ARTICLE FROM STEREO REVIEW
AUGUST, 1991



*This is the FULL TEXT*
John Denver: "I have a vision of a better world, and I'm able 
to articulate
     that in my music."
 Nash, Alanna
 Stereo Review  v56 p63(3) August, 1991

 illustration; portrait
 ARTICLE TYPE: biography
 CAPTIONS: John Denver. (portrait)
 BIOGRAPHEE: Denver, John--Conduct of life
 DESCRIPTORS: Singers--Conduct of life; Music and 
society--Personalities


     THE celebrity snow bunnies are keeping a low profile in 
Aspen, Colorado this February morning. A quick look around the 
town turns up neither hide nor carefully coiffed hair of 
Goldie and Kurt, Don and Melanie, Sylvester, Vanna . . . not 
even so much as a glimpse of Hunter S. Thompson. Also missing 
in action is singer-songwriter John Denver, now exactly one 
hour late for an interview at Pour La France! cafe and bakery,
a site he abruptly substituted at the last minute for the 
meeting place we had agreed on earlier, his Rocky Mountain 
High home in the exclusive section of Starwood. But then plans 
often go amiss in this former mining town now better known as 
a ski resort and playground of the rich and famous.

     For example, Claudine Longet didn't really mean to 
fatally shoot her lover, pro skier Spider Sabich, here in 
1976. (How embarrassing for the Andy Williams family Christmas 
specials!) Likewise, Gary Hart hadn't planned on getting that 
chummy with Donna Rice when they met here in 1986,
nor did Ivana Trump have any intention of surrendering the 
Donald to Marla Maples when the three collided on the snowy 
slopes in 1989.

     And, just as certainly, John Denver had no intention of 
running his brand new Porsche off the road and crashing 
through somebody's fence the night before our interview, the 
reason he offers for being late when he finally shows up with 
his sixteen-year-old adopted son Zach in tow. But by
this time Denver ought to know he has some kind of Tibetan 
curse where Porsches are concerned. He had another one, you 
see, but as one of the country's most famous environmentalists 
he'd been criticized for owning such an extravagant 
fuel-burner. So last year, dutifully calling it a
"gas-guzzler," he got rid of it and bought a Jeep. It was just 
one way he could help the planet, he said at the time, along 
with washing his windows with vinegar instead of soap, 
installing low-energy lights in his house, and using cotton 
diapers for his new baby Jesse Belle, the product of his
marriage to Australian actress Cassandra Delaney after his 
split from Annie, the first wife he long celebrated in song 
and whose side many Aspeners still take in the wake of a 
bitter divorce.

     The Porche flap grew out of the national howl that went 
up when Denver planned to install several gigantic gas tanks 
on his various Colorado properties. He wanted them, he says, 
so he could buy gasoline in volume, in part to aid his 
Windstar Foundation, an environmental education and
research center, and in part to offer lower gas prices to his 
employees. It was a perfectly fine idea, he thought, except 
the newspapers reported that the famous energy saver now had 
enough gasoline to drive his Porsche around the world twelve 
times. The accusation angered the normally mild-mannered
singer, but it forced him to cancel the gas tanks to quell the 
public outrage.

     Now that the controversy has died down, he has both one 
giant gas tank and a new Porsche--make that one slightly 
damaged Porsche--that he insists gets 20 miles to the gallon. 
People who drive luxury cars with no regard for fuel 
efficiency, he declares, should be taxed accordingly.

     But, Denver adds, choosing a high-visibility seat in the 
muffin restaurant and registering his disappointment when the 
chef is unable to whip up an order of his beloved huevos 
rancheros, that isn't what he came here to talk about. He is 
far more interested in discussing his new album,
"The Flower That Shattered the Stone," and why he believes 
this collection of mostly middle-of-the-road songs calling for 
global peace, love, and ecological reform will be the 
stepping-stone to a completely rejuvenated career.

     "I think I'm going to have record success again," states 
Denver, who hasn't had a No. 1 single since 1975. "I'm singing 
better than ever before, and people are looking for something 
in our world that has to do with a better quality of life. I'm 
a positive person, and I have a vision of a better world, and 
I'm able to articulate that in my music. I have an
audience all over the world. And I think when they hear this 
music, my success will be much larger than anything I 
experienced before."

     It's not impossible for Denver and his keening tenor to 
come back in a big way, of course, but it is hard to imagine, 
as unlikely as, say, Helen Reddy's rising from the ashes to 
displace Madonna on the record charts. If it did happen, of 
course, it could be described only one way: "Far out."
And, yes, the phrase still falls out of Denver's mouth from 
time to time.
     But, at forty-seven, the singer's trademark granny 
glasses and mop-top hairdo are gone, replaced by a somewhat 
earnest expression and the trimmed-down features of a 
middle-aged man who pays attention to his body,
even if he does veer off his macrobiotic diet "whenever a good 
taco walks by." Or, presumably, huevos rancheros.

     But that's not all that's changed. At the height of his 
career in the Seventies, Denver was one of the top five record 
sellers in the history of the music business. His first 
greatest-hits album--there were eventually three--sold in 
excess of ten million copies, and tunes such as Rocky
Mountain High, Take Me Home, Country Roads, and Thank God I'm 
a Country Boy were almost as familiar in Peking as in Peoria. 
Fourteen of his albums were certified Gold and eight Platinum.

     Then, in the mid-to-late Eighties, Denver's career fell 
off with the momentum of a snowball descending Aspen Mountain, 
the victim, he says, of a changing of the guard at RCA 
Records, of the shift in interest of his manager at the time, 
Jerry Weintraub, from music to filmmaking, and of his
own inattention to the egos of radio programmers while he was 
busy serving on President Carter's Commission on World and 
Domestic Hunger.

     ALL of these factors--along with his penchant for being 
the kind of celebrity who spends more time trading jokes with 
Bob Hope than tending to his music--unquestionably contributed 
to his decline. Time spent using his status to further his 
many worthwhile activist and environmental interests
may also have contributed. But even more damaging was the way 
Denver's bouncy, romantic hybrid of folk, country, and pop had 
begun to take a dreary turn toward MOR. And his image as a 
middle-class hippie--a man quick to reveal his astrological 
sign and to hug a tree--made him seem laughably
passe, the very symbol of the most naive and hackneyed 
optimism of the Seventies.

     The upshot was that when Denver handed RCA his "One 
World" album in 1986, forsaking such previous old-fashioned 
country sentiments as Grandma's Feather Bed for the antiwar 
stance of (Let Us Begin) What Are We Making
Weapons For?, the label couldn't quite muster the enthusiasm 
to release it. The news hit Denver like a fist in the face, 
especially since RCA had earlier rejected his "Perhaps Love" 
album, a decision sanctioned, he reports, by his manager, 
Weintraub, whom he says he then fired. (The title
song was ultimately released as a duet with Placido Domingo.) 
RCA eventually released "One World," but the singer says it 
was only because he forced the label's hand. When it came time 
to renew Denver's contract, neither party rushed to the altar, 
and RCA ultimately failed to exercise its option.
     Today, Denver is in the rare but unenviable position of 
knowing what it's like to have been at both the top and the 
bottom of the music-business heap. From the days when his 
popularity was so assured that his records and
television specials earned him a People's Choice award and an 
Entertainer of the Year trophy from the Country Music 
Association (in 1975), he has plummeted to such a level that 
it has taken him five years to get his own label. Windstar 
Records (distributed by American Gramaphone), off the
ground.

     One reason it took so long, he says, is that he intends 
to be "true to my art, my songs. I want success to prove 
myself, and to say 'I told you so' to certain people, 
including Jerry Weintraub. But I'm not going to sell
my soul for it. There's a thing they call the dark night of 
the soul. It's when you begin to question even your faith. 
I've been through that, and I've survived."

     But even with a new album that he controlled every step 
of the way, from the writing to the production, he has, by his 
own admission, met enormous resistance at the radio level, 
especially at country radio, once the backbone of his support. 
Still, Denver steadfastly refuses to alter the
structure or subject matter of his songs to conform to modern 
country standards. ("I was treated rudely in Nashville, and it 
really offended me. I guarantee you," he adds with a 
condescending laugh, "I'm not going to sit down and try to 
write an uptempo love song.")

     Yet he seams genuinely surprised that his current 
issues-laden yet often simpleminded brand of music has 
received only adult contemporary airplay, and little of it at 
that. Of course, many of the songs are staunchly antiwar at a 
time when the nation is engaged in its most aggressive 
flag-waving in decades.

     And what a pity that more of America isn't listening to 
him! Because John Denver born Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., 
the son of an Air Force pilot, believes he could save the 
world, if only we would let him. As a "global citizen," he's 
already been responsible for several of the world's
most important cultural exchanges, he asserts, as his new wife 
and baby arrive at the restaurant and entice him to come 
skiing.

     But Denver, who admits he'd planned on blowing off his 
interview in record time, is now on a roll, and skiing will 
have to wait. People don't realize, he says, that after he 
gave nine concerts in Russia, "the first public performances 
by an American artist in more than seven years,"
President Reagan's Secretary of State, George Shultz, summoned 
him to ask him his impressions of the Soviet Union.

     "I got a pretty big head about this," says Denver, 
getting into the story. "Mr. Shultz said, 'Tell me, young man. 
What would you advise the President and me?' I said, 'Well, 
Mr. Secretary, far be it from me to give you any advice, but I 
think that there are two things of critical importance. First, 
I think we ought to re-establish cultural relations with
the Soviet Union. And second, I think you and the President 
ought to go over there and walk outside of the Kremlin and 
meet the people, because they're just like us.'

     "Of course," he goes on, "the first thing that got 
accomplished when Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan met the 
first time in Geneva was a re-established cultural agreement." 
A beat. "I can't help but feel I had a little bitty part in 
that."

     Denver, who pilots his own Lear jet on his concert tours, 
also claims he was "the primary catalyst for the whole 
Citizens in Space program getting started in this country." 
Indeed, he says, he was scheduled to fly
on the ill-fated Challenger "until President Reagan said he 
was going to send a teacher first."

     He also "had a chance to fly in space with the Soviets" 
in 1989, an opportunity that, for unexplained reasons, never 
materialized, despite Denver's offer of a large amount of 
foreign currency (although not, he says, the $10 million 
reported in the press).

     THAT he didn't get to go into space was obviously a tough 
break, but Denver saw it only as a temporary setback, the same 
way he views his current record career. All of it--his 
ecological goals, his hoped-for space travel, his return to 
the top of the record charts--is just part of his
larger plan. The real question, he says, is what kind of 
contribution can he now make to the world? Or, as he puts it, 
"What kind of role am I going to have in this coming decade?

     "I think there are going to be darker and harder times 
out there," he explains, "and that the world needs a positive 
expression for people to hold onto. From the letters I get, 
people have really felt a great deal of solace in my music. I 
don't want to just entertain people. I want to touch
people."

     Just then, as if on cue, a well-mannered matron stops by 
the table on her way out the door. "We salute you. Keep up 
your good work," she purrs, touching his arm.

     "See?" says the beaming Denver as the woman walks off. 
"That's far out! Because there are cycles in everything. If 
you've been the biggest, the cycle has to shift, and it's a 
very rare thing when you have great, great success and it 
declines and you come back up again. But I'd be
willing to bet it's going to happen with me."

     John Denver takes a sip of his cappuccino and makes a 
sweeping, elegant gesture toward his "new beginning," his 
pretty wife and healthy baby. "Just watch and see," he says, 
smiling broadly. "I'm starting over. Life is really wonderful, 
isn't it?"