John Denver: Death of the Sunshine Boy

stirs those profound feelings up. You fill up myselfss like night and aforest, like the mountains, and spreads like a walk in the rain, like a storm in the desert, like a sleepy blue ocean. You fill up my senses. Come fill me again. Denver wrote those words in nineteen seventy four while riding a ski lift here in Aspen, Colorado, after a spat with Annie, his then wife. Decades later, the lyrics have been etched into a large river boulder

displayed here at Aspen's John Denver Sanctuary. This park, along the Roaring Fork River is equal parts nature, preserve and memorial. Annie song became a number one hit. Although John and Annie ended up divorcing, the song is still staple at weddings, and yet, like so much of his work, it's tinged with melancholy. Let me come, let me love you, let me give my life to you, let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms. So there's a kind of wistfulness about it, right, I mean, it

goes from a sense of wonder in romance. But then let me die in your arms. Is that's the part that makes me sad. It makes me sad. John Denver died at fifty three while piloting an experimental home built aircraft. He went out fast, kind of went out like a shooting star, and sometimes I wonder, I hope that he wasn't scared. That it all happened pretty quickly for him.

One of the best selling artists of the nineteen seventies, Denver also made his mark on the world as a TV and movie star, a humanitarian and environmentalist, but not everyone saw the depth in him. As Annie explained to CBS days after he died, I think people tended to simplify John because of the simplicity and eloquence of his of his music, but that he was a very complex man.

There was a very sad, sad part in John, and and it's really the part that the the music came from the utter sincerity of John Denver's songs endeared him to fans worldwide, but also made him an easy target for critics who considered his music to earnest or even corny.

People would be embarrassed because it wasn't cool, but there was a shining light with goodness and beauty and awe wonder from CBS Sunday Morning and I heart I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries this moment John Denver, October Death of the Sunshine Boy. I love John Denver's voice. Listening to his greatest hits brings me a sense of peace. This sanctuary includes a different boulder for each of those hits.

You don't know where things are, and then all of a sudden you look at a rock and there it is Annie Denver and I left no stone on read Down by the river bank, we found Rocky Mountain high. I'm an eagle and hot guy and it's right over there. Yes, higher up on the embankment, we found the eagle and the hawk and he's really hitting those notes though he is. It's amazing. Yes, don't you feel like you're flying? Where is sunshine on my shoulder? So around the corner. Come on.

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy. Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry. It makes you just feel, at least for me, connected with the goodness and people. Eighteen year old Duncan Moore was feeling the connection to John Denver the same day we were there. Seems like he really enjoyed nature and just enjoyed all the little things in life as you can, like see all the flowers and of the nature park over there, and the little streams, and all of the songs and all his poems.

Our friends said you must come to John Denver Sanctuary. We did not know it was here. Big John Denver fans Dan and Susan Stephen drove down from northern Colorado. John's music and songs allays struck me as being sincere. And when we moved here eight years ago, then all of his songs became really real rocky mountain high. It was like, oh my gosh, here we are in the rocky mountains. So really it's just kind of like regenerated our love for John Denver all over again. And it

had nothing to do with smoking weed. John Denver was not from Colorado. He was born Henry John Dutchendorf Jr. In Roswell, New Mexico, near the Army Airfield where his dad worked as a pilot and flight instructor. John grew up moving from place to place, a shy and lonely military brat. I think much of John's life was looking for home connection. One of his earliest memories was having a birthday party and maybe one person came. I know,

I know. John told a group of Aspen kids about his childhood on a local TV show In so every time we went someplace, it was difficult to get to know people. And the thing that happened is that my guitar helped me make friends, and so I always I wanted to have a lot of friends. I want people to like me. Things began to shift around age twelve, when John's grandmother gave him her nineteen ten Gibson acoustic guitar. He started carrying it everywhere he went. This old guitar

taught me to say, showed me the soul guitar. There's a line about that in it. The soul guitar gave me my life, my living, all the things I love to do. That's where he felt most at home, hanging onto that guitar. Help me make it without that old guitar in hand, John wasn't comfortable, As he would later

explain in his autobiography Take Me Home. I feel things very deeply, But for most of my life it has been easier for me to talk casually to a thousand people than to talk openly to just one one person. He had trouble talking to his high achieving father, Dutch, who said at least three speed records piloting a mock

to bomber for the Air Force. Dutch was skeptical of John's musical aspirations, so John attended college at Texas Tech in Lubbock, where he studied architecture and played in bands, but he dropped that at twenty and moved to Los Angeles to try to make it in the city's swelling folk revival scene. He made connections and got some experience playing clubs, including a place owned by Randy Sparks, the founder of a popular folk ensemble called the New Christie Minstrels.

It was Sparks who told him Dutchendorff wouldn't fit on a marquee. The first suggestion was Summerville. John eventually agreed to change it to Denver same. John Denver's first big break came in nineteen five when he was asked to join the Chad Mitchell Trio, taking the place of founder Chad Mitchell, who had left to make his debut on Broadway.

Unlike John, the trio were political, doing mostly topical satire like a send up of the extreme right wing John Birch Society, Society, Society to save our country club in this big block joined the John Birt's Society holding off the reds. Will use our heads and hearts in him, we must will use our heads. Here's John performing one of the trio satirical hits which mocked the k K K yep, since we got a lawyer and the public

relations man where your friendly liberal label? Did John have politics? Then? No? And my Coblet, who was in the trio and interviewers has said, well, how naive John was about so many of these things. I think he said he didn't know how to pronounce the word politics. He said politic or something like that. Clearly it was the beginning of any activism he had. Later on, I started to find out that there is a lot more you can do with music.

On the stage and then just sing it. You can make people think, you can make them laugh at things going on in the world. That's John from his autobiography. Again, it was a revelation to me when I could make a ridge to an audience's psyche. At this point, John wasn't yet the guy on TV with the Dutch boy haircut and the granny glasses. So when you met him, what was where was his collegiate looking part? And don't forget he was with the Mitchell trio and they were

doing a lot of collegiate dates, Jack and tie. It was at one such campus performance that John and Annie first laid eyes on each other. At Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, the college that I was going to was in the town that I grew up in, and John was giving a concert with the Mitchell Trion, and afterwards he was playing his guitar and there were

a group of people. They were doing a play and kind of a silly little musical, and I was the girl that carried the signs across the stage Act one, Act two, and according to John, I had a pair of blue jeans on and a flannel shirt and Penny Loafers and I just paraded across the stage and then he left and we didn't speak. Soon enough, John was back for another college gig, and this time he invited her on a date before he showed. That night, Amy sat alone in the audience while John did his sound

check on stage. It was dark and there were lights on the stage and it was just his voice and this light was on him and he and it were so beautiful, right, And then he came over to meet my parents and they liked him a lot. I mean, he was charming. He asked them questions, he listened, and that's how it all started. How soon did he propose? Nine months later? And then we got married within a couple of months. And with all due respect, did you

know what the hell you were doing? Not at all. No, you don't get to be as big a star as John was by accident. I mean he was ambitious, yeah, very and then John had this gift, really so I don't think I looked at it as ambition until things started happening. Things really started happening. When John left the trio, it's popularity was waning fast. Then scored a record deal with our c A pursuing a solo career drew John

out of himself but also away from Annie. In My Songs, John wrote in his memoir, I was able to say things I couldn't say directly to Annie. Case in point. For Our ci A, he recorded a song he had written a few years earlier called Babe, I Hate to go kissed me a smile of me to tell me that you wait for me. His producer, Milt Oaken, convinced him to change the title. Oaken passed along what was now titled Leaving on a Jet Plane to folk group Peter Paul and Mary. There's so many times I've let

you down, so many times I've played. Bands thought it was an anti war song about soldiers shipping out to Vietnam every place, but John wrote it about his life on the road and it's toll on his relationship with Annie. It became Peter Paul and Mary's biggest hit. Annie Denver remembers when John got his first check in the mail. We would drive at night and we would go by this furniture place that had antiques, and there was a lit Tiffany and original Tiffany lamp in the window. And

so when we got the check. He wanted to buy a Porsche, and we wanted to buy the Tiffany lamp. And we did it. And I thought my father was going to croak that that's what we did with that money to make ends meet. Annie had been selling baby clothes at a department store in Minneapolis, but after the young couple traveled to Aspen with annie Ski club, they decided to relocate there. Aspen back then was not the sheshy place it is now. Was it a little hippy dippy? Yeah?

Waitresses wore their hiking boots, and people had long braids, and everybody was doing macromay. I made so much macromay. The Rocky Mountains became John's greatest muse. Funny then, that his first big hit as a recording artist was about a state in America's other great mountain range. John Denver did not write the famous chorus to take Me Home, Country Roads. The credit goes to his friend's husband and

wife songwriting duo Bill dan Off and Taffy Nivert. But when he sang it, the song became a worldwide phenomenon. The reason it was such a hit is people could relate to being home, are coming home, or this, this idea of connectedness and belonging. It's been translated into dozens of languages, from Finnish which to Hindi and don't forget a hugely popular Jamaican reggae version by Toots and the Maytals. One year after Country Roads came John's love letter to

the first place he actually called home. He was born in the suburbs Kenny. Seven year at home to place never been before. Rocky Mountain High is not about drugs. More about that later. John was inspired to write it after witnessing a stunning meteor shower from ten thousand feet up in the Rockies Shadow. You could travel in other countries and they don't quite know the Rocky Mountains, but

they'll go oh, Rocky Mountain High. Fun fact. John Denver is a writer of two official state songs, Colorado's and West Virginia's. By the time he had released Country Roads, John Denver had signed with a talent manager named Jerry Wine Troube. A likely pair John Denver and Jerry Wintroub. No allow me to translate for Annie. Jerry Wine Troub was brash, bold, the ultimate go big or go home guy.

The same year he signed Denver nine. He also convinced Elvis's manager to let him book and promote the King's national comeback tour. Wine Troub later took Frank Sinatra back on the road and helped bring in the era of the arena concert tour. He would eventually become a major movie producer, and he believed he could turn this easy mannered mountaineer into the next big thing. Terry had a vision and could see I think talent. He didn't create John, but he took what he saw in John and really

developed it. One of the shrewdest moves engineered by wine Traub was the release of a John Denver's Greatest Hits album. Now. The album did include some genuine hits Country Roads, Rocky Mountain, High, Sunshine on My Shoulders, but most of the songs on it were new recordings of lesser known, earlier released tracks, not hits, but songs that would help define Denver, like follow Me and Rhymes and Reasons. The album went multi platinum, selling more than ten million copies, but that was just

one piece of the puzzle. Wine Troup was convinced that television was the key to turning John Denver into a Superstar by controduced Mr John Denver. Denver's first TV appearance was on The MERV Griffin Show. Once from the Fame Chad Mitchell Trio and now composer of well the number one hit songs of this season. After that, it seemed like he was on TV all the time, Aren't you Denver? On The Bob Hope Show, he and the host dressed as doppelgangers. I'm your twin brother, Irving Idaho. Denver hosted

the Grammy Awards five times. Slid is Grammy nine the biggest slide in music. And we're here live in Los Angeles with the show That's so hot, it's gonna pop if we don't get right into it. John Denver eventually got the ult him at Show Business co sign. You know, Frank, I was just thinking a TV special with Sinatra about the time that song was first heard, so was I. I don't know how to make a guy wearing his now trademark wire rimmed glasses and sporting hair down to

his shoulders. John Denver was a made for TV hippie, safe and fun for the whole family. Yeah, he kind of looked like a muppet, don't you agree? And then he performed with the Muppets. Have you seen him with the Muppet I know he celebrated Christmas with the Muppets in nine Shine Start Up. But to really get a sense of John Denver and the nineteen seventies, there may be no better document than his own Rocky Mountain Christmas Special.

In let me describe it, He performs for a live audience from inside what looks like a giant snow globe, but with snow on the outside. Well we did. What we did is we built a transparent bubble and placed it in the middle of a snow covered meadow in the Rockies. And in here we've got flowers and grows and greenies and little butterflies bloating around high there. Yes, that's John saying hi to a butterfly that's landed on

his hand. The special is a weird blend of comedy bits with stars like Valerie Harper and Steve Martin and nature scenes. Some of us are trying to reintroduce the grizzly bear into this part of the world. Oh and this is our first experiment in that regard. John wrestles with a grizzly cup at one point. It's a little nerve racking. Watch this little lady is a here and a half old grizzly come and he is a turkey.

There's a sequence about the life cycle of brook Trout that looks like something you'd watch in fourth grade science. Olivia Newton John is introduced singing on horseback. Later she comes back for a genuinely lovely duet of fly Away. It stars studied, for sure, but the pacing of the special is lank, even listless. Kingle, I guess I'm just used to a more upbeat jingle bells. It's like this special predicted Jimmy Carter's infamous malaise speech later in the decade. Honestly,

this whole hour feels slathered in malaise. Towards the end, during a sing along, we see Annie looking serene and the audience their infant son, Zach, the first of their two adopted children, at her side, But everyone else in the audience looks a little dazed, a little glazed over, like they're experiencing their own energy crisis. It's all supremely strange and supremely seventies and guess what. More than sixty million people tuned into John Denver's Rocky Mountain Christmas sixty million.

The boy who had grown up searching for home had apparently found a place in homes everywhere. Jerry wine Troub would later say, if you give Elvis the fifties and the Beatles the sixties, I think you've got to give John Denver the seventies. With wine Troub's help, the wholesome hippie had become a mass commodity. The very next year, John Denver made the cover of Newsweek, the magazine dubbing him the Sunshine Boy, but the article itself wasn't exactly sunny.

He may have become a phenomenon with the public, but he was far from critics choice how much did that bother him? I actually think it bothered him more than a hat lead on. I think it bothered him a lot. You know, I met Julianne Moore the other day the terrific Radiant Act. It's not because I'm not saying that we're friends yet. And our our mutual friend who brought us together, was talking to her about this podcast. Now this is really turning into a plug and she said,

who do you have coming up next season? And I said, John Denver, and she simultaneously melted and sighed and just exhaled John Tenver and the way she said it, And I couldn't tell if it was just that I took her back to a time that at least seems like it was a safer, kinder time. Well sure, I mean, it seems reasonable that Julianne Moore when she was eleven years old would have listened to John Denver and that might have been her entry point for music. That's my pal,

music writer Bill flan Again. Unlike me and Julianne Moore, when Bill first encountered John Denver's music, he was a cool New York rock critic writing for an underground magazine, and like most music critics at the time, he wasn't filled with any childlike warmth. In fact, John's boyishness and enthusiasm are part of what he was teased for. They called him the Mickey Mouse of rock and roll, the Jimmy Stewart of folk music, the Ronald Reagan of pop.

I mean, look, here's the thing. As a former recovering rock critic, if if you're sent to review a show and you think the person is insipid, then you've got to say they're insipid. But John Denver was absolutely playing for the whole family and playing a very kind of Network TV version of pop music. And maybe what offended some rock critics was that he looked like a hippie.

What he was doing was he was sort of taking countercultural fashion and moving it into the mainstream, the Family Channel, the Walt Disney World, and some people were very defensive about that. The nine seventies were an especially rich period for singer songwriters Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Carol King, Marvin Gay. John Denver didn't fit in with any of them. John Denver came out of a folk tradition that was not exactly what James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and csn Y

and the Lourel Canyon people were doing. He came out of that Chad Mitchell trio, Michael Rode, the Boat Ashore, Peter Paul and Mary, very early sixties kind of harmony folk singing that of everybody sing along that had its roots in the Weavers and Pete Seeger and you know, and kind of graduated into Christian rock, you know, kind of graduated into music to be played at the folkmass I think John Denver has said in interviews that that is kind of what he He grew up singing in

the church choir and going to the football games in Texas. You know, it was a very kind of mainstream America, non counter cultural. He comes from a military family life, and his version of the counter culture was more to do with ecology, preserving the land, camping in the mountains, getting away from the city, which is perfectly legitimate. How big a deal was John Denver in the nineteen seventies.

Boy in the middle of the nineteen seventies, John Denver had about two or three years when he was huge. He was the acceptable face of the sort of hippie songwriter to mainstream America. He was family entertainment, and you know, that's a that's a difficult slot to fill, and you you kind of have about one every decade, you know.

But the John Denver phenomenon specifically, could that have only happened in the nineteen seventies, Well, I think it only could have happened with a guy with the Beatles haircut and you know, moccasins in the nineteen seventies. But I think there's a version of it. Whatever is on FM radio, and is being written about in Rolling Stone probably has a translation for mom and dad going on on television. And in the sixties it might have been Sunny and Share.

In the fifties it might have been Pat Boone. In the eighties it might have been Olivia Newton John somebody that Middle America and all generations can appreciate. Okay, well then, and I hear what you're saying. So, so let's talk about what I think you're really talking about, which is so the criticism of him, the music criticism. I want to just read a few things. Oh, there's gonna be painful,

isn't it? They are? Uh. Robert Christi Gal probably a friend of yours, a dean of rock critics, the legendary rock critic, wrote for The Village Voice for nearly four decades, Denver is everything an acoustic singer songwriter might be pretty vapid and commercial. This in nineteen seventy four, he described Denver's music as simple minded escapism, and it compared him unfavorably with James Taylor and Carly Sigman. He finally, nineteen seventy seven called him the blandest pop singer in history.

Well clearly Robert had some angry issues. You know, you got to consider he's writing for the Village Voice. He's you know, very interested in what lou Reid is up to, and you know he'd probably be just as tough on Andy Williams and Andy Williams had had alongside burns and wire room glasses. I love Andy Williams, by the way, Well that's you know, John Denver is as much out of the tradition of Andy Williams and Perry Como as he is out of the tradition of John Pryan and

Leonard Cohen Boy. That nineteen seventy six cover story in Newsweek, written by Maureen Orth, she says she described his music as the n seventies favorite snake oil in the guise of warm milk. That's assuming something that's unfair to assume, which is that he's insincere or that he's manufacturing. And

you know, who's to say manufactured music is bad. I mean, listen, my eleven year old favorite band was The Monkeys, and I still love the Monkeys, and I will defend the Monkeys as being a great entry point for people who soon we're listening to more sophisticated stuff. The other thing to remember is that reviews are written to be read the day after and then thrown away, and they're not meant to be pulled out as prosecution uh forty or fifty years later. It's like, man, look at what Bob

Chris Gau said, What a nasty guy. Well, we actually tried to subpoena Bob christ Gawen he to see if he would recant on any of this, and he said no, thanks, we can't blame him. You want to hear something really mean? How can I stop you go? This is from British rock critic Nick Kent in Vree wrote, John's the stereotype of the neighborhood whimp who would get his head constantly pushed down toilets in junior high school, who spent his

teenage years learning how to play old wood. He got three songs in the TV room while the gang was out on the streets stealing hub caps and cruising for and who turn up at folk clubs and a denim cap and promptly have beer cants thrown at him. Yep, John Denver's sure paid his dues. As Steve Stills would say, so far be it from me to lay the proverbial mark of kine on him for producing this unadulterated piece

of organic draws. It doesn't seem impossible that Nick Kent is projecting his own childhood or teenage years onto John Denver in that piece. This is making me feel so much better. Hashtag team Denver. Somehow, Mo, you have used you have Perry Mason like wiles to turn me into someone who is attacking my peers and defending John Denver. I may never recover from this. Bill say is that John Denver was intentionally middle of the road where you're

bound to get run over. At the end of the sixties, it was a little bit like today, you know today with the Red state Blue state divide. It was the counterculture and the mainstream culture. It was a M and F M. It was Rolling Stone or Time magazine, and it felt like never the Twain would meet. But in fact, the seventies was all about sort of people letting go of that anger and coming together, and John Denver was probably a symbol of that. But you know, again, he

was I'm not saying he wasn't kind of corny. He was kind of corny, but that's what he set out to be, and Not everybody has a thousand LPs in their collection and reached the underground press. Some people just want to hear a nice melody and a pleasant song, and there's nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with that at all. As Bill witnessed firsthand, my younger brother and sister absolutely adored John Denver. And when our mother died, she was in My mother was in her forties. When

she died, she was she had five kids. I was the oldest, I was nineteen. The youngest were nine and twelve. And the day after her funeral, I took him to see John Denver and it was the most joyous, life

affirming experience that we could have had. And I'll always have a soft spot for John Denver for that, because, you know, if you can imagine anything sadder than a young mother dying and leaving five children than to watch my little brother and sister just you know, who had been were beyond grief stricken, who were who were just stunned to watch them fall into delight listening to John Denver saying was just a that that's the best thing music can possibly do. And how well do you remember

that concert? First time I'd ever seen really big screens at an arena concert and suddenly the screen split up with film of a harvester going through the field, olds

and farmers gathering gathering. Hey, and it was magical, you know, And listen, whether it's John Denver or whether it's Frank Sinatra, or whether it's Frank's Appa, if music can lift somebody out of the worst kind of grief at the most vulnerable moment of their life and give them something to look forward to and bring joy back into the life of a grieving child. I mean, I don't mean to get all Jerry Lewis tallethan here, but you know that's

a that's a very very powerful thing to accomplish. And that's why, you know, I think if there's one thing where we probably want to come back to and talking about John Denver, it's that if music touches somebody, then great, that's that's the best thing in the world. And if it doesn't fit somebody else's framework or their aesthetic judgment, you know, that's okay too, but it doesn't detract from

the power it has with someone who loves it. And nobody should be told that they shouldn't love any kind of art if it moves them. I've thought about who John Denver would be in pop culture today had he not died. My friend, the actress Pamela ad Lawn was in a TV movie with him in and she's got a really interesting theory which I floated by Bill. Pamela ad Lawn said to me, if he had lived, he might have been Dolly Parton. Big that kind of you.

That's a very very very interesting That's that's smart because Dolly Parton probably got the same kind of criticism at the same time as being manufactured fake, you know, a big wig and extreme proportions and tons of makeup and singing these little sing along songs that everybody likes and appearing in pop movies. So that's a that's a really really good observation that John Denver might have become Dolly Parton.

He might have become as respected as Dolly Parton. And now that we live in a world where everyone we're beers Dolly Parton and there is great retrospective um affection for the Carpenters and nobody cares about what the great rock critics of the seventies wrote. Sure, John Denver might be uh, you know, might be getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Today, I just wanted to show you US is here meditation. This is Buck. Tom Crumb is showing

me around his delightful home in Aspen. It's an a frame kind of looks like a ski shout from the outside. But when he and his wife first moved in in the early nineteen seventies, it didn't even have running water. So I took a pipe of PBC pipe plastic pipe, and ran it up into the hills right up there new the where you can see the gondola. I don't know if you can see it. This was just all mining cabins along here. It's a charming outlier in today's Aspen.

In the backyard a small Japanese rock garden. On the other side of the backyard fence, a forty six million dollar mansion recently rented out by the Kardashians. How many bitcoin billionaires come by trying to buy it? Yeah? Right, I don't know. They come and go quick. I hear. The inside of Tom's house is chocolate block with curiosities, including a nineteenth century cross between a music box and phonograph. Oh my god, this is a vagina phone. This is

I know the Vagina phone. Yes, I know about this. This is so cool, so cool. I saw one of these in Indianapolis at the President Benjamin Harrison home and he was president elected. So it's the same, like the same, but this is not a mobituary for Benjamin Harrison. At the height of his fame, John Denver was struggling with loneliness and demanding work schedule. That's when he turned to Tom Crumb, who was teaching martial arts and meditation here

in Aspen. Tom came aboard to help handle security, but also as emotional support for John. There's a song where it goes he sometimes I fly like an eagle, and sometimes I'm deep in despair. I think John was one of those personalities. There's an up and down in him. So those times he'd get quiet, yeah, he'd get dark, but also a lot of creativity came out of that. Did the songs come from the lonely place? Oh? I

think a lot of them. Did you know everything that he would write about he was so fully committed to and that only happens when you're feeling it deeply. Tom was there as John's saw songs began fading from the air waves, and as John began redirecting his energy towards conservation and a host of other causes. In six John and Tom bought a ranch near Aspen and set up a humanitarian organization they named the Windstar Foundation. John was no longer content to entertain the world. He wanted to

change the planet. We wanted to make a difference. We wanted to affect the environment. We wanted to affect Hungary with nuclear non proliferation. We had a wind generation, We had solar retrofitting. Now this is in the world wasn't ready. We're We're putting up solar panels, were doing bio intensive gardening. By virtue of his celebrity, John was able to commune with luminaries like Guru Ram Das, astronomer Carl Sagan, and

futurist and architect Buckminster Fuller. You know, friends like Warner Earhart. When with the s movement, which was a very big movement back in the early seventies, getting involved with that, Denver Co found did a hunger nonprofit with Werner Earhard, the controversial celebrity guru whose air hard to semin Our

trainings also known as st promised to transform lives. According to sixty Minutes Are Heard was so popular in nineteen seventies Hollywood that someone once suggested a studio be renamed Werner Brothers. Increasingly, when John went on TV, it was in support of his array of causes. Well, I'm a

very optimistic person. I think it's important for people to know that we do feel we have the wherewithal if people are willing to make the commitment, if governments are willing to make the commitment to end hunger in our lifetime, I mean, that's incredible. You know, John was so enthusiastic if you went to a hearing with him. Let's get out of songs now and get into the political world where he's working on the Alaska Wildlands Bill, very influential.

They're working on the space issue, working on a hunger issue, working on environmental issue, had all these issues. Once again, John Denver seemed to be everywhere this time trying to be all things to all causes. And you are involved in all different kinds of causes. What does a cause have to have? What does it have to represent in order to get John Denver involved in Well, it's not like a cause, you know, it's it's things that that are are given to me or come up for me

because I am celebrity. I have been successful and have certain things that come to people's mind when they when they speak of my name or or hear my music. To be clear, John Denver did throw himself into some causes with real commitment. From saving the ocean, he formed a deep bond with Jacques Cousteau to exploring outer space. He was a serious contender to join the ill fated

Challenger mission. Instead, NASA went with teacher Christie mccauliffe. But in his memoir, Denver revealed that he did so many benefits and supported so many causes because he wanted so much to be liked. He said he would agree to some things not out of commitment to an issue, but because he was afraid to say no. This was no surprise to Annie Denver. Basically he was a pleaser. I wanted to make people happy. I think that was hard for him. He had a rough few years, was especially

rough early that year. John's father, Dutch, suffered a massive heart attack and died. When John and Tom Crumb were on tour, they were often flown by John's pilot father, and Dutch had taught John how to fly hours spent in the cockpit together began to heal their relationship. Once he was asked by John to be his pilot and to teach him to fly that jet. That's where it all shifted. That and of course being at concerts and seeing who John was. John mourned Dutch in song and

the soul the nice thing. Then, only months after Dutch died on their fifteenth wedding anniversary, Annie filed for divorce. When you look back now, after you've been married for fifteen years and you decided to divorce, was that the way it had to be? Yes, Yes, she's reluctant to elaborate, understandably, But John himself would confess in interviews that he wasn't there for Annie. He was still going on the road for months at a time, and he'd been unfaithful to her.

My life is way out of balance in regard to the time that I had with my family and uh and that I have now, and I feel it more with the kids being teenagers now. They had built a home together in Aspen, but it just didn't seem to be enough for him. John soon suffered another painful break up, this time with manager Jerry Weintraub, who John claimed ditched him for the move he was producing the Karate Kid. Then another disappointment when the biggest stars in music came

together for African famine relief. Yeah, John wasn't invited. You have been involved in hunger projects for fifteen years, long before many other celebrities got on the bandwagon, so to speak, and yet you were left out of the recording of Way of the World. Were you upseid about that? Well, you know what had happened. Uh, I was very disappointed. I would love to have been there. That hurt him deeply. He was on President Carter's Commission on World and Domestic Hunger.

This guy was out there making a difference way before any of these people. I'm suddenly hunger after all these years he's working on it becomes a huge public issue. You and he's not invited. We are the world's producer. Ken Craigan later said John Denver was the hardest artist to turn down, but it had been years since John had had a hit. He was invited later that year to Washington, d C. To testify on an issue roiling the music industry, sex and violence in rock and roll lyrics.

Whether records should be rated AX On one side. The p t A and a group of influential women in Washington, d C. Called the Parents Music Resource Center. In September, Tipper Gore, wife of then Senator Al Gore, and other Washington wives held a congressional hearing on the labeling of music deemed obscene. Rock lyrics havept turned from I can't get no satisfaction. I'm going to force you at gunpoint to eat me alive. Other witnesses included d Snyder of

Twisted Sister and Frank Zappa. Mr Zappa, thank you very much for your testimony. Next witnesses John Denver. Before his testimony, it was anyone's guests who Denver would side with. It may be very clear that I'm strongly opposed to censorship of any kind in our society or anywhere else in the world. My song Rocky Mountain High was banned from

many of radio stations as a drug related song. This was obviously done by people who have never seen or been to the Rocky Mountains and also had never experienced the elation, the celebration of life for the joy in living that one feels when he observes something is wondrous as the perceed meteor shower. Years later, in a radio interview, d Snyder said Denver's testimony was key. Me and Frank

were very worried about what John was gonna do. He was such, he was like the all American guy then, and we were very worried that he would turn his back on his on on rock. But he did not. He tall for us and I never got to shake his hands though it's one of my regrets. But all the activism didn't change the fact that his sales were continuing to flag. The public had moved on. The following year, in June of six, r c A tropped John Denver.

He was one of the top selling artists in their history, but he wasn't worth what they were paying him anymore. And now I'm not the biggest selling record artist in the world, and I don't sell out big arenas like I used to, and that might come around again, I don't know. John married Australian actress Cassandra Delaney, and the two had a daughter, but John continued to struggle to

find balance between his public and private lives. They soon divorced, and friends say he fell into depression In interview, John shared what he thought had happened to his career. One of the major things I think for me in that decline was both my wanting to stick to the music that I do. I don't want to be told what to record by anybody. I think I earned the right to do what I do. That's where I had my

big success. And I'm not going to do a bunch of country songs is because somebody thinks I'm a country artist or that's what they want to sell from me. It was like John had lost his sense of direction. He wasn't sure where he belonged, but he no longer had the guiding hand of someone like Jerry Weintraub. In He recorded and released his twenty seven studio album All Aboard, a children's train themed album, nine A Lie to Blow, Dyna World to Blow, nine and one to Blow Your Horn.

The album earned John Denver his first and only Grammy award, but he never got to accept it. Diving crews searched the waters of Monterey Bay four pieces of the two seaters single engineer plane and clues to the crash, but singer John Denver was alone in the plane when witnesses say it just fell from the sky and all of a sudden there was a pop and a popping sound, and it just kind of went up a little bit and absolutely straight down, not spiraling, just absolutely straight down.

John was flying with a suspended license. He'd lost it after two d u wise, but toxicology tests later showed he'd been sober that day, And at the time, Tom Crumb wasn't worried about his friend's mental health. Would you worry that, you know, he might be suicidal or something? No? I didn't. I just didn't. I knew John when they were on the road years earlier. Tom had seen John

at his lowest. That was a tough time, coming out of a dark darkness and and going in and know when you're gonna have to perform for twenty two thousand people and and bring them up, and you suddenly are singing for them because now you have to do something out there. That the performing was he antidote that made him feel better. You go out and make a difference for somebody and you'll feel better. But did you have confidence that he'd come through it, that he would like

through the darker period? I did. I thought he was coming out of it when he died. Annie Denver's last conversation with John was just before his death. John died October twelfth, And he had he had been home and he had had dinner with Anna Kate, with your daughter, Anna Kate. Yeah, and he called me and he was in a great mood. John had recently sent Annie flowers for her birthday, which he did every year, even after the divorce. Oh, and even things were when things weren't good,

I always got flowers. And so I thanked him for the flowers. And then there was a long, long pause, and he said, this is totally indelibly etched in my heart. And he said, oh, but Annie, I love you. On Phil Donahue's show years before their divorce, Annie described her relationship with John and his appeal to the masses. He's always been very affectionate, very sensitive, to the point of being moody sometimes, and it comes from I think stems from his loneliness. He feels a lot of loneliness. Said

think it's the kids. And consequently he's always been very warm, very affectionate, and he's it's really so that a lot of men can't share those feelings, and John can sit for everybody because everybody feels it, they just can't share it. I think the loneliness John Denver projected was a big part of his appeal. Like he told those Aspen school kids back in nineteen and seven, he just wanted to

be liked. Who couldn't relate to that? Maybe it makes perfect sense that he sang one of the most enduringly popular songs ever written about home, a song that's beloved worldwide about a place that wasn't ever actually his home. I didn't know John Denver. I don't know if he ever felt like he found home, but whatever he was searching for, that yearning in his voice, that was real. I certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May I ask

you to please rate and review our podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. Here all new episodes of Mobituaries every Wednesday. Wherever you get your podcasts, and check out Mobituaries. Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best selling book, now available in paperback and audio book. It includes plenty of stories not in the podcast. This

episode of Mobituaries was produced by Aaron Shrank. Our team of producers also includes Wilco, Martinez Cacceto and me Morocca. Editing was by Moral Walls, engineering by Josh Hahn, and fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is Neon hom Media. Our archival producer at CBS is Jamie Benson. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support from Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gerveis, Alan Pang, Reggie Basil and everyone at CBS News Radio Special thanks to Michelle Castle,

Young Kim and Alberto Robina. Mobituary's senior producer is the comparable Aaron Shrank. Executive producers for Mobituaries include Steve Raizy's and Morocca. This series is created by Yours truly and as always undying gratitude to Rand Morrison and John carp for helping breathe life into Mobituaries. Okay, High, This is the end of Rocky Mountain High with about two thousand people at the Paramount Theater, which was built and has

beautiful murals. Um So let's do this now. Okay, Rocky Mountain High, Rocky Mountain High, Rocky Mountain High, Rocky Mountain High, Rocky Mountain High, thank you,