John Denver
John Denver was born John Henry Deutschendorf in Roswell, New Mexico on December
31, 1943. As a child in an Air Force family, John lived in many places throughout
the country in his youth and teenage years, before settling in Lubbock, Texas
for college. While at Texas Tech, he spent endless hours playing the guitar
his grandmother gave him years earlier. Soon, he began playing at local bars,
where a promoter encouraged him to change his last name from Deutschendorf.
In 1964, the newly surnamed John Denver headed to Los Angeles in pursuit of
a career in music. Once there, Denver joined a folk music group known as the
Chad Mitchell Trio.
In 1969, Denver left the group and began his solo career with the release of
Rhymes and Reasons. His song “Leaving On a Jet Plane” became a hit
when Peter, Paul, & Mary recorded it. By 1971, Denver needed no one to take
his own songs to the top of the charts. His singles “Take Me Home, Country
Roads,” and “Sunshine On My Shoulders” from that year’s
Poems, Prayers, and Promises made him an household name. By the next year, 1972,
with the release of Rocky Mountain High and the single by the same title, John
Denver was one of America’s biggest names in entertainment. His image was
everywhere—on magazine covers and television specials—and nearly always,
his backdrop was a snow covered mountain somewhere near his home outside Aspen,
Colorado. Denver’s first “greatest hits” record was released
in 1973, selling more than ten million copies and remaining on the top-seller
lists for more than two years. In 1977 Denver acted alongside George Burns in
the comedy film Oh, God!
By the 1980s Denver focused much of his energy on humanitarian and environmental
activism events associated with his Windstar Foundation, a non-profit educational
organization dedicated to promoting holistic solutions the world’s environmental
problems. Many of Denver’s later public performances, including his 1987
performance at Chernobyl in the wake of that city's nuclear disaster, and his
1995 Wildlife Concert in New York, exemplified his priorities as an activist
musician.
Denver was killed in 1997 when his glider airplane crashed in California.
1. In “Rocky Mountain High,” Denver sings “Now his life is full of wonder/ but his heart still knows some fear/ of the simple things he cannot comprehend/ Why they try to tear the mountains down/ to bring in a couple more/ More people, more scars upon the land.” When Denver recorded these lines in 1972, his adopted hometown of Aspen, once a mining town, was undergrowing great growth due to its popularity as a skier’s paradise. Denver was perhaps a bit sanctimonious in “Rocky Mountain High.” He eventually owned a large new home just north of Aspen, in addition to at least one other house in Malibu, California. Look in your newspaper for stories or advertisements relating to the ski industry in Colorado or elsewhere. Do any of the ads or stories provide evidence of Denver’s “More people, more scars upon the land?” As a class, organize a debate around this statement: agree or disagree, the ski industry in the West transforms the environment as dramatically as mining did?