[John Denver, despite his ostensible vulnerability, is a far tougher cookie than any of the singer/songwriters who originally defined the genre; not one of them proved to have the kind of personal staying power that could lead to a double date at Lake Tahoe with Frank Sinatra. ...What reaches out from the hotel suite are the bone-to-flesh sounds of a fistfight, only somehow the blows fall too regularly, the rest of the room is too quiet….and on the couch beside the coffee table, John Denver clenches his fists for another assault. Visibly disturbed and with that drumhead-taut look of someone who runs harder and eats better than you do and knows it, Denver appears a lot less like a man-sized Muppet than we’ve been led to expect. He looks more like an angry young man.]
“The thing I object to is that in regards to a nuclear freeze,
we have two distinct sides and they’re like this! (thump),” protests
Denver, starting to methodically pound his fists together with unnerving force.
“Nothing gets done! My observation is that nothing has gotten done (thump)
for close onto 40 years now. (thump) After the first atomic bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima (thump), many of the scientists involved said that
the world is different now. (thump) We need a new world order. (thump)
Violence is no longer an appropriate way (thump) to resolve
conflict. Forty years they’ve been talking about it, and this! (thump) Nothing
(thump)..(thump) Nothing.”
[In the World According to Denver, we’d better start thinking in
new ways about some old problems. Like hunger, pollution and war. We may stand
at a new evolutionary step, and he’s ready to march on. It’s something he feels
very strongly about, and he’ll explain why until his publicist is climbing the
hotel room walls. It’s something he can even get angry about.]
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“It’s frustrating to me when people say that I’m always trying
to be a ‘nice guy’, or something like that. Well, I was raised well. I
do have respect for other people, and consideration for the planet, and I like
to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. That’s just how I am. I don’t think there’s
anything wrong with that. I think it’s good.”
“I want to touch people, and I’ve said that from the very, very
beginning. More than just entertainment, I want to connect with people and songs
come out of that feeling. Of primary importance to me is that whatever song I
do, I want to be able to do it with just me and my guitar, and have it work.
Because that’s where they come from. Hit records are not what my business is
about. What I’m trying to do is communicate.”
“Some people cannot play to the general public out there who
watches television. They have either not the desire, nor the specific talent.
Not that it’s any big deal or anything, it’s just that some people you invite
into your living room, and some people you don’t. Finding that you are perhaps
the kind of person people feel comfortable enough with to have in their living
room, then you ask yourself, what are the kinds of things I can do with that.
You find over the years that my success and career are not really based on any
one particular medium or thing, unless it’s my personality and the way people
relate to me. I think that’s my most specific talent. I don’t think I’m a great
singer, and I’m not a great guitar player. But I think I’m comfortable, honest
and easy to relate to, and people like that. It’s like I’m a superstar, but I’m
not a superstar. That’s not the way I live, not the way I want to be, and I
don’t hold it over anybody. It’s not something special or incredibly unique,
except that I’ve had the success I’ve had and I’m just like everybody else.
That’s the rarity.”
“The music is universal. Even in China, where a lot of rock and
pop music doesn’t have any meaning to the people, they know my music and like
it.
- It’s not the Rocky Mountains I’m talking about, it’s self-discovery.
- It’s not West Virginia I’m talking about, it’s country roads and going home.
- It’s not the wheat fields of Kansas I’m talking about, it’s family. “
“If people feel comfortable with you and feel that you relate
and articulate something they feel, then perhaps you find within yourself a lot
of other strong feelings about things going on in the world. There’s something
happening on the planet. People are becoming more health-conscious, more aware on
a worldwide basis of the threat of nuclear war.
Where we are now perhaps, is an
evolutionary change taking place, that life is no longer about survival and you
or me, but about living and you and me. We have the
opportunity to make a conscious choice. We can no longer live the way we used
to.”
Yeah
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