JOHN DENVER SINGS A SONG OF HIMSELF

Minneapolis Star
3-6-79
by Jon Bream
MN Star Staff Writer

John Denver has been a very busy man this year.

Usually he spends January at home in Aspen, Colorado with his
family. This year, however, Denver was participating the
Concert for UNICEF in New York, performing for the Chinese
vice premier in Washington, accepting an award as one of the
Junior Chamber of Commerce's 10 outstanding young men of 1979
in Tulsa, attending a meeting of the Presidential Commission
on World Hunger in Denver, hosting the Grammy Awards in
Hollywood and filming his latest television special on the
West Coast.

The show, "John Denver and the Ladies" will be broadcast at
7:30 PM Thursday on KSTP (Channel 5).  Guest stars will
include columnist Erma Bombeck, actresses Valerie Harper and
Cheryl Ladd, model Cheryl Tiegs and singer Tina Turner.
Denver called The Star recently to promote the program, but
instead of focusing on such mundane topics, the conversation
turned into an opportunity for this Rocky Mountain Highness to
pontificate.

Here are excerpts from that conversation.

Q - I can't believe your schedule for the past several weeks.
How do you do it?

A - Ha ha ha. I've got a lot of energy. try to stay in shape
and I like what I'm doing.

Q - What keeps you motivated?

A - Gee, I don't know. It just has to do with who I am and
what I want to do. There's all these things going on and I
find myself in the wonderful position not only to work in ways
I want to work but to be involved in some situations that I
have concern about. I find I have opportunity to act in some
of those areas, and feel I would be negating myself if I
didn't take advantage of that.

Q - I was struck by the concept of your television special. Is
it a conscious attempt to change your image from the
all-American boy to a ladies' man?

A - I don't think so.  A lot of people have asked me if I'm
trying to change my image. What I tell all of them is I didn't
create an image out there.  What I've done from the very
beginning is the music. What we've tried to do on television
is try to be myself.  And what is happening is that you grow
and you change within that growth or it's an expansion of what
people saw earlier.

I'm different now than when I started on television but I'm
still myself. We couldn't do something that is not me.  We
didn't contrive something to put together. I'm not so much a
country boy anymore. I'm a young man now. I'm involved in
things going on around the world, I'm doing a lot more myself
and I think it shows in everything I'm doing.

Q - You started out as a singer-songwriter, evolved into an
entertainer and then into an institution where your image
transcends your music and your work. Do you feel comfortable
with that? After all, some people see you as sort of a guru.

A - My purpose is not to be an institution, an idolized image
or be a guru or anything like that.  And I recognize for some
people, when you get the kind of vast audience that's
available today, that happens.  It gets interesting when
people use your songs in their wedding and use it when their
children are being born. You start to have a real bond with
people. And so I'm aware of that aspect of what is going on
through my music. It pleases me greatly but my purpose is not
to be a guru.

What I want to do is be totally and completely myself and to
give myself to people. It happens to be my own particular
philosophy is that the best that can happen to us in life is
to find out who we really are. So you have a good, strong 
sense 
of who you are that individualizes  you in the framework of 
the universe and really makes you one with the rest of the 
universe. And then, within the framework of that, to make some 
contribution back to life, to serve life around you, to share 
yourself with the rest of life in the planet. That's what's 
available to us in the process of living.

If people find meaning to me being myself, or are able to 
relate to that some way, that's fantastic. I love it when 
there are people who when I sing a song or say something on my 
mind, they say, "That's how I feel."  I think that's 
wonderful. Sometimes I do think I speak for people. And if I'm 
able to do that, I'll be very happy and that I'm making a 
contribution. I want to make that circle complete.

Q - Give me 10 adjectives that describe John Denver.

A - Ha ha ha. Well, that's a dangerous question. Jon, I don't 
know if I can come up with 10. I'm optimistic. I'm committed. 
I'm sincere...I'm concerned...Those are the words in my mind 
right now.

Q - What do you consider your personal strengths and 
weaknesses?

A - I guess the strong ones are the weak ones, too. in some 
areas, I'm very, very disciplined. When it gets to my work and 
things I really care about, I'm able to be disciplined and 
there's no effort involved. Like when I do a tour, even 61 
days and 57 concerts.  I do it. It's easy.

When I get back home, sometimes I should go down to the office 
and handle mail and stuff like that. It's hard for me to do. 
I've never been much of a letter writer.  As correspondence 
increases, I don't respond to that with the kind of discipline 
I find so easy in other areas of my life.

When I'm working at what I like to work at, I'm tireless.  I 
come out to Los Angeles for a week, I run people I work with 
into the ground. Then, when I get home, sometimes I just like 
to lay in bed and maybe at the most read a book, have Annie 
there beside me and have the kids come in.

Q - Do you miss your private life?

A - No, I've got it balanced. It was a problem a few years 
ago. So many other things are coming up like the Presidential 
Commission on world and domestic hunger that and I put into my 
free time. Annie and I have moved through a lot of spaces and 
she understands my commitment to this. She is supportive of 
it. I thought of another word - spiritual. I hesitate to put 
that out there. I say it pointedly because I don't mean 
religious.

Q - What qualities make you successful?

A - I'm honest in expressing myself. I think people are able 
to relate to me very easily. I don't think I'm a threat to 
people. I think they really understand even if they can't 
articulate it, that I'm not trying to get people to look at it 
my way, but that's just how I look at it.  From the point of 
view of allowing them through the particular vision to find 
out how they look at it themselves. Quite often, people find 
they feel the way I do.

Q - But that image of you is there. The all-American boy. Mr. 
Sunshine and Good Vibrations. Mr. Nice Guy.

A - However people read it, it doesn't make any difference to 
me. I wouldn't change what I'm doing or how I'm living for 
anybody to look at it differently. I want to be how I am. 
However, people want to describe what they get out of that or 
their experience of that, that's for them to do. If it's a 
problem for them, it's their problem.

Q - How did you get to know yourself so well?

A - I've always kind of looked inside. I've always noticed how 
I feel. I had a chance to talk to a high school graduating 
class once. I looked back: What would I have liked to have 
most heard from the commencement speaker when I graduated. It 
was something I never heard from anybody. It was this thing 
about being yourself. What happens in your own personal truth 
is always there for you. It's always popping up. See my 
definition of art is that it creates a space for people to see 
themselves. You look at a painting, hear a song, go to a 
movie, see a dance.  In experiencing that, you find out who 
you are.  Then the whole process of life becomes a work of 
art.

Q - What does Minnesota mean to you?

A - Minnesota is a part of my home. I live in Colorado now and 
I consider that the place where I want to get my roots in the 
ground, if you will.  Being raised in the Air Force (his 
father was an officer), we lived all over and I never had a 
place where I could hang my hat, so to speak. For a large part 
of my life, that was kind of a difficulty or frustration.

When I finally got to Colorado, I feel I found my home. At the 
same time, growing has expanded things for me. I find myself 
in a situation where a lot of places feel like home to me. In 
regard to Minnesota, I have family (his in-laws), and friends 
there. I love the people of Minnesota. It's one of my homes, 
if you will. I feel very much like a world citizen, I guess.  
I'm never not at home. The place I hang my hat happens to be 
on the side of a mountain in Colorado.

Q - There were questions raised about the benefit  you did 
here last spring for Wendell Anderson's bid for U.S. Senator.  
First, the billing of the concert as a benefit was not clear; 
it was in the fine print on the ad. Secondly, Anderson 
moderated his views on the Boundary Waters Canoe Area issue. 
You being long recognized as an outspoken environmentalist, 
seemed to be caught in the middle. It seemed Anderson was 
copping out.

A -  I don't think he was copping out. I disagree 
wholeheartedly on what was expounded on in the media about 
Wendy's point of view on the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. I 
think it was misunderstood. In talking with Wendy myself, I 
found I had no argument with what he was doing. I don't have 
any regret in supporting him.

Q - When we last talked, about three years ago,  you said you 
were uncertain about your political aspirations.  How do you 
feel now about pursuing political office?

A - When I finished "Oh God" a couple of years ago, I really 
took a step back as far as the work I was doing. To clear 
myself out, see where I was and find out what I wanted to do 
from there. I had gotten to a place where I feel I 
accomplished more than I ever had dreamed of. All of the 
things I wanted to do in regard to show business and being an 
entertainer I'd pretty much done.

I'm still a young man - I'm 35 - and I have my whole life 
ahead of me. I was innocent at the time about how I felt about 
politics. What I found out was what I really want to do is the 
thing I'm trained for and have had most experience in. I love 
singing for people.  I hope I can do it intelligently and do 
it in a way that is more than just entertainment, but in a way 
that perhaps touches people. And if I can do that, I'll be 
very happy. Right now, the furthest thing from my mind is 
getting involved personally in politics.

Q - Tell me about your performance before the Chinese vice 
premiere.

A - Well, it was very exciting. I especially enjoyed being 
able to go out there, just me and my guitar, to sing a couple 
of songs for him. More than that, I appreciated having the 
opportunity of saying a few things, to take advantage of the 
few Chinese words I knew and to lighten up the evening a 
little bit.

It's been a long time since I got nervous walking onstage. 
Everyone was so nervous and serious before the show backstage 
and I was trying to ease up and all of a sudden I walked 
onstage and realized where I was and what was going on.  I got 
so nervous I forgot a couple of verses of "Matthew."  I felt 
terrible about it, but nobody knew it. What I wanted to do was 
do what I did when I was talking.  The songs took a back seat 
in my mind and I was thinking about what I was going to say 
between songs.

Q - Your new album ("John Denver") struck me as a return to 
basics. The instrumentation is limited and you've even 
included some old rock standards. What prompted the change in  
the music?

A - Most specifically, if there's change in sound there, it 
has to do with the band I have. I was able to get together 
(about 1 1/2 years ago) with people I'd heard about for a long 
time. As we worked together, they opened up a lot more and 
were giving themselves to what I was doing musically and 
admiring me, if you will, and really taking advantage, if you 
will, to inspire me to stretch out a little bit.

When we first started working together, they tried to repeat 
what I had done on record. In other words, they repeated the 
old arrangements. But there was a particular time during the 
tour last spring when all of a sudden the old arrangements 
weren't enough for them and they started making the 
arrangements their own. For the first time, I feel in a sense 
this is a band. To sing in front of them is exhilarating. I 
find it incredibly freeing, if you will.  I'm singing much 
better and more freely than ever before.

Q - Many of the guys in the band at one time played with Elvis 
Presley. Does it feel at all unusual that you inherited his 
band in a sense?

A - No, I didn't make anything out of it.

Q - Did you ever meet Elvis?

A - Yes, once. It thrilled me to death. I'll tell  you a great 
lesson I learned from Elvis. When I was 12, I had chicken pox 
or measles. I was home in bed for a couple of weeks. During 
those two weeks, Elvis was becoming a big thing across the 
country. Somehow the thing I got from him was this thing about 
being yourself.  He wasn't trying to do something new. He 
didn't have some idea like I can come up with something that 
nobody has done before and it's gonna turn everybody around, 
that it's gonna be a whole new thing. That's not the way he 
was looking at it.

What he was doing was in the area of music and the opportunity 
of expression, if  you will, all this stuff happened around 
him. No one had seen anybody sing like that, move like that, 
or give that kind of energy to their music. That's not what he 
was trying to do. That's simply how it was for him.

The thing I learned from him is that if I'm ever gonna be 
anything in this world, I was gonna do it by not copying 
anybody, but being myself. Period. That's a great lesson to 
learn at 12 years old. Part of what killed him in later years, 
I think, he was not able to be himself. He started to live his 
image, if you will.

Q - Earlier, you said you've been listening to Jackson Browne, 
Billy Joel, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Dylan, Fleetwood Mac and some 
others. Does the music you listen to affect your music?

A - I don't know. It's inspiring to me. I want to go and sit 
down and work on my music. But I don't try to emulate them. I 
find that with people I meet.  If I get in one of my lazy 
periods, I meet someone and then I got to go back and do it.

Human beings - we're magnificent creatures. Stuff we do is 
just incredible. If you see somebody working at such a level 
of excellence or of personal commitment and wanting to do 
whatever they do as good as they can possibly do it, God, I 
want to live up to that. I want to do a show as good as it can 
be done. Not copying someone else's show, just doing my music 
on stage. If I'm going out to speak to the American Wheat 
Growers Association, I want to do it as good as it can be done 
and I want to be an inspiration to other people.

Q - How do you want to be remembered?

A - There's no particular way. If they remember me through my 
music, I'd be happy with that. If my friends remember me 
through the kinds of work I've done and way I've been a friend 
to them, that's what I want. If people want to remember me as 
Annie's husband and Zachary's and Anna Kate's father, that 
would be more than enough.




Photo: Close up of John with a grin and granny glasses.  
Caption: "John Denver: Freer than ever."




Copyright 1979, The Minneapolis Star