John Denver was a personal friend. As one of his creative collaborators, and the Co-Creator and Executive Producer of his last completed, original work in both television and music, The Wildlife Concert,(1995) and The Best of John Denver Live,(1997) I often heard that John Denver’s music was no longer “hip”. John Denver’s songs never were “hip”. They are timeless.
In an era obsessed with throw away music and pop stars, John Denver traveled a different road, and his legacy is more than just the tragedy of another fallen, global celebrity. John Denver is a cultural icon. His songs have become an intrinsic part of our cultural fabric. Regardless of ethnic heritage, generation, race, or social class; most of us think we know who John Denver was. The mere mention of his name evokes an immediate image even among those few who are not familiar with his music. Like “Beatle” Paul, Charlie Chaplin and Elvis Presley, we always wanted John to be “John Denver”. As an artist, it was an enormous burden. To understand why we felt so is perhaps to understand ourselves. Maybe it was John’s signature optimism, that sense of idealism that is so American – today, so easily scorned; given short shrift in these cynical times – nonetheless, that part of the American character so admired around the world. How else can you explain the unprecedented and enduring global popularity of songs like Take Me Home Country Roads, Annie’s Song, Leaving On A Jetplane, andRocky Mountain High even in Russia, China, and Patagonia.
John Denver had much in common with the American poet Robert Frost. Like Frost, John was a lyric poet. It is worth noting that at Frost’s death in 1963, he had lost favor among his peers. At that time, the emerging “Beat” poets were in vogue. Robert Frost’s graceful, lyric style was scorned as passé. Likewise, John Denver’s impact and legacy is, today, in the current climate of American popular music, mostly underestimated and unappreciated. Beneath the affirmations of many of John Denver’s songs lie a deep and subtle questioning – an agitation and longing. Behind the simple grace of his lyrics and melodic phrases, one finds the darker soul of a poet. Contrary to what many of his critics suggest, John Denver’s songs resonate a profoundly contrasting and competing sense of loss and hope. Underneath the warm and surface charm of the songs, one hears an intense and soulful sense of self doubt and melancholy. As with Frost, the deceptive simplicity of John’s songs make it easy to overlook their depth.
John Denver’s music reflects a vision whose optimism and sense of possibility is profoundly contrasted by an intimate, yet universal struggle and longing. This is why people over and over -around the world- respond to his music. That’s what we hear. That is why his music will endure.
Along with Robert Frost, Stephen Foster, Woody Guthrie, and Leonard Bernstein, few voices have captured the American character and spirit so well. With songs often painted with the lyric palette reminiscent of Albert Beirstadt; epic in vision, yet with a brilliant sense of intimacy, John Denver became a national treasure, his impact, global.
His meteoric rise in the 1970’s was a phenomenon the music industry had rarely seen since The Beatles. John Denver was everywhere. By 1975 he was the biggest selling recording artist in the world. Today, he remains one of the top selling artists in the history of the music industry. As John himself often noted, once you are at the top, there is only one place you can go. As an artist, he was disappointed in his inability to get his music heard in recent years, yet understood well the vagaries of the business of popular music.
While John’s personal support for numerous causes during his life are well known, his influence has been much greater, and had a profound social impact. In 1973, John Denver’s Greatest Hits, at the time only the third album in music history to sell over 10 million copies, ignited a popular consciousness and celebration of nature and the outdoors. Because of his massive appeal, John Denver significantly helped to popularize the conservation ethic in American culture.
I am often asked, “ What was John Denver was really like?”. He was a good friend. At heart, a shy and private man; contemplative and thoughtful. Intensely loyal to his friends and family, he was nonetheless very much a wandering soul. An artist whose occasional and very human adventures and mishaps eloquently spoke to his vulnerability, and the daily struggle and intense pressure of being “John Denver”. He cared deeply about the world and passionately wanted to make a difference for others. But to know John best is to listen to his songs. It is in his songs that he was most at home, most himself. His legacy is in his music, and it is in his music that he will live on.
