Playboy Interview (Long!!)

[C Moon]

Here is the Playboy interview.....

"I have a male ego, too, and sometimes I'm tired of being cute, man. But
maybe I'm not sexy; I don't know. What I want to do is communicate, and I do
that best singin' my songs."
"There are nights when you have a shitty audience. . . . And I know I can
give them what they want, even if it's not honest. So you use tricks. My
trick is that I become a little overenthusiastic."
"Critics who write negatively about me work in big cities, on big newspapers
or magazines. I sing about mountains and wilderness, about love and family,
and that's not what those people want to hear."
Early last summer, it was announced that John Denver would play Harrah's in
Lake Tahoe, Nevada, for ten days at the end of August. In the first hour
that the telephone lines were open for reservations, the computer logged
over 10,000 attempted calls. Ordinarily, that would seem an astonishing
piece of data: Harrah's is, after all, a gambling casino, a vast and flashy
monument to what is perhaps the weirdest of all human lusts. And John Denver
is, well--John Denver. One would as soon marry the Pope to a massage parlor
as Harrah's to this sunlit country boy.
Yet all the figures spelling Denver's success are in the same range of
incredibility. He has sold over 100,000,000 record albums, which puts him in
the Beatles/Presley stadium; he has acquired 11 gold LPs, one platinum album
and six gold singles. In 1975, a year in which Denver is said to have had
gross earnings of over $12,000,000, he was, according to the Billboard
magazine year-end listings, the number-one artist in each of the categories
of Pop, Easy Listening, Single and Country Album. Five of his albums were on
the charts simultaneously, 400,000 of his albums were sold on one three-day
weekend and, in that year, Denver sold more records than any other artist in
the world.
It goes on: Denver has made ten sell-out concert tours (he set the Los
Angeles Universal Amphitheater house record by selling out seven days of
concerts in 24 hours); his ABC special "An Evening with John Denver" won an
Emmy in 1975; and that same year, the Country Music Association nominated
him for Entertainer of the Year, Album of the Year, Single, Male Vocalist
and Song. (He won Entertainer of the Year and Song awards.)
Perhaps more than any other performer of the day, Denver inspires two
polarized responses. Adoring legions of fans see in him the apotheosis of
life's positive values: Kids go camping in the Rockies because Denver sings
paeans to nature and the mountains; they turn off water taps when he
espouses ecology; they dive into Werner Erhard's est training as a result of
Denver's buoyant support of that consciousness cult; and the number of
Americans who have incorporated "Farrrrr out" into their working
vocabularies is simply incalculable. His themes are simple and oft repeated:
love, home, friendship, serenity, family, the outdoors. His image is well
scrubbed, with more pearly whites than Farrah, ingenuous, puckish, sweet and
relentlessly joyous. But those very qualities that enchant millions are
precisely the ones that repulse his detractors. The press, in particular,
has pulverized Denver: "Repellent narcissism," "contrived and rigidly
controlled Americana," "Mr. Clean," "plastic Pollyanna," "millionaire
mediocrity," "like a cross between Johnny Appleseed and the Singing Nun." In
the urban circles that set trends, declare fashions and make or break
culture heroes, Denver is so unfashionable as to be beneath serious
discussion.
Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., was born on New Year's Eve of 1943 in
Roswell, New Mexico, the son of a career Air Force colonel. His nomadic
"Army brat" rearing took him to short-lived homes in Arizona, Alabama,
Oklahoma, Japan and Texas. He was a shy child, overwhelmed by his commanding
father, jarred by the periodic uprootings. His leading-solace and his truest
buddy: the guitar given to him by his grandmother when he was 12.
He entered Texas Tech University to study architecture but spent more time
playing in the band and singing country music than studying; so, in the
middle of his junior year, he left school and headed for Los Angeles.
Changing his name to Denver as a symbol of his passion for the mountains, he
worked part time as a draftsman while cutting demos and singing at
hootenannies around the city. Eventually, he was discovered by Randy Sparks
of the New Christy Minstrels and given a job at Ledbetters, Sparks's popular
club near the UCLA campus. His big break came when he auditioned for the
Chad Mitchell Trio, as Mitchell's replacement. He got the job over 250 other
candidates, despite a vicious cold. "He sounded dreadful," Milt Okun, the
trio's record producer and now Denver's album producer, has said. "But I
loved his personality. He was full of life. His voice was not as good as
Chad's, but he lit up the room."
Denver stayed with the highly successful Mitchell Trio for nearly
two-and-one-half years, through the mid-Sixties' folk explosion, learning
professional stagecraft and writing songs. "Leaving on a Jet Plane" was his
first hit, soaring to number one on the charts--but sung by Peter, Paul and
Mary. In 1968, the Mitchell Trio dissolved and Denver went out on his own,
moving to Aspen with his wife, Annie, and working the college-concert
circuits. Slowly, he built a small reputation as an appealing artist and a
nice young man. "I was invited back to every single campus on which I
performed," he says proudly.
Two climactic breakthroughs in Denver's career followed: "Take Me Home,
Country Roads," written in collaboration with Bill and Taffy Danoff, with
Denver's own recording becoming a 1,000,000 seller; and his fortuitous
hookup with brash and brilliant Jerry Weintraub, his manager, his best
friend and the architect of the John Denver phenomenon.
To explore what is behind the phenomenon and especially what is behind this
sunny-faced gamin with the granny glasses and the indefatigable cheeriness,
Playboy sent free-lance journalist Marcia Seligson on a camping trip with
Denver. Seligson reports:
"I've known John slightly for a couple of years through our participation on
the est advisory board, but I've been a fan of his music--or at least his
melodies--since 1973 or so. But, like many of my friends, I distrusted the
image: Nobody can be that adorable or perky, I thought. Also, I've known
enough stars to recognize that you don't get to be the astounding success he
is without having merciless drive, tenacity and probably more than your
share of lunacy. I wanted to poke into those corners of the man, find the
contradictions, the true complexity, his dark side.
"Denver would not allow a reporter access to his Aspen sanctuary; instead,
he suggested a three-day hiking and camping excursion into the Ventana
Wilderness near Big Sur, in California. He picked me up in his single-engine
Cessna, for which he'd just acquired his pilot's license. The entire
trip--and some of the interview--was Nature Boy Meets the Jewish Princess. I
tripped over the tent moorings, he patiently reinstalled them. While I was
besieged by maddening killer gnats, he ignored them in favor of happily
sighting distant hawks and deer on the hillsides.
"There were some moments of extraordinary magic. The first night, after we
set up camp and lit the charcoal for steaks, we sat on the cliff together.
The Big Sur night was windless and balmy, full-mooned; we were enshrouded by
sugar pines, Santa Lucia firs, cedars and the eerily gnarled madroša trees.
The ocean was far below us and the silence was total, engulfing. Denver
picked up a guitar and quietly began to sing, 'He was born in the summer of
his 27th year, Comin' home to a place he'd never been before . . .' and the
mountains echoed with his pure tenor voice, as he sang for an hour, nonstop,
into the silence. "I would love to go to one of my concerts as a member of
the audience. . . . They're that good, that unique. I don't think anybody
does a show like I do. Simple as that."
"Denver's guitar is more than an extension of his body, it is a vital organ.
He sings the way the rest of us talk; that is, he grabs for his guitar when
something needs to come out of him. The second night, the powers that be
laid on a four-star sunset for us. As we watched it, John ran back to his
tent, returned with his guitar, perched on the edge of the cliff and sang
'My Sweet Lady.' his best love song, to the sun, his voice stretching across
the canyons.
"I discovered two things about John: He is precisely his image of the
ebullient unsophisticated lad; and he is considerably more than that. A
deliberate, determined professional, moody and self-questioning, accessible
and yet remote, as if behind gauze, unfailingly kind and energetic. One
afternoon, we went romping on the beach and he quickly disappeared, climbing
a wall of rock. I took a nap on the sand. When I opened my eyes, he was
making his way down the steep face--carrying a bulging carton of empty beer
cans and rubbish that he'd collected at the top. That night, he offered to
sing a few songs on the terrace of the splendid Ventana Inn--the owner is
his friend and had plied us with fine French wine at our campsite. John sat
on a bench in the corner, no stage or lighting, about 75 people listening,
and began to sing at midnight. He did not stop until 2:30 in the morning,
'after I'd sung everything I ever wrote, every request anybody had and every
song I could think of.' It was on this subject--his clear and obvious
passion for singing--that we began our conversations."
PLAYBOY: Few interviews are conducted during a camping trip in Big Sur; and
few subjects start things off by singing for the interviewer, as you did for
us. You seemed to love every minute of it. Is singing as great a high in
your life as it appears to be?
DENVER: Absolutely. Concerts are the most important thing to me. What I want
to do is go out there and sing for people, sit there and be with them. I
tell you, it's a rush, it's that beautiful feeling of being incredibly
alive. And the more people it happens with--I mean, it's powerful. When it's
all working in a concert--when your voice is working and the audience is
with you and the band is cooking--it's absolute magic. God, it's a reason
for living, if you need a reason for living. In fact, I would love to go to
one of my concerts as a member of the audience.
PLAYBOY: Why?
DENVER: There's a certain energy that comes together in those giant arenas
where I've been performing: It starts way outside, in the traffic, and works
its way through the people walking in, finding their seats, beginning to
settle in. There's a buzzing excitement as showtime approaches. Then it
builds and builds, until the headliner comes out, and then there's this
immediate charge, and it's a magical evening.
PLAYBOY: Is that always true of your concerts?
DENVER: Sometimes, not always. Yeah. They're that good, that unique. I don't
think anybody does a show like I do. Simple as that. I said once, long ago,
that I don't just want to entertain people, I want to touch them. And I
rejoice now that I had such clarity about what I wanted to do with my music
and that it's obviously working. You can get to a level of performance where
you just don't do it bad anymore, and I feel that our group, our
organization, is at that level. We don't do a bad show. But there's another
way in which we're unique. Nobody else knows how I want to do a concert, so
I have to take the responsibility for the whole thing, for everything. From
the moment that it's announced until we've left the building, my sound
people are gone and all the bills are paid, I'm responsible. We handle the
ads in the newspapers and on radio to make sure they're done with a little
class, a little style. A lot of concerts are advertised on the page of the
newspaper where they have the raunchy movies. Well, I don't want people to
see me down there. Then the day of the concert, we meet with the parking-lot
attendants, with the ushers, and lots of times I'll go out and sit with
them. I say, "The success of this evening has a great deal to do with what
you do. I want you to know my audience isn't rowdy, they're here to have a
good time and I would like you to do whatever you can to make it a pleasant
evening for them." You see, I want to create a really comfortable and safe
space. I want to create a place where people can be themselves, with other
people being themselves, and we're all there together doing one thing. So I
say, "If you guys can help me do that, then I'll take care of the show end
and I promise you we'll have a magical night." That's the way it works. And
one of the things that we've learned is that people come to my concerts who
have never been to a concert before and don't know where to go or what to
do. So we tell the ushers that there's going to be these people there and to
take care of them.
PLAYBOY: Is all of the necessary? Most artists don't concern themselves with
the parking, do they?
DENVER: No, and it's so easy just not to worry about things in such detail.
But when I take responsibility for what I want done, then the whole evening
gets to be a real experience of me and who I am. You see, the people who
work in those big arenas have mostly had the experience of rock
concerts--the need for security, the rowdiness. So we let them know that
mine is not a rock concert and my audience won't behave rudely. We don't
start an hour late and we don't oversell tickets or any of that stuff that
goes on in rock concerts. The thing about it is that whether I take
responsibility for the entire show or not, the audience holds me
responsible.
PLAYBOY: So you may as well assume it.
DENVER: Sure. When I'm onstage, I know everything that's going on in the
building. I hear hecklers, I see through the walls, I know when a janitor is
unloading some trash outside or taking it downstairs into a hallway. I just
know it. I see it. That is mine, it gets to be my space. Actually, that's
inaccurate. It gets to be a unified space, with everybody there giving
himself to creating the concert. That really pleases me. Generally, when you
have a concert of 18,000 or 20,000 people, at any given time there are 1000
people walking around in the outer corridors, going to the concession stands
and to the rest rooms. I'll bet you at my concerts there's an average of 20
people walking around at a time, that's all. And I see them. I can see the
little holes of light at the entrances to the arena and the ushers and
usherettes are up there, standing and just watching and listening. They
don't have to be taking care of anything else, 'cause there ain't nothin'
else going on; everybody's in his seat enjoying the show and things are
going smoothly. I can't tell you how that pleases me. I did a concert in
Atlanta last year, for about 18,000 people. One review was a knockout; the
man said it was one of the most beautiful evenings he'd ever seen and he
couldn't believe that that huge audience could be so quiet.
PLAYBOY: But isn't it true that over the years, record and concert reviewers
have almost unanimously slammed you?
DENVER: No. I would say that in the big, so-called sophisticated cities--in
New York, Los Angeles and maybe Chicago--that's true. In other places, like
Atlanta, Denver, Cincinnati, sometimes I've gotten very good reviews. In any
given city, if there are two newspapers, my concert will get one good review
and one bad one.
PLAYBOY: Does it really break down into poor reviews in the major urban
centers and better ones in the Midwest and the South?
DENVER: It seems to. A lot of that has to do with what I think I represent
in my music. I'm not a sophisticate, I'm the opposite of Ole Blue Eyes. In
the early Seventies, my success went totally against the grain of what was
going on in popular music. The mainstream of music, which is where the focus
was, was hard rock, both in the industry and with the public. The popularity
of country music that's grown in the past couple of years with Willie Nelson
and Waylon Jennings hadn't started yet and the Sixties folk music was over.
So within that framework of rock music, I came along and had great success
with songs like Take Me Home, Country Roads in 1971. I think the people in
the media wanted to say, "Over here is where it's happening"--meaning in
rock 'n' roll--"even if this guy had a fluke with his record." Rock was what
they applauded and where they uplifted performers and where the hype was
really going on; nobody was paying serious attention to me.
PLAYBOY: But now you are one of the most successful entertainers in the
world and have been for several years; yet the critical scorn continues.
Reviewers aren't taking you any more seriously now than at the beginning of
your career, are they?
DENVER: No. There seems to be a great resistance out there to me, to the
things that I represent, perhaps.
PLAYBOY: What are those things?
DENVER: A celebration of life and a life that is reflected in a rural
setting more than an urban one. Most of the critics who write negatively
about me are people working in big cities, on big newspapers or magazines. I
come in singing about the mountains or the wilderness, about love and
family, and that's not what those people want to hear. All they are really
exposed to is the horrendous stuff they read every day and see on television
news. Sometime I'd like to be a critic; my notion of most critics is that
they couldn't make it in the business themselves, so they started being
critics.
PLAYBOY: That sounds like something said by somebody who gets bad reviews.
DENVER: [Laughing]: Yeah, right.
PLAYBOY: How do reviews affect you?
DENVER: The good ones I take as verbatim, as absolute gospel. The bad ones I
dismiss.
PLAYBOY: Really?
DENVER: No. I've kind of gotten out of the habit of reading reviews, mine or
anyone else's. Every once in a while, I'll see a review in Rolling Stone of
somebody that I really enjoy, so I'll look at it. As far as I'm concerned, I
know what I did on the record or in the concert; I know what was good and
what was bad; I know what I was trying to do and whether I succeeded or not.
PLAYBOY: But isn't the critical dismissal largely because of the image you
convey? The cover of Newsweek portrayed you as a human sunflower and many
people think you come off like a sappy Pollyanna. They tend to disbelieve
you and your "Yippee, isn't this farrrrr out!" approach to life.
DENVER: I'm probably not that nice all the time. I do have periods of what
to me is incredible depression. As high as I can get, I'm capable of being
that low. There are times when I am very sad, times when I'm lonely; there
are times when I'm unhappy and when I feel sorry for myself. What have I got
to feel sorry for myself about? I have everything. But it has nothing to do
with what you've got or where you are. It's the human condition. To run the
gamut of those emotions is a great part of the living experience; I have all
of those things in me and I'm able to communicate them in songs better than
I'm able to reflect them in person, perhaps. I think a lot of my songs
reflect the sadness and show the pain that I feel.
PLAYBOY: What, precisely, are you trying to communicate?
DENVER: My intention in life is to make some kind of contribution to the
world out there. I've learned that the thing that gives me the most
effective opportunity to do that is to be myself. So here's the way I make
my contribution: I have some notions that I feel very strongly about, some
experiences that have worked and always work for me. One of those is being
out someplace like this, camping in Big Sur. This is a quieting, settling,
clarifying experience. Being out in the woods and listening to the wind
blowing in the trees, not listening to telephones ringing constantly and
horns honking and people grabbing you. This is a peaceful place and anyone
who comes here will find that. So I want everybody to know, Hey, this is
something that works for me. Within the realm of my own experience and my
limited knowledge of the earth around me, well, I want to share that with
people.
PLAYBOY: Is it possible you're not communicating all of your complexity and
that that is why so many critics think you're either a simpleton or full of
bullshit?
DENVER: I'm aware that I have this underlying purpose of wanting people to
know, in the midst of this incredibly insane world, with all of the terrors
and problems, that life is worth living. I love life! I love everything
about it. And there comes a point, when I'm incredibly angry or sad, that I
experience that emotion so strongly it gets to be a celebration. It's life,
you see?
PLAYBOY: Well. . . .
DENVER: And even so in that pain or sadness or fear--though there aren't so
very many things I'm afraid of anymore--I get to a certain low point and
what I really experience is, God, I'm alive! How wonderful to feel this way!
How wonderful it is to care so much that your heart is breaking! I'm aware
that throughout all of this pain, what permeates me is this sense of love
and of life. And that's what I want to give and share with people. Anybody I
see or talk to, I'd really like him to fell better afterward; I really
would, and I'm not always able to do that. But it's part of that underlying
thing that is always going on with me. What happens, you see, is that I'll
go out feeling really, really terrible. I'm depressed or Annie and I are
arguing or a mix-up is going on in the business and everything seems out of
control. But somebody comes up to me and says, "How ya doin', John?" And I
say "Great! How are you today?" And all of a sudden, for that moment, with
that person, it is great. Now, why lay all my shit on him?
PLAYBOY: Because you're lying.
DENVER: No, I'm not. That's what I'm trying to say.
PLAYBOY: But if you're not feeling great----
DENVER: I am feeling great! I've just told you that it is great to me to
feel pain. It's great to me to be sad. That's life. A whole lot of people
think, God, I'm sad, I'm miserable, life is not worth living. That's what
we're taught. What I'm trying to say is unhappiness is part of the human
condition and it's always going to be there. Your happiness and success are
not constants, nor are they fixed. It's an ongoing process.
PLAYBOY: All right, but you've said you want to communicate who you are. So
if someone asks, "How are you, John?" and you answer, "Great, far out," then
it's a lie, it's a mask. And so your so-called celebration of life will
strike people as shallow.
DENVER: Let me think about what you're saying. I really want to express to
you that I don't feel it as a lie or as an act. I have constant
opportunities to be with people. I cannot go anywhere and not be recognized;
and I really get to share a great deal of myself. The way I choose to do
that is in my music--that's what does it most effectively for me. I bare my
soul to people in music, I think. But there is all of the stuff of my life
that is constantly going on and I don't want to maintain that level of
communication with everybody all the time. I think that would drive me
crazy.
PLAYBOY: You mean a level of intense self-revelation?
DENVER: Yes. With different people, you bare different levels of yourself.
And there are things that you don't communicate to anybody. Strangers come
up who want to sit down and rap with me. I can't do that. There are some
things that I need to maintain for myself personally. Some things I need to
preserve for my friends. But the first thing that is there for me in every
relationship, in every aspect of living, is this celebration. So even when
I'm down, I realize that's only on the surface. My sense of joy and
aliveness and love is the underlying thing, so deep that it's always right
there. "I'm aware that throughout all of this pain, what permeates me is
this sense of love and of life. And that's what I want to give and share
with people."
PLAYBOY: Has that always been true for you?
DENVER: No; when I was in high school and even before that, I went through
long periods of not speaking to anybody. I would get into depressions and
feeling sorry for myself and just withdraw. I must have been really shitty,
hard on a lot of people who loved me. My parents most specifically, I think.
But I'm glad you asked me that, because maybe that became part of what I am
now. You see, I wanted everyone to know I was hurting and to pat me on the
head. But it never worked.
PLAYBOY: You didn't get what you wanted?
DENVER: No, not that way. I learned that this way works for me and it's also
more honest. It's closer to the truth of who I really am. See, there are
enough people around who are dwelling on the shit in life, enough people
hung up on themselves and the sadness and the screams. I do want you to know
that I'm there, too, but I always get back to the other side; I absolutely
intend to put the positive out there--it's the central core of my being.
PLAYBOY: You mentioned that you were depressed and withdrawn as a child.
Why?
DENVER: Most of it had to do with the fact that I never felt I had a home.
My father was in the Air Force and we were always moving around. Well, not
always, but the longest we ever lived in one place was seven years, in
Tucson. I resented the hardships my parents put me through because my dad
was in the Service, so I really shut myself off from them for a large part
of the time that I lived with them. For example, we moved from Tucson to
Montgomery, Alabama, when I was 13 years old. That was pretty jarring--a
segregated society in the Deep South. I started school a week after
everybody else had started and I didn't know a single person in that town.
That's a pretty insecure place to be when you're only a 13-year-old kid. The
thing that got me through that year, that made friends for me, was my guitar
and my singing. And that was a big lesson in my life; not a turning point
but a kind of focus.
My dad and I didn't get along until maybe two or three years ago. I think
there's something that goes on with the first male child in a family. In our
family, I'm five years older than my brother and there are only two of us.
I've really observed a marked difference between the way I was raised and
the way my brother was raised. For many years, I resented that a great deal.
PLAYBOY: What was the difference?
DENVER: Well, the kind of responsibilities that I had as opposed to the
responsibilities--or lack of them--that my brother had. The disciplines that
I faced that he was never subjected to. So I was bitter toward him and
toward my mom and dad, particularly my dad, about that.
PLAYBOY: How do you feel about your family now? Are you any closer to them?
DENVER: Oh, Jesus, yeah, I love them. I look at my childhood very
differently now. I can see that it was a great experience for me. I lived in
so many different situations, met a whole lot of different people, went
through all kinds of things at a very early age that really prepared me very
well to do what I'm doing now, to be what I want to be in the world. Also,
now, in est terms, I can really take responsibility for shutting myself off
from my family as a kid and not communicating with them. I have such a
profound sense of family now in my life. And a lot of that is because of my
marriage to Annie and having a real home. Annie went to grade school, junior
high school, high school and college in the same town, with the same
people--in St. Peter, Minnesota. She has a real close loving family, real
roots.
At this point in my life, I feel nothing but support from my mom's family
and my dad's and Annie's, and it's incredible for me. But it's only recently
that this feeling has gotten to be a crystal, solid thing that I can rest
on. We did a concert in Oklahoma City last year--my parents' families are
spread around Oklahoma--and I set it up so that all the Deutschendorfs and
all of my mom's family came for a huge family reunion. We played a softball
game and it was fantastic for me. That night, we had a dinner for just
family and the people who were with me on the tour and during dinner, I
stood up to tell them all what family meant to me. And I told everybody that
one of the things that I want to do with my life is to impart that sense of
family to the world around me; that I felt that one of the things that's
really lacking in society today is the sense of family that I have now with
my own.
PLAYBOY: Let's go back to something you said before, about everybody's
wanting to make a contribution to the world. Do you really think that's
true?
DENVER: Yeah. I think everybody--I mean everybody--is in the same situation.
They want to give. But it seems sometimes that practically nobody knows
that. Everything around you is caught up in or supports the notion that you
want to get, you want to have. So that's where people get stuck and then
they're stuck even further because they don't know who they are, so they
don't know what it is that they want to give or do. Now, I'd say that 99
percent of the time it's exactly what they're doing. But they don't know
that: "It can't be what I'm doin'--working in a gas station." I'd like to
let people know that whatever it is they're doing, we need that, we need
that to be done. And they can make an invaluable contribution to the whole
universe by doing those things that they do. Jesus, everybody would have so
much more joy in their lives if they could see that they are, in fact,
providing a service.
PLAYBOY: Do you think that the guy working in the New York subway cleaning
toilets thinks he's making a contribution?
DENVER: Of course not. And that comes from the fact that a whole lot of
people have said that cleaning out toilets is shit.
PLAYBOY: So to speak.
DENVER: [Laughing]: Right.
PLAYBOY: But if you're trapped in an urban ghetto, you don't want to think
about the Rocky Mountains very much. That could make you crazy.
DENVER: It would sure make you unhappy in the ghetto. But I don't think that
anybody's trapped. A lot of stuff out there supports the notion that you're
trapped, but I don't think anybody truly is. I think you can put up a lot of
barriers between yourself and where you'd like to be in the world.
PLAYBOY: That's right out of est. How much did that affect your life?
DENVER: I took the training in Aspen in the summer of 1971. For me, est was
not so much a revealing experience as an acknowledgement of some things that
I had always felt but that nobody else had ever said.
PLAYBOY: Like what?
DENVER: About personal responsibility, I suppose. And about joy and pain
being the same thing, love and hate the same thing; that it all falls within
the spirit of existence. All of those are pieces and what most of us do is
get hung up on the pieces without ever really getting in touch with the
whole context. Somehow, even back then, I was living in the context much
more than in the bits and pieces.
PLAYBOY: Have you ever had any therapy?
DENVER: No. Est was my first adventure like that. Here's something else. I
never knew what meditation was; I never studied formal meditation or T.M.
But what is meditation? It's stilling yourself and looking inside. And I
discovered that I've been meditating since I was eight or nine years old. In
Tucson, there was a place with some really tall, great trees, the only trees
in the neighborhood. I used to climb up as high as I could get in those
trees and just sit there and watch people on the street, watch the traffic
go by, watch the clouds through the leaves, feel the wind. I'd kind of empty
myself and be totally aware of everything that was going on around me but be
absolutely still. Now I do the same thing if I'm in a car or a plane. I slow
myself down and I'm aware of the stewardess going by, conversations around
me, but I'm still and I'm quiet. It's exactly what I've been doing all my
life, but I never knew it was meditation. "We always wanted children, but
I'm sterile. . . . It's one of those things that I always knew, since I was
about 13 years old. It was just a feeling I had."
PLAYBOY: You've been quoted as saying you've had some experiences of
clairvoyance. Is that so?
DENVER: Yeah, I've discovered I have that power and I'd like to develop it.
I had a great experience up in Alaska. I went up there to make a film. I'd
always wanted to go to Alaska and experience that wilderness. Anyway, the
film is basically of me and a couple of bush pilots, and we were getting
ready to start filming in Barrow. But the bush pilots were stuck in a small
town where they'd been fogged in for ten days. When I was told that, I said,
"They'll be in Barrow when we land there tomorrow." Everybody thought I was
crazy, it was so cruddy and foggy out. Well, the pilots landed ten minutes
after we did.
So we started the filming. I wanted to go out over the ice and find a polar
bear to film. The bush pilots were concerned because they were professional
guides and knew they could take people out for two weeks without seeing a
bear. The weather was still lousy. I told them the sun was going to be
shining the next day and we'd find a bear. The next morning, it was still
cruddy. I said, "Look, you guys, why don't we go out and get everything
ready and I bet by that time the sky opens up for us." It cleared up, we
flew out and not only found a bear the first day but were able to find a
place downwind of the bear to land, on the ice, and the bear crossed right
in front of us so we could film it. I tell you, I had a couple of believers
in those pilots after that.
PLAYBOY: What's your explanation for all that?
DENVER: I don't know.
PLAYBOY: You must have a theory about it.
DENVER: All right: I think I run the universe.
PLAYBOY: Care to explain that?
DENVER: I don't want in any way to intimate to people that I separate myself
from them in feeling that way. I think we all run the universe. We sometimes
run it at the expense of others and mostly we run it without knowing or
having any idea of what that means. I don't know precisely what it means,
but I do have a sense that I am responsible, that all of this is my creation
and----
PLAYBOY: Since you run things, would you run these mosquitoes out of our
campsite, please?
DENVER: I don't know if I can do that. If you get down to the nitty-gritty,
it's got to be all bullshit. I can't get rid of the mosquitoes. Maybe I can
get a stronger wind up so we can at least have them get out of our hair and
our faces.
PLAYBOY: So what are you getting at?
DENVER: I don't think it's power or control. I think it is the real sense of
being one with the universe. Perhaps spirituality is the correct word. That
thing that is in all of us and in the universe, and that is what God is.
That's what the Great Spirit is that the Indians talk about, that spark of
life that's not your mind and not your body. I wish I could find exactly the
right words for this.
PLAYBOY: And that's what you meant when you once said "I am God"?
DENVER: Exactly. And it's in all of us and I know that people have
experienced it, but sometimes I guess it's so far out that you think, This
can't be the truth. I think that spirituality took different forms--or
religions--to be able to explain some of these things that people feel. The
Tao says, "The name that can be named is not the name." You can talk about
it until you're blue in the face and that's not it. But there are
legends--the Indian people, in their close communion with nature, gave many
forms to the Great Spirit. Spirits in the wind, spirits in the storm clouds,
and certainly the sun and moon and mother earth were spirits. People have a
sense, I think, of a communion with all that. We can't describe it, so we
lamely try to label it. Religion is a feeble attempt to share this sense of
God.
PLAYBOY: Do you think most people have experienced this kind of oneness or
spirituality?
DENVER: Yes. Everybody has. And damned near everybody will deny it. I tell
you that I know that because I know that our oneness with this spirit is
true. I know that!
PLAYBOY: You called religion a feeble attempt to share a sense of God.
DENVER: Yes. You don't have to go to church to know God, though you don't
necessarily have to stay away. My own experience up to now is that religion
gets between you and any sense of the spirit. It's a barrier between me and
God. When I think of Christianity . . . oh! I can't think of a word that
says for me how many terrible things have been done in the name of
Christianity! Like, "If you don't embrace my form of religion, you're a
heathen." The Christians tried to convert the Eskimos, for instance. When I
was in Alaska, I met some Eskimos and they are a beautiful, spiritual people
. Now, since their conversion, they have problems they've never faced
before. Being with them has opened my eyes to some things about my own son,
Zachary.
PLAYBOY: He's an adopted Indian boy, isn't he?
DENVER: Yes, a quarter Cherokee. When Annie and I adopted him, we talked
about wanting to educate him to his heritage, his culture, where he comes
from. But my desire for that is now deeper than I ever dreamed. His heritage
is a beautiful one, strong and solid and totally in touch with the universe.
I really want him to be able to express that and experience it. I want to
take him to the reservation. I want him to spend time with those people who
are his.
PLAYBOY: You have two children, both adopted. Why did you adopt children?
DENVER: Annie and I wanted children very much, but I'm sterile.
PLAYBOY: Has that been difficult for you to handle?
DENVER: Yes and no. Somehow, it's one of those things that I always knew,
since I was 13 years old. It was just a feeling I had. But I never spoke
about it, though I mentioned my feeling to Annie when we got married. For a
while, we went along not wanting to have children, and then we tried for
about four or five years, but nothing was happening. We went through a bunch
of tests where everybody assumed it was Annie's problem. They always assume
it's the woman's problem, so they checked her out and there's absolutely
nothing wrong with her. It took 15 minutes to find out that I'm sterile. It
wasn't a shock to me at all, but Annie went through a brief period of great
sadness and compassion for me, perhaps for us. On a couple of occasions,
before we adopted Zachary and Anna Kate, I went through some real grief,
deep depressions and feeling sorry for myself, for Annie and me. Then we
started working on the adoption right away, five years ago, and it took some
time.
PLAYBOY: How long have you had the children?
DENVER: Zachary for three years and Anna Kate for almost a year. And they're
our children, there's just no doubt about it. It's a wonderful, marvellous,
beautiful miracle to me--our family.
PLAYBOY: Are you going to adopt more children?
DENVER: Well, we planned one at a time. Annie and I have talked about it and
I guess I would like to have as many children as I can afford.
PLAYBOY: That would be a battalion.
DENVER: But by afford I mean all that I can give myself to and have the time
to be with them. We've talked about seven, but who knows? Yes, I'm positive
that we'll adopt more children.
PLAYBOY: Anna Kate is Japanese?
DENVER: Yes, but she gives French kisses.
PLAYBOY: Why did you pick minority children? Was it because they're more
available for adoption?
DENVER: We just didn't care. When you have a lot of specific requirements,
adoption is harder and takes longer. Our only consideration is that we would
like to have children who are healthy enough--or who can be made healthy
enough, with medical help--to live with us and do the things that we enjoy
doing in the mountains. We're a pretty active, outdoor family and living at
a high altitude has its own things to deal with. We didn't ask for a boy and
we got Zachary; I think we preferred a girl after that and we got Anna Kate.
But we didn't care and it's always a surprise, never what you expect.
PLAYBOY: Did you have any personal obstacles to overcome in their being
minority children?
DENVER: Not at all. We were just watchful and considerate of our parents in
that respect. And they became grandparents immediately, just slipped right
into it. I tell you, I think that children were made for grandparents and
vice versa, and it's a beautiful, joyous thing to observe--the love they
show those two little ones. There's just no question that this is our
family, that it could ever be or was ever meant to be anything other than
exactly the way it is. You know, I have this notion about children choosing
their parents, my whole sense of spirits and how they get together. Those
little souls choose the precise way they want to come into the universe and
who they want to be with.
PLAYBOY: What do you mean?
DENVER: Well, this was first articulated for me in being around Werner
Erhard, the founder of est, and more and more, I observe its truthfulness.
If you allow yourself to see it, it gets to be really obvious, at least to
me. But the point is that it was a miracle for my two little souls to have
made this circuitous trip to be with Annie and me. I'll tell you something.
Three years ago, when we were well into the adoption process, I had a dream
in which men in white robes with surgical masks came and placed in my arms
this little boy-child who was round-eyed and had this marvellous gummy smile
and a kind of overbite. And he grabbed my thumb and it was a completion.
Simple as that. I told Annie about the dream and we laughed, we thought it
was interesting. So the day we picked up Zachary, we were standing in the
hall of the adoption agency when these people came rushing in with this
baby. They put him in my arms and he grabbed my thumb, looked up at me and
smiled. It was the same little boy.
PLAYBOY: Exactly?
DENVER: Exactly. The same face.
PLAYBOY: Was the child announcing himself to you in the dream? Is that how
you interpret it?
DENVER: I don't know. He was born exactly ten days after I had the dream, so
I thought that was far out. With both of our children, from the moment we
started the adoption process, I had this sense of a little spirit out there
that was starting a journey toward us. And every quiet meditative moment,
before a show or at night before I let myself drift off to sleep, I would
talk or pray or communicate with that little spirit out there . . . just
saying to myself, to it, "Well, it's started. We can't wait to be with you.
Your mom and I love you so much. I don't know what you've got to go through
between now and when we finally get together, but whatever it is, I want you
to know that there are two people here who love you very much. And we can't
wait to be with you."
PLAYBOY: Whenever you talk about family, you get choked up and tearful. What
is it that moves you so deeply?
DENVER: I don't know. The thing that I just flashed on was how very precious
they are to me and how seemingly far away I am from them sometimes. I go
through periods, when I'm on the road, of wanting to have my family with me
and I'll get really depressed.
PLAYBOY: Your family doesn't travel with you?
DENVER: Rarely.
PLAYBOY: How much time do you spend at home in Aspen?
DENVER: Last year, it was about four weeks.
PLAYBOY: Recently, in addition to your concerts and television specials and
albums and benefits and club date with Sinatra, you starred in your first
feature, Oh, God! Had you wanted to do a film for a long time?
DENVER: Yes. Four or five years. I've been reading scripts and had movie
offers at least since I've been doing my own specials. I knew what I was
looking for and I didn't want to do it until it was just right and I was
ready and could do it my way. And the one I was most interested in was the
script for Oh, God! I liked the story and I thought I could be that guy. I
liked what God was saying in it and the vehicle He took to say it; I thought
it's exactly what I'm trying to say in my music and what I want to do with
my life. I mean, it's just a lovely story, I think, and it's plausible, I
guess.
PLAYBOY: Was there anything else that you considered doing before Oh, God!
came along?
DENVER: At one point, I had an interview with Sam Peckinpah to be Billy the
Kid, in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the role Kris Kristofferson played.
And I would have loved to do that, a whole different thing for me.
PLAYBOY: You wanted to play Billy the Kid?
DENVER: Yeah. I interviewed for the part, but I didn't get it, because
Peckinpah didn't think I could kill anybody. Which is the truth, but that's
what they thought about Billy the Kid, too. So what does he know? What do I
know?
PLAYBOY: There's a line at the beginning of Oh, God! in which you say to God
something like, "Why did You pick me?" And He says, "I set the world up so
it can work. And you're my messenger." That seemed made to order for you.
DENVER: I will be very frank with you. Yes, I feel that that's my role. I
feel I'm a messenger.
PLAYBOY: The message is that the world can work?
DENVER: Yeah. And I wouldn't say it exactly that way. I guess I'd say that
the earth and the spirit provide us with everything we need. And maybe this
is simplistic, perhaps it's naďve, but I look at those beautiful pictures
that were taken of the earth from the moon and I see this one beautiful blue
orb hanging there in the blackness of space--one planet Earth. And I see, in
that sphere, that globe, everything that everybody needs to live a full and
productive and happy, healthy life. We've got everything we need.
PLAYBOY: Going back to the movie, did you ever take acting lessons?
DENVER: Not really. A fantastic guy named Jeff Corey worked with me during
the shooting of Oh, God! What he showed me allowed me to take some tools
that I already had in performing and use them effectively.
PLAYBOY: You've never had any voice lessons, either, have you?
DENVER: No. So, hopefully, I shouldn't have too many acting lessons. I think
if I had real serious vocal training, the way you train someone who's going
to do opera, I would change my voice, and not for the better.
PLAYBOY: Do you ever find yourself acting onstage, during a concert?
DENVER: Oh, yeah. And I have a lot of conflict about that, but I think it
happens with a lot of performers. I want to be honest with the audience, OK?
Also, I recognize that I have a certain responsibility to entertain them.
Sometimes there are nights when you have a shitty audience; some nights
nobody can get in tune and play together. And some nights it's just simply
not cooking, you can't get it there. And I know I can give them what they
want, even if for that moment it's not honest. So you use tricks. My trick
is that I become a little overenthusiastic. More enthusiastic than I'm
really feeling. I think, if I can kick it off a little bit, I might get a
spark out of the guys in the band or somebody out there or myself and the
spark will spread.
PLAYBOY: What are your particular gimmicks?
DENVER: Saying "Farrrrr out" is one. After the first Tonight Show that I
did, it became my trademark, because I guess I said it so many times.
PLAYBOY: So you can always drop a "Far out" on the crowd and it will get a
big response?
DENVER: Yes. But it's a tool, which I think is a better word than gimmick.
Sometimes I use it consciously. Sometimes I use it unconsciously. I'd like
not to fall back on those little tricks, because it seems to me like a mask,
a kind of lie. It's rare these days that I have to fall back on that kind of
stuff. You know, we do good shows, I've got one hell of a band. And when
you've got 20,000 people who have been waiting a month to see you, they're
excited. I very rarely face a situation anymore where I have an audience
that's kind of dead on its fannies. But if things are going wrong in the
show--a little sound problem, a buzz here, losing a mike there, the mix
feedback--I might get off track, and then I'll start using the tools.
PLAYBOY: Would you give us an example?
DENVER: Yeah, during that same concert in Atlanta that I told you about--the
one that got such a great review--I was really distracted and off. Someone
broke in backstage two or three times before the concert and was really
hassling me. I hate that feeling of everything not being entirely in
control, and this guy was trying to get to me. That kind of disruption is
unusual. I don't have much stuff like that going on in my life, I'm not a
threat to people, I've got nothing to push on anybody. So it made me really
uncomfortable and I recognized that during the course of the show, I felt as
if I were on automatic and that all of my attention were really on
everything else that was going on in the building, everything that I could
notice. So, from time to time, I'd use those trusty tools that always get a
response.
PLAYBOY: In this interview, you don't seem to have said "Far out."
DENVER: You haven't been listening. It's a quieter thing, I guess, when it's
real and spontaneous. Yesterday, I remember when we saw that hawk while we
were walking, I pointed it out to you. Far out! I noticed the expression
popping out. But onstage . . . I don't know, maybe overenthusiastic isn't
the right word. Maybe it's cute. People think of me as cute.
PLAYBOY: Do you like that?
DENVER: I always wanted to be . . . [in a deep voice] sexy! It drives me
crazy when somebody says, "Oh, you're so cute." But it's effective.
PLAYBOY: It's been said of you that one of the reasons for your great
popularity with all age groups is your lack of sexuality onstage, that
people feel safe with you and feel that their children are safe with you.
What do you think?
DENVER: I'm aware that with most performers who've had great success at the
levels that I have, sex has had a lot to do with it. Tom Jones, Elvis
Presley, Neil Diamond. The kind of frenzy at their concerts comes out of
that, but it's not inherently in their music, it's more the way they
maneuver onstage. I doubt that Tom Jones moves around the recording studio
like he does onstage. And I think that kind of sex is ego, not what the
music is really about. Neil Diamond, for instance. He's written some
beautiful songs. I think Beautiful Noise, his last album, is one of the best
albums I've ever heard. And I can't stand Neil onstage. I turned off his
television show because of the way he presents himself onstage, which is not
where I think the music is coming from.
PLAYBOY: Did you dislike Presley's performances?
DENVER: Oh, I was a great fan of his. He turned the world around and
exemplified what rock 'n' roll was for most people. But Elvis, the original
Elvis, was a singer, and if you're a singer, you've got to sing songs. And
it got to the point, especially after he got back from the Army, where he
didn't get to sing songs anymore. All those costumes and that posturing--he
lost the opportunity to do what he was really meant to do. I remember seeing
a tape of his concert in Hawaii and he didn't sing one entire song--two
verses of Hound Dog and that was it.
PLAYBOY: You know Colonel Tom Parker, don't you?
DENVER: Yeah, I love the colonel. I got a telegram from him on a recent
opening night that was signed, "Love, Elvis and the Colonel." He always
signed telegrams like that.
PLAYBOY: That was after Elvis died, though, wasn't it?
DENVER: Yeah. Just the other day.
PLAYBOY: What about Sinatra, with whom you've worked. What do you think of
him onstage?
DENVER: Mr. Sinatra's success has something to do with his sexuality, but
it's different from those other guys'. Whatever he does onstage is totally
aligned with what's going on in the music. Regardless of how he moves,
everything is overshadowed for me by the quality of his performance. I just
see that a lot of women go crazy over Ole Blue Eyes. And I don't see that at
my concerts. You don't see frenzied fans at my concerts, people running up
to tear my clothes off. I don't have a sweaty handkerchief to throw to them.
And I'm the only one I know who draws the kind of numbers that I do without
that.
PLAYBOY: But you want to be sexy and not cute, you say.
DENVER: Listen, I have a male ego, too, and sometimes I'm tired of being
cute, man. But maybe I'm not sexy; I don't know. What it really gets down to
is that it doesn't make much difference to me. What I want to do is
communicate, and I do that best singin' my songs. I don't choreograph my
movements.
PLAYBOY: But don't you think sexuality is a natural part of many singers'
performances, like Sinatra's?
DENVER: Absolutely. What he has, what Lena Horne has is definitely
sexuality. What Tom Jones and Mick Jagger have is just sex. And those are
two different things to me. The difference is between naturalness and
contrivance.
PLAYBOY: Incidentally, why do you refer to Sinatra as Mr. Sinatra?
DENVER: Well, in show business, people really want to appear chummy with
somebody who's a great success. One of the things I abhor is--take Sammy
Davis Jr., for instance. A great entertainer, but there are some things
about him that rub me the wrong way. Whenever he's on the Johnny Carson
show, he calls him John, even though he goes by the name Johnny, we all know
that. It's like a little plug. As for me, I don't know Mr. Sinatra. I've
worked with him a few times and we've spent a minimum amount of time outside
of rehearsing for our shows, so I don't feel I know him. He is an elder to
me, someone I respect incredibly.
PLAYBOY: The pairing of the two of you on one bill struck a lot of people as
odd.
DENVER: Yeah. Once, I walked out onstage while he was on. He had called for
a glass of booze and I surprised him by walking onstage--with a glass of
milk. He broke up and the audience loved it, too.
PLAYBOY: You once said you had a very modest self-appraisal as far as your
singing and composing were concerned. Do you still feel that way?
DENVER: I'm getting to be a better singer, I think. I think that my voice is
maturing and I'm also learning what to do with it. I think I'm getting to be
a better songwriter as I learn to express myself from a more intelligent or
mature viewpoint. I'm not a great guitar player. For instance, I really
admire Paul Simon for the imagination he has and the dedication in his
learning classical guitar, which I understand he studied extensively. It
really expanded his playing. I don't have such a variety of range, of
expression.
But what I think I do is communicate. My songs seem to touch people and I
have a very definitive style. When you hear one of my songs, there's no
doubt who that is; it doesn't sound like anybody else. In some cases,
there's a just criticism that many of my songs sound alike. The guy who said
all Denver songs start sounding the same had some legitimacy, and I believe
that's a fault of my not playing the guitar better.
PLAYBOY: Which of your songs do you particularly like?
DENVER: Calypso is a great piece of music, a great lyric and melody. The
chorus is inspiring. You know, when you hear a whole bunch of people singing
that, it lifts you right up off your seat. Annie's Song is a simple song
that I think is beautiful and majestic. I think Rocky Mountain High is a
real good song, Poems, Prayers and Promises, Back Home Again--man, my own
songs are my favorite pieces of music!
PLAYBOY: How about your lyrics?
DENVER: I think I write lovely, expressive poetry. In a way that doesn't
lose people in its imagery but is easily understood and related to by
everybody.
PLAYBOY: What do you see as your failings as a musician?
DENVER: Most specifically, my guitar playing. And my musical knowledge. I'd
like to learn to play the piano, then I think I'd start writing some very
different kinds of songs. But my own inadequacy in this area doesn't seem to
be getting between me and accomplishing what I want, sharing with people
through my music.
PLAYBOY: And you don't feel inadequate as a lyricist?
DENVER: Nope. I think I write some nice lyrics. They're my favorite songs.
Obviously, you don't agree, right?
PLAYBOY: Right. Nice melodies but sometimes awkward silly lyrics, in our
opinion. The new song that you sang for us last night has a terrible line,
about "quiet stillness." It's redundant.
DENVER: No, it's not. There are a couple of lines in that song that send
tremors through me. What I like about my lyrics is that I paint a specific
picture so clearly that you can see whatever you want to see in it. So, in
this song, I'm in a jet plane over the mountains. The line you're talking
about goes, "There are pathways winding below me and pleasure I've gone
where they go / In their quiet stillness I can hear symphonies, the
loveliest music I know." That's a contradiction there: "Quiet stillness I
can hear symphonies." Quiet stillness is more than just stillness and more
than just quiet. That's about all I can tell you about it.
PLAYBOY: It's the sort of thing for which the critics will jump on you.
DENVER: That's OK. No problem at all with me. I tell you, I have no problem
with my songs, whether people like them or not. I couldn't care less. And I
love it when they like them and it hurts me when they're torn apart. But the
song is finished, and that's it. I really have an experience of not owning
any of those songs. From the moment it's finished, it's no longer my song.
It's your song.
PLAYBOY: Are you ever tempted to go back and change a word here and there,
even a few years later?
DENVER: No. The song does not belong to me, I don't feel ownership of it.
The closest I get to feeling I own it is when I see the sheet music with my
name on it and when I get royalties from it. Like last night, when somebody
requested Leaving on a Jet Plane, I found myself surprised.
PLAYBOY: You mean you had forgotten that song?
DENVER: No; but I don't think about it and I know I have some connection
with that song. It's like your reminding me of The Last Thing on My Mind.
That's definitely my song. But Tom Paxton wrote that song. Well, Leaving on
a Jet Plane, that's my song. Oh, John Denver wrote that; oh, I know that
song. Well, far out.
PLAYBOY: And you see only a slight difference between those two?
DENVER: Yeah, I think it's great.
PLAYBOY: Are you saying that there is a kind of universal pool of music out
there?
DENVER: Absolutely! That's it!
PLAYBOY: And some of it happened to have come through John Denver?
DENVER: It's not just the music, either! There's a universal pool of truth
out there. Sometimes you write it down. Sometimes Werner says it. Sometimes
Dick, Gregory gets a laugh with it. Sometimes the Beatles sing it. Sometimes
I say it. It's as simple as that.
PLAYBOY: We don't feel that we wrote Hamlet.
DENVER: I did! And I could do it again. You know, when I struggle to write a
song. I can't do it. The song comes when it wants to come and I've got
practically nothing to do with it, the most I can do is get myself in a
space to let it come.
PLAYBOY: Can you give us an example of a song that was born that way?
DENVER: Sure. I was walking on the deck of the Calypso [Cousteau's boat] the
day I met Captain Jacques Cousteau, and suddenly the chorus of Calypso came
to me. It didn't have music yet: "The places you've been to, / The things
that you've shown us, / I sing to your spirit . . ." I heard it and said,
"What was that? I've got to go write that down." That was literally how the
words came. Then, for months, I struggled to write the verses to that
chorus, verses that had to be totally different from the chorus, because I
wanted them to sound classical, while the chorus is a sea chantey. So I was
getting totally frustrated because I could not finish the song and nothing
would come. I wanted to use it in my television special that was coming up,
I wanted to put it on the album I was preparing, and I didn't think I was
going to get it. Finally, one day I let go of it. "I can't do anything
else," I told myself. "I'm wasting my time here." I let go and I went
skiing. I made about two runs and I had the urge to write; I didn't need to
ski anymore. I thought, I'll go home and start working on that damn song
some more, so I got into my jeep and started for home. All of a sudden, I
found myself sitting there behind the wheel, singing, "To sail on a dream on
a crystal-clear ocean, / To ride on the crest of the wild raging storm, / To
work in the service of life and the living, / In search of the answers to
questions unknown / To be part of the movement and part of the growing /
Part of beginning to understand. . . ." Man, I was tearing in that jeep,
down the mountain and over to my house, so I could get that down on paper.
No, there's nobody who could convince me that I did that.
PLAYBOY: Did you have the melody, too, or just the words?
DENVER: By the time I got home and sat down with my guitar, the chords were
there, the melody was there. It was all there. Boy, I just love it, whoever
wrote that song. It's one of my favorites to sing. You can totally give
yourself with that song. It's a joyous, celebrative song. And I love it that
I happen to be the guy to get to put the words down and I especially love it
that I'm the guy who gets to sing it whenever I feel like it. Thrills me.
But I didn't do it, and I did it. I want to take full responsibility for
doing it and I take a lot of pride in that song, but I didn't do it. It was
given to me.
PLAYBOY: You are nominated for awards in many categories--country, pop,
middle of the road, folk. In which division do you primarily see yourself?
DENVER: I think that I do things in all those areas. Except, I guess, that
I'm not really rock or jazz. But pop, middle of the road, country, folk--all
of those.
PLAYBOY: Who are and were your own musical heroes and influences?
DENVER: Elvis Presley was the first. Not a hero, but he was the first to do
a really new kind of music that communicated to a mass of my peers. His
early stuff. After that, it was Bobby Rydell, Paul Anka, all of those
people. I listened to their songs and sang them, but none of them was a real
influence on me. Then, when folk music started happening--the Kingston
Trio--a lot of artists were really influential to me. Judy Collins more than
Joan Baez; Tom Paxton was a big influence on me. Someday, I want to do an
album of Tom Paxton songs. I enjoyed the New Christy Minstrels--Randy Sparks
gave me my first work as a singer, in a club in L.A. called Ledbetters.
Later, when I joined the Mitchell Trio, Phil Ochs, Peter, Paul and Mary were
very important. And the Beatles, of course, I always loved them. I don't
know who is affecting me now, but of those I listen to, I think Stevie
Wonder is the best.
PLAYBOY: Why?
DENVER: There is such passion and such life in his music. He's so incredibly
musical, a great singer. And I think that we're doing the same thing. We
come from two points of view and two experiences in the world, and that's
reflected in what we do, but I feel that we're right in alignment.
PLAYBOY: Who else?
DENVER: I thought Harry Nilsson was a great singer; a few of his albums are
some of the best things I've ever heard. Lately, I've gotten into Willie
Nelson, I like to listen to Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, Fleetwood
Mac. I enjoy The Eagles' Hotel California album. And James Taylor's always
been one of my favorites.
PLAYBOY: How about Carly Simon?
DENVER: Annie's a big fan of hers. She doesn't do much for me. I think
Kristofferson is a brilliant lyricist and I really enjoy his songs, not very
often by him.
PLAYBOY: You've been very active and vocal in various social causes in the
past few years, but you've been criticized for not taking a political stand
at a time when many folk singers did. Is that accurate?
DENVER: No, it's not true. I don't know if you remember it or not, but one
of my cherished memories is of standing on the steps of the Capitol in front
of a half million people, singing Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream. That
was in 1968, I think. It was lovely to me because it was before anything was
really happening in my career. I was there with Peter, Paul and Mary, Phil
Ochs and Pete Seeger. There were about three marches in Washington and I was
at all of them. And there has been a constant growth since my days with the
Mitchell Trio. The political satire that they did really opened me up.
Jesus, at the beginning, people would have to explain to me why a line was
funny, why everybody was laughing. I think I'm getting more intelligent and
disciplined about supporting a candidate or defending a specific issue or
taking a stand on something.
PLAYBOY: What are your essential social concerns right now?
DENVER: My foremost concern is with nuclear power. The time and energy, the
money, the proliferation of nuclear materials in the world today is the most
frightening thing in the universe for me. It says that the world isn't
working, that there are a vast number of people who don't want it to work,
who have no sense of oneness with other peoples or with life. It terrifies
me.
PLAYBOY: Are you talking about a specific group?
DENVER: Yes. The terrorists. Any of them, all of them. I feel it's a
realistic and pragmatic view to look at the fact that given the opportunity,
a terrorist organization is going to use a nuclear bomb one of these days. I
hope to God it doesn't happen, but it's certainly going to be threatened,
whether they have the bomb or not. So the more nuclear material that is
floating around, the more opportunity they have to get hold of some of those
weapons. And they're going to do it.
PLAYBOY: But isn't the issue larger than that?
DENVER: Yes. The issue is our commitment to continued development of nuclear
stockpiles, both as weaponry and as fuel for nuclear reactors. I used to
have a real sense of doom about it. I don't so much anymore, but I think
we're living in perilous times. Unfortunately, we have a society that really
doesn't care. Beyond what touches them and their own personal lives, people
don't care. They hear and see what's going on with the energy crisis, they
go through a winter like the last one, a summer like we've just had, and
they still waste fuel and waste water and waste time and don't start finding
out about some of the alternatives. People can look at an issue that has the
far-reaching impact of nuclear power and not take it upon themselves to
educate themselves so that they can cast their votes intelligently. And then
we have some who don't even take the time to cast their vote. I tell you, I
am embarrassed for our people in that respect.
PLAYBOY: Is that why the attempt to promote nuclear safeguards has been
unsuccessful?
DENVER: Partly. People are easily swayed. I had an argument with somebody
who claimed that people opted for personal convenience now instead of
thinking of their children and the future. And I disagreed with that. My
sense of what happened--and this was one of the things that I went to
Washington about, to talk to Energy Secretary Schlesinger in regard to the
energy program--is that the power companies have all the money in the world.
And what they were able to do in regard to the nuclear-safeguards
propositions that were up in seven states last year was to spend a great
deal of money, making very professional and very visible commercials in
support of their position. And the other side, the side that I support, was
pretty much a grassroots movement, of people whose jobs didn't depend on it
but who had some sense of the dangers. We ended up spending one fifth to one
half as much as the power companies spent. And we lost in all seven states.
PLAYBOY: What did you do?
DENVER: I sang in six of the seven states, gave concerts to raise money, and
I did some commercials for television and radio in support of the
nuclear-safeguards propositions. I also contributed $100,000. And it's been
one of my great disappointments.
PLAYBOY: Do you talk about nuclear power in your concerts?
DENVER: No. I refuse to politicize my concerts. If I'm lucky, I'll get the
song done that I'm writing about nuclear power. And the song will say it. I
learned a valuable lesson from my experience with Captain Cousteau and
something called Involvement Day that he's been putting together for the
past few years. They've had five of them now and I went to the last one in
Boston. They go to an area and get all the environmental groups together.
They have speakers and debates, an incredible display of solar-energy
devices. In Boston, Barry Commoner spoke, a debate on nuclear power was held
with two of the top guys on each side. In the evening, Pete Seeger, Don
McLean and I gave a concert. Now, have I described an event? Something you'd
want to attend? Yeah. Well, they had fewer than 5000 people in the whole
course of the day. Now, I can go to Boston and sell out 30,000 seats at
seven dollars to twelve dollars a seat for a concert. But my being there
with Captain Cousteau and an Involvement Day to talk about nuclear power
couldn't draw diddly squat. Couldn't do it. What I'm forced to look at is
what people want from me. I don't think they want to hear me talk about
nuclear power. Or hunger or the wilderness. They want to hear me sing those
songs. They come to hear me sing and make them feel good or whatever it is
that I do for them.
You see some interesting examples of what can happen. Shirley MacLaine for a
long time really got into politics. She went to China, did a film, was very
vocal. You know what she's doing now? She's back on the road performing,
doing Las Vegas. Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, the same thing. If you take a look
at anybody who was successful as a performer and who got involved in
politics in a way that shifted his focus, you will find out that he lost his
audience, to some degree, and in doing so, lost his potential effectiveness.
PLAYBOY: Those people you mentioned--Fonda, Baez, MacLaine--did affect
political change, even if their careers suffered. Don't you think it's
chickenshit to say, "I'll do it through a song, because people don't want
politics from me"?
DENVER: Well . . . let's talk about that a little bit. People keep telling
me, "John, you can't start putting your focus entirely on those concerns,
because if you do, you'll lose your effectiveness. If you want to do
something in the world, you've got to keep singing." And I say, "If I gotta
keep singing to do something, when am I going to get to do it? And when is
the time more necessary than now?" And they can't answer that. And I can't
really answer it yet. It doesn't seem like it has a solution. But I do think
that I can be most effective by sustaining my position, by continuing to
sing and do concerts and television and albums, so that I have the access to
powerful people and can make myself heard. You know, I can sit down and call
anybody in the country. I can have a meeting with Dr. Schlesinger and give
him a couple of ideas and he might even buy one of them. I can go to
Australia and do the same thing over there, do it in Europe; if I'm lucky,
one of these days I'm going to go to Russia and China. And the first thing
that I'll do when I get there is sing Rocky Mountain High.
When I went to Japan and sang for an audience of 20,000 people, two thirds
of whom did not speak or understand English, they sang every song with me,
word for word. Now, they have never been to the Rockies. But somehow the
song works for them, too. That's a powerful tool; it's not to be abused;
it's not to be taken lightly. So if I can lend my voice to these trees and
these mountains, this ocean and this planet, I will do that. I know that I
can make an incredible political statement with a song. I feel that I had a
great deal to do with stopping the Winter Olympics in Colorado in 1972.
PLAYBOY: With a song?
DENVER: Yes. Rocky Mountain High. They wanted to have the Olympics in
Denver. There was a lot of crookedness and misinformation being passed
on--promising the Olympics committee that we had the facilities already
built, that we would definitely have snow there, and so forth. The people of
Colorado did not want it, didn't want to raise $200,000,000 or whatever it
was, didn't want all the building, tearing up the mountains around Denver
for a ski jump. Now, that's what the verse in Rocky Mountain High refers to.
"Now his life is full of wonder--but his heart still knows some fear--/ Of a
simple thing he cannot comprehend. /Why they try to tear the mountains down
to bring in a couple more--more people--more scars upon the land."
PLAYBOY: And it was after that that it was decided not to hold the Olympics
in Denver?
DENVER: Yes.
PLAYBOY: You've said that your heroes were Jacques Cousteau, Werner Erhard
and Dick Gregory. What do they have in common?
DENVER: First of all, they're not heroes. I don't have any heroes. What I do
have is a sense of some people I would like to live up to. They are so real
and human, so willing to share themselves that they are an inspiration to
me. Among them, and certainly at the very high end of it, are Captain
Cousteau, Werner and Dick. They all have something to offer and a total
commitment to make a contribution to the world, to the quality of life. It's
exactly that. I would also like to say, knowing me better than anybody knows
me, that if I were not me, I would have my name on that list.
PLAYBOY: That's pretty modest of you. Why?
DENVER: I have to tell you my definition of art. It's that which allows a
person to see himself. You listen to a piece of music that touches you and
you see yourself. That's what I can give to people, that's what I'm trying
to do in my music. So I just took that thought a little bit further and
said, That's what I want to do with my life. I would like my life to be a
work of art--so true a reflection of my experience of myself and the
universe around me that any time anybody comes in contact with me, he has,
perhaps, a clearer sense of himself.
PLAYBOY: On to another subject. Last year, there was an uproar about your
telling the press you smoke dope. What was that about?
DENVER: It was in Australia. All the things you hear about the Australian
press are true. It's a yellow press, really out to get you. I was doing a
concert tour there and a reporter asked me if I smoked dope. I said yes, I
do. And all of a sudden, there was a gigantic furore. I got thousands of
letters, some of them totally disappointed, some totally supportive, saying,
"Glad you're finally coming out and saying it," "Glad to hear it," "Way to
go." And some who didn't care.
PLAYBOY: How did you handle the mail?
DENVER: I sent a little letter to everybody that said that I sincerely hoped
that whatever they'd heard or read or were told about me, they wouldn't let
it get in the way of whatever value my music might have for them. You know,
I regret my remark now; it was unthinking. I know a lot of people look up to
me or use me as an example in some ways. If John Denver smokes dope, it must
be all right. Some little kid might be thinking that, you see, some young
kid. And, just like alcohol, I believe marijuana should be handled
responsibly, or like driving a car, and kids shouldn't get involved with any
of them until they can handle them. So I don't want to condone smoking dope.
I'll tell you my single greatest fear. You know I'm stupid sometimes. As
much as I try to stay healthy and keep myself together, I sometimes do
unthinking things and I'm afraid someday I'll do something that will turn
people off the music.
PLAYBOY: What do you imagine that might be?
DENVER: I have no idea and as we speak, I'm not really sure if that could
happen. I can see them getting really angry, disappointed or upset with me,
but the music is always going to work. On the other hand, young people are
very impressionable and need heroes to look up to. I know I felt that way
about President Kennedy. And now all of the nonsense comes out, years after
his death, about his affairs. If I had heard that back then, it would have
been such a shocking revelation to me, it would have destroyed my feeling
for him. Because the one person who meant something to me turns out to be
just like everybody else, see? People put you on a pedestal or set you
apart, and then when it hits them in the face that, in fact, you really are
just like everyone else, certainly it causes you to diminish in their eyes,
and then maybe it causes the music to diminish.
PLAYBOY: We'd like to ask you about Annie and your marriage. You speak about
her frequently in your concerts and, of course, Annie's Song is one of your
best-known. How old were you when you met Annie?
DENVER: I was 22.
PLAYBOY: Was she your first love?
DENVER: No. I've had, I guess, three loves in my life. One when I was in
high school in Fort Worth, if you can call that love. Then, when I started
travelling and singing, I met a girl named Bobbie Worgo, who lived in
Arizona. For about a year and a half, I would go to be with her when I had
free time. I wrote a song called For Bobbie for her, the one that starts,
"I'll walk in the rain by your side. . . ." Then we grew apart and I met
Annie.
PLAYBOY: You have a pretty traditional view of men's and women's roles and
of marriage and family, it seems. At least your songs suggest you do.
DENVER: I suppose so. I do think the epitome of manhood is being a father
and the epitome of womanhood is being a mother. But in no way does that
intimate that I think any less of the woman who's not a mother but has a
career and is making a contribution in that way. But maybe I do have a
traditionalist sense about that. I never thought of it that way. My whole
sense of Annie is that she wants to be a mother.
PLAYBOY: Then what about you? It seems to us you're pulled between the
family and the world outside your family.
DENVER: Absolutely. You've hit the nail on the head. The constant joy to me
of seeing Annie with our children--her womanliness, her being a mother--God!
But I am a complex person. Annie doesn't fill every space for me, nor I for
her. Many people don't face up to that and can't live with it, so it ruins
their lives. I'm not willing to let that happen, so I'll be straightforward
about it. And Annie knows about my drive to sing. I cannot give that up. I
cannot. I would cheat myself, my family, everybody I love. I would take
something away from all of them. Annie doesn't like very much of the life I
lead. That's one of the differences in us. And yet there are aspects of my
life that she really enjoys and wants to take advantage of. If I go
somewhere she would like to go or where we have mutual friends and she and I
have a chance for some time together, she might come along. And certainly
she can bring the kids, or not, as she wants. But, as I told you, I was home
last year for a total of four weeks. That's terrible.
PLAYBOY: That's crazy.
DENVER: It is crazy. And for the first time in many years, I was getting
unsure, insecure, everything was pulling in a different direction and there
was no alignment in my life. There were so many pulls that each aspect was
suffering. I always thought that I had the power to do everything, so I
suppose it was a great lesson to learn that I didn't. Everything started to
suffer--the last two television shows, and Spirit, my last album.
PLAYBOY: And your marriage as well?
DENVER: Yes. Annie and I were having a hard time. You see, my work has been
getting more complex and more demanding all the time. And I could see that I
was either going to burn myself out or get really crazy--those things go
hand in hand. I suddenly realized that when the choice came to do some new
work or to spend more time at home, I kept doing the stuff with the music.
And I knew that if I went on like that, I would lose my family.
PLAYBOY: What did you do?
DENVER: I just stopped everything. At a point last winter, after I finished
Oh, God! and my last contracted special for ABC, I told Jerry Weintraub I
wanted no commitment from then on, on anything, anywhere in the future.
PLAYBOY: Was there pressure from Annie to stop working?
DENVER: Well, it's something that we've spoken a great deal about over the
past several years, but she never badgered me about that. I felt she was
just sitting there watching, saying to herself, "When are you going to do
it? It seems to be getting crazy to me now." And when our relationship was
strained, it generally had to do with that specific aspect of my work.
PLAYBOY: Does that refer to your brief separation--about a week, we gather?
DENVER: I don't know.
PLAYBOY: Did you hear the rumor that you had run away with Olivia
Newton-John?
DENVER: I heard that once and didn't hear anything more about it. Not such a
bad notion. Actually, I think our separation was about a different thing
than we've been talking about. Annie and I constantly need to examine
ourselves. Both of us are very strong people and neither wants to be
dominated by the other or by anything around us.
PLAYBOY: How does the craziness you described manifest itself?
DENVER: Well, I get very tight, very demanding, mostly in the professional
sense, with the people who work around me. I make it difficult for them. And
everything stops being fun. Our last tour was not much fun. Only during that
time out onstage. The last television shows weren't very much fun; they
suffered and the album suffered. I don't think the movie suffered, because
that was so very important to me.
I started tightening up, building a shell around myself, so I wasn't aware
of the messages people were sending me. I learned over the past six months
that I'm intimidating to people. I always was shy and never really felt
aggressive, and then I had to recognize that I'm a very aggressive person,
especially in work. I'm going for it all the time. But I was intimidating
the people I love, my friends. And, Jesus, that was bad.
PLAYBOY: How long had all that pressure been building up?
DENVER: Steadily for one year, one solid year. I'd been thinking about
getting off the treadmill; I'd talked to Jerry about it, but he never
thought I was actually going to do it, and maybe Annie didn't, either. Then,
as the pressure got worse and worse, near last Christmas, one of the things
that got me through without going off the deep end was that I knew that as
soon as I got through with the movie and the last TV special, I would have a
long stretch of time set aside. I was really going to get that break. But
here's an example of how crazy it had all gotten to be. I wanted to be home
for a time before Christmas, because I felt it was Zachary's first Christmas
in which he would be aware of everything. And it got to be real important to
Annie. But I didn't really take care of things, so I ended up having to fly
home Christmas Eve, from L.A., having Christmas Day off, and then having to
fly back the next morning. It was on that trip that I thought Annie was
going to kick me out. Coming back on the plane, I wrote How Can I Leave You
Again. There's a line that goes, "So I question the course that I follow,
I'm doubtful and deep in despair / My heart is filled with impossible
notions. Can it be that you no longer care?" I really thought that maybe
Annie didn't love me, that maybe I could not make her happy. And that I had
lost this thing that's so precious to me. I couldn't blame anybody for it. I
did it.
PLAYBOY: Are you ever afraid that you won't be around to see your kids grow
up?
DENVER: Somehow, it seems to be a possibility in my life. I suppose it has
to do with that thin edge Annie and I dance on. It takes a great deal of
strength and energy and desire for the two of us to sustain our relationship
in the midst of all of this and to stay together. It's a constant, everyday
thing.
PLAYBOY: So did you take that vacation?
DENVER: The truth is that I question whether I ever really took that break
and gave myself to my family and my home. So much stuff has been going on.
It's been wonderful, but it got to be a lot more hectic than I would have
preferred.
PLAYBOY: Perhaps you need to accept the fact that you're incapable of taking
a vacation.
DENVER: I don't know. I do know that I'm looking forward to going back to
work. I'm excited. I just feel a real celebration in how much I'm enjoying
singing again--whether it's singing by myself at home when I'm working on a
song or singing for my friends when we're out camping. Or like up in Alaska
just recently--I sang every night up there.
PLAYBOY: Doesn't it sound as if you're starting the----
DENVER: The treadmill again. Yes. Hopefully, with a more mature perspective.
Knowing how it works. And with a clear intention to not let it get that way
again.