COUNTRY ROADS AND CROSSROADS
John Denver's Journey -
Getting Here From There
by Alice Steinbach

Saturday Review
Sept/Oct 1985


     The voice coming at you from deep in the recesses of an 
overstuffed sofa is exactly as you remember it from records 
and TV: sweet, clear, a little reedy and, even in 
conversation, full of musical nuance. It's so familiar, this 
voice of John Denver's, so full of the capacity to evoke 
instant memories of the young, nature-loving singer who shaped 
a whole musical ethos during the seventies, that it comes as a 
surprise to me that while the voice is the same, almost 
everything else about the man has changed.
     Gone are the wire-rimmed granny glasses and long hair 
that identified the old John Denver. And gone is the boyish, 
gee-whiz, "far out" approach to life - an approach, it might 
be added, that earned him a reputation as the "Tom Sawyer of 
Rock."  Gone, too, is the wife he immortalized in one of his 
biggest hit records, "Annie's Song" (John and Annie Denver 
were divorced two years ago after fifteen years of marriage).  
And although not completely gone - more like forgotten - 
Denver's once very high profile, top of the charts career is 
not what it used to be.
     And now for the new John Denver, the on who's been slowly 
- and privately - evolving over the last several years: he 
wears contact lenses, has cut his hair and uses words like 
"catalyst" and "quark" when discussing one of his favorite 
topics - his concern about the nuclear arms race.  And 
although he's unfailingly polite and will answer anything you 
ask him, he also seems a bit more guarded than the man who, 
ten years ago, grabbed the knees and ankles of an interviewer 
in an attempt to get his point across.
     He doesn't smile the famous John Denver smile as often, 
either. (But when he does flash that wide grin, he still looks 
like a kid who's just been told school is out - early).  At 
forty-one, the man who's been known to thank God for making 
him a country boy seems to have learned that you can take the 
boy out of the country and he is busy doing just that. 
(Denver, who made news last year by touring both the Soviet 
Union and China in a sort of personal detente, will be 
returning to both countries again this year at their 
requests).  it doesn't take an interviewer long to discover 
that what we have here is a thoughtful, serious and 
socially-committed man. (Denver co-founded the Hunger Project 
several  years ago and has also worked with the World 
Commission for Hunger).
     But wait. There's yet another change in the man, one that 
is even more surprising. Ready?  Okay, write this down: the 
new John Denver has become one sexy man. Not Tom Sawyer sexy, 
but Richard Gere sexy. This is the image his publicists are 
pushing - along with his latest record, "Dreamland Express" - 
hoping, one supposes, that sex will help his reentry into the 
top 
ten charts and the hearts and minds of a younger audience. 
But, frankly, Denver doesn't need the hype. He can get the job 
done on his own.
     Relaxed, suntanned, dressed in a pastel-striped shirt and 
tan chino pants that taper neatly at the tops of his 
expensive, hand-sewn boots, he's trim and sharp, a man who 
gives of a natural, healthy sensuality that hype can't buy. 
And he shows it off, too, in the new video he's made for his 
latest single, "Don't Close Your Eyes Tonight."  In it, the 
all-American singer has leapfrogged from performing with 
Kermit, Miss Piggy and the rest of the hilarious, but 
definitely wholesome Muppets to displaying some bare skin and 
surprisingly sexy moves.
     "That was a side of myself I was really not comfortable 
showing before" says Denver. "But now...well, I can live with 
it."  There's a long pause as his eyes drift to the window of 
the Manhattan apartment he's borrowed for the interview. Then: 
"You know, I really don't see the change in me as 'old' or 
'new.'  I see it as 'then' and 'now'.  I've gone through a 
bunch of stuff in the last several years, but my heart is 
still the same."  he seems almost wistful when he talks about 
the past. Or maybe he's just tired from his non-stop concert 
tour of nineteen cities, which is almost at an end now.
     Denver sighs and picks up the thought he has left 
dangling in the air: "I guess I believe we live in a very 
superficial world. So because I had a very specific image in 
people's minds - it had to do with this little, naive guy with 
the granny glasses and the long hair - that's how a lot of 
people still look at me.  And they haven't watched the growth 
and changes in my life. I'm a mature man now. And I'm my own 
man now. I think I was about forty years old before I became 
my own man," says Denver, his voice containing an odd 
combination of self-assurance and vulnerability.
     There were, of course, some pretty low points on the road 
to becoming his own man. The breakup of his marriage was one, 
a split that he blames to a great extent on his roadaholic 
concert schedule, one which frequently kept him on the road 
eight months a year. He stretched himself pretty thin, too, he 
admits, in terms of his humanitarian commitments, chiefly his 
interest in solving the problem of world hunger. his non-stop, 
whirlwind lifestyle took its toll, personally and 
professionally.
     "I remember one incident in London," he says hesitantly, 
as if undecided whether to go on with the thought or abandon 
it. But after a long pause he chooses to go with it: "I was in 
London about six years ago doing the Christmas album with the 
Muppets. It was a very important project to me, and then in 
the middle of that project I went down to Rome to attend a 
world conference on agrarian reform, and then back to London 
to work some more. I was really exhausted. And at one point 
during that trip, Annie called me, and when we finished the 
conversation- which was more a fight than a conversation - i 
walked out of my hotel room onto the balcony with the thought 
that I was going to jump off."
     He didn't; instead he picked up his guitar and composed a 
song called "In My Heart."  Denver refers to it as a "killer 
song" and laughs wryly when he recalls some of the words. "It 
says: 'There goes my best friend, there goes my last dime.' It 
helped."
     But while it may have helped him get through the night, 
it didn't help him sustain the marriage. "There was a lot of 
pain going on, a lot of anger between Annie and me," he says, 
recalling that period.  "But time is the ultimate healer and 
our relationship has healed.  Wonderfully."  Annie and his two 
adopted children, Zachary, eleven, and Anna Kate, eight, will 
soon move into a house that is "within walking distance from 
mine."  Now that the wounds are healed, he says, he is ready 
"to look at the possibility of love again."  Right now, he is 
alone. "There is, unfortunately, no special relationship in my 
life. I wish there were."
     Still, despite whatever void exists for Denver 
personally, there is more than enough going on in his 
professional life.  Sometime this fall, after returning from 
his trips to Russia and China - where he hopes to do a live 
broadcast that will air around the world - he will tackle a 
musical project based on the life of American humorist Will 
Rogers. Denver, who will write the lyrics and music, is hoping 
the project will wind up on Broadway with its author playing 
the lead role. "There's nobody in entertainment that I relate 
to more than Will Rogers. He's a hero of mine" says Denver of 
the man who started out as a humorist and eventually became an 
American sage and institution.
     Denver admits that he would like to become a role model 
for young people - in much the same way that Will Rogers was 
for him. In fact, one of the reasons he is trying to 
revitalize his career at this time is to give young men 
another choice when they're looking around for examples to 
emulate in the celebrity culture.  "You know, one of the 
by-products of the women's movement is that men don't know how 
to be men anymore" he says.  There's a pause and then John 
Denver gets visibly angry and impulsively sheds light on 
something that's really bothering him: "And now all of a 
sudden we're being shown that the way to be a man is to be a 
Rambo" he says, referring to the violent character created by 
Sylvester Stallone in the wildly successful movie of the same 
name. "Well, I don't want to be Rambo. It's sickening and it's 
part of this old mind set of 'It's either you or me.' And 
that's what young people see as a hero. i want to make sure 
they have something else to look at," says Denver who, at this 
point, is practically shouting.
     His alternative?  "I think I have the potential to be - 
for a lot of people around the world - a hero. I think I have 
the opportunity to represent another option, another future, 
that has to do with demonstrating to young people what they, 
too, are capable of doing."  Denver says all this is what 
could easily come across, but somehow doesn't, as a 
breathtaking display of arrogance. Maybe that's because he has 
shown he is capable of doing a lot more than singing. After 
all, the man has spent more than a decade, neglecting his 
career in the process, working for solutions to what he calls 
"the obscenity of world hunger."  Long before "We Are The 
World" - and scores of other musicians - jumped on the hunger 
bandwagon, Denver was there, donating money, raising money and 
working on hunger and agrarian reform commissions. (Oddly 
enough, he says, when he asked the "We Are The World" 
organizers if he could be a part of their project, they 
rejected his offer.  "I shed a few tears over that" he says.  
"I would have given anything to be a part of it).
     Denver visited Africa for the first time last year and 
finally saw for himself the devastating effects of hunger. "I 
went to Africa a little bit afraid" he says.  I'd taken a 
stand on Africa that we can end the hunger by the year 2000.  
What I was afraid of was that I was going to see the heart of 
hunger, see the real thing, and that it would dampen my 
enthusiasm, lessen my commitment. I thought the reality of it 
might be so overwhelming that I might lose my perspective that 
it can be ended. But it wasn't. i still believe there is hope 
and that hunger can be wiped out."
     A song "African Sunrise" came out of that trip and here's 
John Denver's recollection of what inspired him to write it:

     "I was sleeping overnight in a village in Burkina Faso 
and a dust storm late at night woke me up. I couldn't get back 
to sleep again - i kept hearing this strange noise. Finally, 
at about five in the morning, I heard a beautiful sound 0 the 
sound of roosters crowing. But this strange noise kept 
interrupting it. Then suddenly I realized it was the sound of 
babies crying, crying from the pain of malnutrition, and i 
knew those babies were probably going to die. And i knew there 
was probably a mother and a father there who could do nothing. 
now, I'm a father and I related to that very, very strongly," 
he says, looking away and swallowing hard.

     It's a long way from Aspen, he is told in response to the 
story.
     "It's a very long way from Aspen" he replies sharply. 
"But it's still part of the same world. And that is my 
message. i want people to look outside of the narrow focus we 
all get caught up in and see that whether you live in Aspen or 
in Africa, underneath we are all the same."