A NEW VERSE TO 'ANNIE'S SONG'
by Bill Husted
Rocky Mountain News
August 10, 1994

     If I told you John Denver took acid, tried to touch the 
sun and attacked his estranged wife's furniture with a 
chainsaw, would you believe me?  What if Denver himself told 
you - would you believe him?  It's all there in Denver's 
unexpected new autobiography, "Take Me Home", advance proofs 
of which are right here on my desk.
     The book, due in November, will shock people who think 
Denver a cherubic cross between a sweet-voiced choirboy and a 
clean-cut soda jerk.  It recounts the birth of megahits like 
"Country Roads" and "Rocky Mountain High", but it also charts 
his weird life in Aspen and his two dismal marriages.
     So what about the Aspen Chainsaw Massacre?  Seems Denver 
was peeved at his estranged wife, Annie, in 1982, after she 
chopped down a stand of shrub oaks outside their house - 
without consulting him.  The response of the muppet-faced 
American icon?
     Denver arrived at Annie's door with a power saw.
     "She thought - she told me later - I had come to kill 
her" Denver explains.
     The Denvers talked in the kitchen, and Annie turned her 
back on John.  Big mistake.  "Before I knew it, I had her up 
on the kitchen counter and my hands were around her throat" 
Denver writes.  "And I stopped.  I had almost lost control, 
but I didn't."
     His Rocky Mountain Highness apologized for strangling 
Annie, then revved up the ol' power saw.
     "Annie had turned into quite a socialite in Aspen.  She 
was the hostess of many famous dinner parties, to which I was 
never invited, being on the road as I was.  But I thought her 
guests should know my work, even if they didn't know me."
     So Denver cut off a corner of the kitchen table.  Then he 
bisected the dining room table.  Then he went into the bedroom 
and shredded the headboard.  "In adolescent triumph, I 
announced that I had done what I had come for, then I left the 
house and drove off."
     Things didn't go much better with second wife, Cassandra.  
Denver says her Aspen friends "strained credulity; they were 
the flightiest, most irresponsible women in town."  And things 
got worse.  "Before our short-lived marriage ended in divorce, 
she managed to make a fool of me from one end of the valley to 
the other, although I must say there is a great tolerance in 
Aspen for the kind of fool I've been."
     "Take Me Home" is filled with other un-Denver-ish 
stories.  Acid trips in '72. Trying to touch the sun. (Same 
year). Adventures in EST.  Then there's the fan who started 
sending Denver all her belongings, beginning with her 
underwear.
     Even cynics will find the book surprisingly candid and 
honest.  Mostly.
     It was the night after Denver's final hearing in his 
divorce from Cassandra that he was arrested for drunken 
driving.  "I feel that I was perfectly in control of my 
faculties, but that's another story."
     Oh God!