Playboy Interview: John Denver

a candid conversation with the unbelievably cheerful, sweet -- singin' country boy

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 massagparlor 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 himin 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 sellout 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, leas 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 madroña 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.

"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."

[Q] 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?

[A] 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 theaudience.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Is that always true of your concerts?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Is all of that necessary? Most artists don't concern themselves with the parking, do they?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: So you may as well assume it.

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: But isn't it true that over the years, record and concert reviewers have almost unanimously slammed you?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Does it really break down into poor reviews in the major urban centers and better ones in the Midwest and the South?

[A] 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.

[Q] 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?

[A] Denver: No. There seems to be a great resistance out there to me, to the things that I represent, perhaps.

[Q] Playboy: What are those things?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: That sounds like something said by somebody who gets bad reviews.

[A] Denver [Laughing]: Yeah, right.

[Q] Playboy: How do reviews affect you?

[A] Denver: The good ones I take as verbatim, as absolute gospel. The bad ones I dismiss.

[Q] Playboy: Really?

[A] 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.

[Q] 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.

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: What, precisely, are you trying to communicate?

[A] 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.

[Q] 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?

[A] Denver: I'm aware that I have this under lying 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?

[Q] Playboy: Well. ...

[A] Denver: And so even 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 feel 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?

[Q] Playboy: Because you're lying.

[A] Denver: No, I'm not. That's what I'm trying to say.

[Q] Playboy: But if you're not feeling great ----

[A] 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.

[Q] 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.

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: You mean a level of intense self-revelation?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Has that always been true for you?

[A] 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 with draw. 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.

[Q] Playboy: You didn't get what you wanted?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: You mentioned that you were depressed and withdrawn as a child. Why?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: What was the difference?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about your family now? Are you any closer to them?

[A] 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.

[Q] 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?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that the guy working in the New York subway cleaning toilets thinks he's making a contribution?

[A] Denver: Of course not. And that comes front the fact that a whole lot of people have said that cleaning out toilets is shit.

[Q] Playboy: So to speak.

[A] Denver:[Laughing]: Right.

[Q] 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.

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: That's right out of est. How much did that affect your life?

[A] Denver: I took the training in Aspen in the summer of 1971. For me, est was not so mach a revealing experience as an acknowledgment of some things that I had always felt but that nobody else had ever said.

[Q] Playboy: Like what?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever had any therapy?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: You've been quoted as saying you've had some experiences of clairvoyance. Is that so?

[A] 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 clay 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.

[Q] Playboy: What's your explanation for all that?

[A] Denver: I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: You must have a theory about it.

[A] Denver: All right: I think I run the universe.

[Q] Playboy: Care to explain that?

[A] 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 1 am responsible, that all of this is my creation and--

[Q] Playboy: Since you run things, would you run these mosquitoes out of our campsite, please?

[A] 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 outof our hair and our faces.

[Q] Playboy: So what are you getting at?

[A] Denver: I don't think it's power or control. 1 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.

[Q] Playboy: And that's what you meant when you once said "I amGod"?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think most people have experienced this kind of oneness or spirituality?

[A] Denver: Yes. Everybody has. And damned near everybody will deny it. I tell you that 1 know that because I know that our oneness with this spirit is true. I know that!

[Q] Playboy: You called religion a feeble attempt to share a sense of God.

[A] 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, Zackary.

[Q] Playboy: He's an adopted Indian boy, isn't he?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: You have two children, both adopted. Why did you adopt children?

[A] Denver: Annie and I wanted children very much, but I'm sterile.

[Q] Playboy: Has that been difficult for you to handle?

[A] 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 Zackary 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.

[Q] Playboy: How long have you had the children?

[A] Denver: Zackary 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, marvelous, beautiful miracle to me--our family.

[Q] Playboy: Are you going to adopt more children?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: That would he a battalion.

[A] Denver: But by afford I mean all that I can give myself to and have the time tobe with them. We've talked about seven, but who knows? Yes, I'm positive that we'll adopt more children.

[Q] Playboy: Anna Kate is Japanese?

[A] Denver:Yes, but she gives French kisses.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you pick minority children? Was it because they're more available for adoption?

[A] Denver: We just didn't care. When you hake 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 Zackary; 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.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any personal obstacles to overcome in their being minority children?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] 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 marvelous 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 clay we picked up Zackary, 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.

[Q] Playboy: Exactly?

[A] Denver: Exactly. The same face.

[Q] Playboy:Was the child announcing himself to you in the dream? Is that how you interpret it?

[A] 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."

[Q] Playboy: Whenever you talk about family, you get choked up and tearful. What is it that moves you so deeply?

[A] 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 nd I'll get really depressed.

[Q] Playboy:Your family doesn't travel with you?

[A] Denver:Rarely.

[Q] Playboy: How much time do you spend at home in Aspen?

[A] Denver: Last year, it was about four weeks.

[Q] 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?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Was there anything else that you considered doing before Oh, God! came along?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy:You wanted to play Billy the Kid

[A] 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?

[Q] 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.

[A] Denver: I will be very frank with you. Yes, I feel that that's my role. I feel I'm a messenger.

[Q] Playboy: The message is that the world can work?

[A] Denver: Yeah. And I wouldn't say it exactly that way. I say that the earth and the spirit provide us with everything we need. And maybe this is simplistic, perhaps it's naïve, 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.

[Q] Playboy: Going back to the movie, did you ever take acting lessons?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: You've never had any voice lessons, either, have you?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever find yourself acting onstage, during a concert?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: What are your particular gimmicks?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: So you can always drop a "Far out'' on the crowd and it will get a big response?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Would you give us an example?

[A] 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 ofdisruption 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.

[Q] Playboy: In this interview, you don't scent to have said "Far out."

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Do you like that?

[A] 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.

[Q] 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?

[A] 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 beautifulsongs. 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.

[Q] Playboy: Did you dislike Presley's performances?

[A] 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 lie 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.

[Q] Playboy: You know Colonel Tom Parker, don't you?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: That was after Elvis died, though. wasn't it?

[A] Denver: Yeah. Just the other day.

[Q] Playboy: What about Sinatra, with whom you've worked. What do you think of him onstage?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: But you want to be sexy and not cute, you say.

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: But don't you think sexuality is a natural part of many singers' performances, like Sinatra's?

[A] Denver: Absolutely. What he has, what Lena Home 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.

[Q] Playboy: Incidentally, why do you refer to Sinatra as Mr. Sinatra?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: The pairing of the two of you on one bill struck a lot of people as odd.

[A] 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.

[Q] 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?

[A] 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 sonic 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.

[Q] Playboy: Which of your songs do you particularly like?

[A] 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!

[Q] Playboy: How about your lyrics?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: What do you see as your failings as a musician?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: And you don't feel inadequate as a lyricist?

[A] Denver: Nope. I think I write some nice lyrics. They're my favorite songs. Obviously, you don't agree, right?

[Q] 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.

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: It's the sort of thing for which he critics will jump on you.

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Are you ever tempted to go back and change a word here and there, even a few years later?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: You mean you had forgotten that song?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: And you see only a slight difference between those two?

[A] Denver: Yeah, I think it's great.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that there is a kind of universal pool of music out there?

[A] Denver:Absolutely! That's it!

[Q] Playboy: And some of it happened to have come through John Denver?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: We don't feel that we wrote Hamlet.

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Can you give us an example of a song that was born that way?

[A] 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 Inc that I did that.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have the melody, too, or just the words?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: You are nominated for awards in many categories--country, pop, middle of the road, folk. In which division do you primarily see yourself?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Who are and were your own musical heroes and influences?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Who else?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: How about Carly Simon?

[A] 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.

[Q] 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?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: What are your essential social concerns right now?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Are you talking about a specific group?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: But isn't the issue larger than that?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Is that why the attempt to promote nuclear safeguards has been unsuccessful?

[A] 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 grass roots 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 (continued on page 135) lost in all seven states.

[Q] Playboy: What did you do?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Do you talk about nuclear power in your concerts?

[A] 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 clay. 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.

[Q] 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"?

[A] 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 clays 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.

[Q] Playboy: With a song?

[A] 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."

[Q] Playboy: And it was after that that it was decided not to hold the Olympics in Denver?

[A] Denver: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: You've said that your heroes were Jacques Cousteau, Werner Erhard and Dick Gregory. What do they have in common?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: That's pretty modest of you. Why?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: On to another subject. Last year, there was an uproar about your telling the press you smoke dope. What was that about?

[A] 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 furor. 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.

[Q] Playboy: How did you handle the mail?

[A] 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 O little kid might he thinking that, you see, some young kid. And, just like alcohol, I believe marijuana should be handled sponsibly, 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.

[Q] Playboy: What do you imagine that might be?

[A] 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.

[Q] 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?

[A] Denver: I was 22.

[Q] Playboy: Was she your first love?

[A] 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 traveling 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.

[Q] 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.

[A] 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 136 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.

[Q] Playboy: Then what about you? It seems to us you're pulled between the family and the world outside your family.

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: That's crazy.

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: And your marriage as well?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: What did you do?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Was there pressure from Annie to stop working?

[A] Denvier: 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.

[Q] Playboy: Does that refer to your brief separation--about a week, we gather?

[A] Denver: I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: Did you hear the rumor that you had run away with Olivia Newton-John?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: How does the craziness you described manifest itself?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: How long had all that pressure been building up?

[A] Denver: Steadily for one year, one solidyear. I'd been thinking about getting off the treadmill; I'd talked to Jerry about it, but he never thought I was actually going (concluded on page 266) Playboy Interview (continued from page 136) 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 Zackary'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 leaving 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 1 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 he 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.

[Q] Playboy: Are you ever afraid that you won't be around to see your kids grow up?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: So did you take that vacation?

[A] 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.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps you need to accept the fact that you're incapable of taking a vocation.

[A] Denver: 1 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 iii 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.

[Q] Playboy: Doesn't it sound as if you're starting the----

[A] 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.

"I would love to go to one of my concerts 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."

"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."

"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."

"After the first 'Tonight Show' that I did, 'Farrrrr out!' became my trademark, because I guess I said it so many times. ... Sometimes I use it consciously. Sometimes I use it unconsciously."

"I'm not a great guitar player. For instance, I really admire Paul Simon. ... I don't have such a variety of range, of expression."

"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.' "

"I feel that I had a great deal to do with stopping the Winter Olympics in Colorado in 1972. With a song: 'Rocky Mountain High.' "

"I always thought I had the power to do everything, so I suppose it was a great lesson to learn that I didn't. ... I could see I was either going to burn myself out or get really crazy."