost to a 1996 plane tragedy (Nashville writer and recording artist, Walter Hyatt, in the Valujet crash), a friend of mine, also a Walter fan, paid him the highest honor one can give: She had a number of trees planted in his memory. With John Denver’s Plant It 2000, it’s pretty easy for those of us who were touched by his music to repay the favor with a similar gesture. Donations to Plant It 2000 can be sent to 9457 South University Blvd., Suite 310, Highlands Ranch, Colorado, 80126.

There have been too many recent losses of folks who spent their time here with a passionate respect for the beauty that surrounds us, that’s in our world and in each other: Jacques Cousteau (about whom Denver sang in “Calypso”), Carl Sagan, Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, Charles Kuralt, now John Denver. They held the public front line on protecting the health of our planet and its creatures; we wanted them there, we needed them there, so we wouldn’t have to worry about it ourselves. It’s incumbent upon the rest of us to champion those human health and environmental health causes that they dedicated their lives to, and that are still too often looked upon so cynically by our jaded society.  Now it’s our turn, and our responsibility.

The beautiful voice, melodies, and songs are what will stick in most people’s minds, those of us uncool nerds who admit to loving that sound, that joyous celebration of life that John Denver captured perfectly in his songs. But again, those songs were more than just beautiful tunes. They were instructions, advice, suggestions, not to be taken lightly:

“Come dance with the west wind, and touch on the mountain tops, sail o’er the canyons and up to the stars, and reach for the heavens, and hope for the future, and all that we can be, not just what we are.”
[from "The Eagle And The Hawk," by John Denver and Mike Taylor, 1971]

Donations to Plant-It 2000 can be sent to 9457 South
University Blvd., Suite 310, Highlands Ranch, Colorado 80126