The Gospel of John (Denver), by me, a true believer

"I'd rather be a loser with an outstretched hand than the coolest person in the world with a closed heart." ~ Garrett Bucks, via substack

I challenge anyone who grew up in the 70s to hear the words "West Virginia" and not follow it up in your mind with "...mountain mama / take me home / country roads..." John Denver was an absolute staple of my childhood, and I can sing every word to every song on John Denver’s Greatest Hits, released in 1973. That album (those specific versions), and a few classics from his collabs with the Muppets (“Grandma’s Feather Bed”, anyone?) are the extent of my John Denver repertoire, but they’re all that  I need. 

The 1970s was still a time when popular musicians could look like and actually be themselves and Denver was charmingly goofy and unpretentious, almost to a fault - he was often not taken seriously, even though he was one of the best selling artists of the era. Today, his songs are like letters from a kinder, simpler time. I remember sitting with my friend Suzie Tucker in a windowless meeting room in the gym where we both worked in Tokyo, listening to his Greatest Hits and imagining the wild wildernesses that we missed, living in that largest of the large cities of the world. To me, they’re nostalgic; a souvenir from a sunny and untethered childhood. But they’re also a reminder that you could be unabashedly sincere, earnest, even cheerful - and still take an honest stand for the things you believe in.

A big part of the soundtrack to my childhood.

Growing up, that was really the only side I knew of him. I wasn’t aware that he got his start doing satirical folk songs as part of an iteration of the Chad Mitchell Trio (how about the “I was not a Nazi” polka?!?) His popular (read: unwelcome and condescending) nickname, Sunshine Boy, obscured the truth that he stood firmly within the long tradition of folk performers whose protest songs - against the Vietnam War, segregation, and the Cold War, among many others - sat easily beside his hits about the beauty of wild places and kinship with the natural world.

His positivity was not the toxic kind, the kind that ignores and dismisses the pain and struggles of the world. Rather, like the world and all humans in it, he himself was terribly flawed, experiencing bouts of depression, rage, and alcohol abuse. In his music, he acknowledges tragedy, loss, and grief, while seeking meaning and celebrating optimism, hope, and healing. Still, as his estate’s music manager put it, “He seemed to really want to see the good in the world.” I think he would have rejected today’s widespread and cynical notion that nothing actually matters, and would have used his pitch-perfect voice to do what he could to make the world a better place.

That’s a sentiment I could really use more of these days, even if it’s a little naive, maybe a bit cringey, probably tragically uncool. I often write these posts with John Denver as my soundtrack - figuratively and literally - as a reminder that there is still good news out there, and that we can still find wisdom in wild and gentle places, power in stillness and quiet, and inspiration through joy and wonder. His songs remain, to me, divine and excellent truths; they are, indeed, revelations.

Selected favourites:

Country Roads (1971)

Denver’s most popular and enduring song, Country Roads, is fun to sing and made our friends think our kids were good at Appalachian geography as toddlers ;-):

Almost heaven

West Virginia

Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River

But it’s more than that, I think. It’s about longing for belonging, and searching for connection, and homesickness for the people you love. It’s such a simple song – three chords, clear melody, plainspoken lyrics - and so earnest that, like with so many of Denver’s tunes, I think the universality and depth of its themes get overlooked. It’s not really about place (even though it is one of West Virginia’s official state songs), but the place serves as a conduit into deeper feelings and points of view.

Rocky Mountain High (1972)

Rocky Mountain High, Denver’s second most popular song, was initially banned by several radio stations in the US due to concerns about possible drug references (note that it did not face the same censorship in Canada, where it became a #1 hit). It seems quaint to think of now (it’s Colorado’s official state song, natch), but Denver had to publicly defend the song at the time, which was not about getting high, but rather an exploration of his spiritual transformation through the power of the wild and rugged spaces he experienced in Colorado:

He was born in the summer 

Of his 27th year 

Coming home 

To a place he’d never been before

He left yesterday behind him

You might say he was born again

You might say he found a key to every door

“[The banning of the song] was obviously done by people who had never seen or been to the Rocky Mountains. And also had never experienced the elation, celebration of life or the joy in living that one feels when he observes something as wondrous as the Perseid meteor shower on a moonless, cloudless night, when there are so many stars that you have a shadow from the starlight, and you are out camping with your friends, your best friends, and introducing them to one of nature’s most spectacular light shows for the first time.” 

Rhymes and Reasons (1969)

Every word of Rhymes and Reasons still resonates:

So you speak to me of sadness

and the coming of the winter

The fear that is within you now it seems to never end

And the dreams that have escaped you / and the hopes that you’ve forgotten

You tell me that you need me now

You want to be my friend

And you wonder where we’re going, where’s the rhyme, and where’s the reason

And it’s you cannot accept

It is here we must begin to seek the wisdom of the children

And the graceful way of flowers in the wind

For the children and the flowers are my sisters and my brothers

Their laughter and their loveliness would clear a cloudy day 

Like the music of the mountains ‘ and the colours of the rainbow

They’re a promise of the future

and a blessing for today

The Eagle and the Hawk (1971)

“Come dance with the west wind / and touch all the mountaintops /

sail o’er the canyons and up to the stars /

and reach for the heavens / and hope for the future /

for all that we can be / not what we are.