John Denver: Country Boy

On 12 October 1997, at Monterey Airport, California,

the singer John Denver took off to test his new plane.

The son of a famous pilot, Denver had thousands of hours'

flying experience, and it was a simple flight on a cloudless day.

But over Monterey Bay, something went wrong

and John Denver's plane plummeted into the sea.

He was killed instantly, aged only 53.

# You fill up my senses

# Like a night in a forest

# Like the mountains In spring time... #

When he died, John Denver was no longer in the limelight,

but during the mid-1970s he was America's most successful solo singer.

He was huge. He was one of the biggest artists in America,

one of the biggest artists around the world.

What Frank Sinatra was to the '40s, Elvis Presley was to the '50s,

and the Beatles were to the '60s, John Denver was to the '70s.

It was a rocket ship.

And...it was big. It was really great.

He projected an image of an easy-going country boy,

at home with nature, skiing in the mountains.

But behind the image was a more complicated man -

an Air Force brat who became a peace campaigner.

He was sort of the grandfather of celebrities being activists.

The Stings and the Bonos - I think they were inspired by John back then.

An ambitious, driven man who struggle with depression

and the barbs of the music critics.

He was called the Mickey Mouse of rock. The Ronald Reagan of pop.

That angered him. That's what got under his skin.

70 years after his birth, who was the real John Denver?

And what's the appeal of his timeless songs?

# Come fill me again... #

SONG: 'Rocky Mountain High'

# He was born in the summer Of his 27th year... #

The Rocky Mountains of Colorado,

are forever associated with the music of John Denver,

and many of his most famous songs were inspired by the landscape there.

In the early 1970s, John Denver was a new type of pop star,

living in tune with nature, away from the city.

I find when I come to Los Angeles especially,

more so than most cities, that I physically don't feel good.

I don't have the energy that I have when I'm back up in the mountains.

My eyes hurt. Sometimes I feel a little nauseous from the smog.

And I just prefer being back a ways where it's a little bit quieter.

To me it's a little bit more peaceful.

I can see more of the stars at night. I feel more comfortable.

# Rocky Mountain high... #

He just liked to sit and be in nature.

It filled him up, and out of that,

beautiful things came forth in terms of his songwriting.

When he was in nature, it inspired his songs,

it gave him a sense of who he really was.

It brought him to be able to communicate,

because he lived in it.

# Colorado Rocky Mountain high... #

but the idyllic setting of the Rocky Mountains

was a long way from the place where he grew up.

BIG-BAND SWING MUSIC

John Denver was born in 1943 in Roswell, New Mexico,

at the Air Force base where his father was stationed.

And if this was far away from Denver, Colorado, so was his name.

My real name is Henry John Deutschendorf Junior. And...

That's a whole album cover!

My father was in the Air Force

and we moved around a great deal.

And it was one particular period in my life

when I was 13 years old and we moved from Tucson, Arizona to Montgomery, Alabama.

And I was there for one year and then we moved to Fort Worth, Texas.

It was always hard because you were going into a new school, new people.

John was a little bit more shy, and so it was harder for him.

And the music, especially his guitar,

became a way of making friends and being accepted.

And I said, "I like music, play guitar," blah blah blah.

And so they asked me to bring my guitar to class one day, which I did.

And all of a sudden...

All of a sudden people were saying hello to me in the halls.

All of a sudden people knew me

as more than just another one of the Air Force brats

that was coming through every year through Maxwell Air Force base.

John's father, Dutch Deutschendorf,

had been born to a poor Oklahoma farmer,

but joined the Air Force in the Second World War and soon became a top pilot.

He flew a number of planes.

He actually gave Lindberg a test ride,

and I think it was a B-25, he was flying those bombers,

and then he went on to fly the plane that carried all the electronics

when they dropped the first atomic bomb to test it.

Dutch Deutschendorf achieved national fame flying a new bomber,

the B-58 Hustler.

In 1961, he broke six world air speed records in one day.

My dad was a very tough guy. A hard guy.

And he was hard on us. Not abusive.

I think John was... Not more sensitive,

but a little shier and a little more withdrawn,

and so where Dad and I would fight, John and Dad would argue,

and John would get upset and go in his room, play his guitar.

For this sensitive son of a Cold War warrior, something had to give.

Aged 16, he took the family car and ran away from home,

heading out West to Los Angeles,

with a dream of becoming a folk singer.

But it didn't work out,

and his dad jumped into a friend's jet to retrieve his wayward son.

Dad flew out there, and they went to Disneyland and SeaWorld

and did all these things, and then came back and, to me,

their relationship was, like, golden.

But four years later, John tried again, dropping out of college

and hitting LA just as the folk boom was at its height.

So I left school and I came out here, and started singing every place

I could around Los Angeles, at the hootenannies that were going on,

and things at the Troubadour and stuff like that. And Randy Sparks,

who in those days had a group called the New Christy Minstrels,

gave me the chance to sing and to do it for a couple of weeks,

and gave me an opportunity to find out a little bit about

whether I could work on stage.

And he found out if I worked for him and the audiences liked me.

-Were you John...?

-I was John Deutschendorf.

-Deutschendorf.

And things kind of started going well for us,

at least they felt that we might go someplace.

And one day there was this big heavy meeting

and they sat down and said, "Listen, kid, Deutschendorf..."

-"Has got to go!"

-"..has got to go!"

Randy says that they asked him to change his name and John said,

"No, I will not give up my father's name.

"I'm proud to be a Deutschendorf." And Randy said,

"It won't fit on the marquee. You have to change it."

They had a minor hit at the time called Denver,

written about this city, and the sheet music was on the wall behind the desk.

And they said, "You're John Denver."

Now with his new name, John Denver set out to make it as a folk singer.

The opening came when one of the big names on the folk circuit,

the Chad Mitchell Trio, lost their lead singer,

and hundreds of young folk artists tried out for the role.

He came to New York to audition,

and it was very clear right away that he was the best.

And it turns out I was very cruel, didn't call him for a week.

And he had a very nervous week.

But it was obvious that John was going to be terrific.

We just, you know, we were just knocked out by this guy.

John was a fine musician, an excellent musician,

a very fine 12-string guitar player.

There was an innocence, I think, in a way,

that was believable and true.

The Mitchell Trio's trademark was left-wing political satire.

Their targets were politicians, religious leaders

and any opponents of Civil Rights.

Top of the list was the secret racist group, the Ku Klux Klan.

# You'll never recognise us There's a smile upon our face

# We're changing all our dirty sheets And a-cleaning up the place

# Yep, since we got a lawyer and a public relations man

# We're your friendly, liberal Neighbourhood Ku Klux Klan

# Yes, we're your friendly, liberal Neighbourhood Ku Klux Klan

# Ever since we got that lawyer And that public relations man

# Of course, we did shoot One reporter

# But he was just obscene

# And you can't call us No filthy names

# What does Anglo-Saxon mean? #

For John, being in The Mitchell Trio was a political education.

He says, "I don't know anything about pol-IT-ics."

And we looked at him and said, "John - it's PO-li-tics."

He said, "That's what I said, I don't know anything about that."

Which was really true.

He was youthful, he was young,

and grew up from the viewpoint of the material that we were doing.

# Your friendly neighbourhood Klan who asks

# "What's wrong with a hood?"

# Your friendly, liberal Neighbourhood Ku Klux...

# Grab your Cadillac And head for the hills. #

APPLAUSE

The Mitchell Trio's main audience were university students,

and the group played campuses right across the Midwest.

In spring 1966, they were in St Peter, Minnesota.

In the audience was a young Annie Martell.

I was a sophomore in college,

and John was part of The Mitchell Trio.

And he came into town,

and about three weeks later I got a letter,

and he said that if he was ever in the area again

he would love to meet me and...

have a talk.

And a year later, he called me and he came over and picked me up,

and that's how this all started.

I was 20 and John was 23.

Very young, but I thought he was very glamorous, very worldly.

He was not at all, but I thought so.

The two were married in June 1967, but for John,

the hard life touring with The Mitchell Trio carried on.

He was starting to write songs, and recorded some of them

at his own expense, sending the album out as a Christmas present.

This is the Christmas album that John made for all his friends,

relatives, associates early in his tenure in The Mitchell Trio.

Track three on the album was called, Babe, I Hate To Go.

Milt Okun liked the tune, but not the title.

I said, "John, that's a terrible name for a very beautiful song."

He said, "What would you call it?" I said, "Leaving on a jet plane."

He said, "But that's the third line of the chorus.

"You never heard a song named after the third line of a chorus."

I said, "It's a good name, let's go with it." And he went with it.

SONG: 'Leaving On A Jet Plane'

# All my bags are packed I'm ready to go

# I'm standing here Outside your door... #

Milt Okun passed the song onto another of his acts,

Peter, Paul and Mary, and it became a smash hit,

going to the top of the American pop charts.

# The taxi's waiting He's blowing his horn

# Already I'm so lonesome... #

John became a friend of the group, and would sometimes join them on stage.

# So kiss me and smile for me

# Tell me that you'll wait for me

# Hold me like you'll never let me go

# I'm leaving on a jet plane

# I don't know when I'll be back again... #

With the Vietnam War at its height,

the song gained added poignancy and became a favourite among the troops.

For them, it was their goodbye song when they were going to war.

So it's very moving to see how a song travels in these kinds of ways.

And how a song like Leaving On A Jet Plane

has become really important to people.

The song had a resonance for John even closer to home

when his younger brother, Ron, went to Vietnam.

Well, I got drafted in 1968.

The weekend I shipped to Vietnam,

John was at the Washington Monument at a peace concert.

A protest concert. And...

That was just the way it went.

# Last night I had The strangest dream

# I never dreamed before

# I dreamed the world Had all agreed

# To put an end to war. #

Even with his success as a songwriter,

John and The Mitchell Trio were struggling.

Their clean-cut good looks were out of step with the new long-haired rock bands,

and in 1968 they called it a day.

John decided to pursue a solo career,

but his producer, Milt Okun, struggled to get record companies interested.

I struck out with John Hammond at Columbia, Wexler at Atlantic,

and half a dozen others.

And someone at RCA, Harry Jenkins, liked it.

And I brought John in the next day to sing for the executives.

And it was a home run.

John Denver signed to RCA in 1969.

His first albums were in the classic singer-songwriter vein.

The songs were intimate and personal,

full of images of the natural world.

# Oh, I am the eagle I live in high country

# In rocky cathedrals That reach to the sky

# I am the hawk and there's Blood on my feathers

# But time is still turning They soon will be dry. #

Songs like The Eagle And The Hawk remained a mainstay of John's act for years to come.

But those early records refused to sell.

Jerry Weintraub is now a top Hollywood producer.

Then, he was a streetwise New York music promoter,

and was brought in as John's new manager.

And we got along, and I said, "Yeah, let's try it." So we tried it.

And it was very successful for a long time.

He was...

He was a farm boy.

Really didn't understand the city or the ways of the city.

He was kind of naive at the time.

But he was nice.

John came to the meeting, you know,

with a guitar slung over his back and wearing sandals,

and I wasn't sure that this meeting would last more than five minutes.

But, you know, the synergy was there, and it became successful.

# And reach for the heavens And hope for the future

# And all that we can be Not what we are. #

You don't make anybody anything,

you expose people to the talent

and they either like it or they don't. You can't make anybody like...

You don't put a gun on their head and say, "Go buy this record."

They listen to it, and they decide to enjoy it or not enjoy it.

I enjoyed his music and his songs,

and I always felt he was going to be a star.

Jerry and John loved each other,

and I think Jerry epitomised a lot for John in terms of

show business, and Jerry saw something in John,

I think his wholesomeness and this kind of, "gee-whiz" quality.

We all got on a rocket ship together,

and it was big, it was really big.

The song that launched the rocket ship was

Take Me Home, Country Roads.

# Almost Heaven West Virginia... #

It was co-written by two of John's friends from the folk scene,

Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert

# Life is old there Older than the trees

# Younger than the mountains Blowing like a breeze... #

We were working at the Cellar Door as John's opening act,

the week between Christmas and New Year's 1970 going into '71.

John liked our music.

He was going to come over one night he wanted to know what else we had.

I said, "Let's show him Country Roads."

Bill says, "It's not finished."

I said, "I know, but, you know, let's just show him what we got."

And he absolutely loved it.

And in the singing of it, John took the lead,

Bill and I fell in with a harmony

and it just sounded so good like that,

that we just decided to perform it like that the next night at the club.

# Dark and dusty Painted on the sky

# Misty taste of moonshine

# Teardrops in my eye Country roads take me home

# To the place I belong

# West Virginia Mountain momma

# Take me home Country roads. #

I remember riding in a car with him. We were going to a concert in Connecticut.

And he heard on the radio for the first time. We heard it on the radio.

And when I heard it on the radio, I turned to him and said,

"That's going to be a smash hit. That's great."

But I loved it. And the public loved it. And they sold.

Sold a lot of records. He sold an amazing amount of records.

He was an amazing artist.

Take Me Home, Country Roads was a huge hit in the summer of 1971,

peaking at number two in the charts

and selling more than three million copies.

# Mountain momma Take me home country roads... #

When we recorded Country Roads,

we needed a little "tsch-tsch" noise at one point,

and the only thing that made any sense in the studio was,

John had some change in his pocket,

and instead of a tambourine or something that was loud,

it was just a "tsch-tsch-tsch-tsch."

Money made music, baby.

# Down country roads Take me home

# Down country roads. #

APPLAUSE

# It's a long way From LA to Denver... #

After the success of Country Roads,

John moved permanently up to the Rocky Mountains

and built his dream home in the ski resort of Aspen, Colorado.

# A long way home to Starwood in Aspen... #

Now it's one of the wealthiest towns in America,

home to billionaires and movie stars,

but back then it was very different.

# Sweet Rocky Mountain paradise... #

All of the mountain towns,

it was a little bit more like the Wild West then.

But unexplored, certainly.

John fell in love with the outdoors, and it was reflected in his music.

And I think he was on the cusp of that becoming part of everyone's consciousness back in the '70s,

just looking around and seeing the beauty of nature.

And hearing it expressed in his music was a big plus for him.

# I forgot what it's like To be home... #

It was this old mining town becoming a ski area, becoming a famous ski area.

And you also had this little intellectual, cultural aspect.

All of it was in its formation. It was a wonderful time to be here.

And you'd have dinner with people

that were plumbers, electricians, fishing guides.

Everything was pretty easy, very laid-back and safe. Safe.

You could be yourself here.

# Oh, my sweet Rocky Mountain Paradise. #

Inspired by this relaxed, back-to-nature lifestyle,

John wrote a hymn to the Rocky Mountains and his life there.

The song went on to become an anthem for the state of Colorado.

# He was born in the summer Of his 27th year

# Coming home to a place He'd never been before... #

We went camping, backpacking with some friends to a place

not far from here called Williams Lake,

and it was the night of the Perseid meteor shower.

And we're all camping and we're laying out under the stars

and they start really going through the sky between midnight and three.

And everybody was clapping and yelling,

and it's really a magnificent, magnificent thing to see.

Out of that he wrote Rocky Mountain High.

"I've seen it raining fire in the sky."

# But the Colorado Rocky Mountain high

# I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky

# The shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullaby

# Rocky Mountain high. #

'So we were up all night watching the most glorious display that'

I've ever seen in these mountains, of meteorites,

and with that camping trip

and with the feeling of coming home here to Colorado, to a place

I'd never been before, I ended up writing Rocky Mountain High.

APPLAUSE

Country Roads and Rocky Mountain High were big hits,

but John's next move cemented his stardom.

Folk music on television to that date had been serious and earnest.

But John's outgoing personality made him a natural for the small screen.

I...I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, "Sure, he can play guitar and sing.

"But...can he juggle?"

LAUGHTER

'Television is a very different medium

'from live entertainment, because...

'you watch television in your home and in 1970'

people had television sets in their bedroom

and they laid in bed and they watched television.

When you let somebody into your bedroom,

they'd better be a nice person or you don't want them in your bedroom.

This is TV, right?

I can do it again or do you want me to leave it like that?

That's a very different quality, from just being a performer,

he had that quality.

People wanted to be around him,

he made people feel good and comfortable.

# Jessie went away last summer

# Couple of months ago. #

In 1973, Jerry Weintraub launched John Denver's television career

not in America, but on the BBC where there was less stress on ratings.

The six-part series combined music, dance and comedy routines.

It was a runaway success with British viewers.

# I think I'd rather be a cowboy. #

'It was my first step in television, in entertainment television,

'I'd done a couple of documentaries prior to that,

'and what I wanted to do was to come someplace where there wasn't quite

so much pressure on the subject and to stretch out a little bit

and see if I could dance and what kind of comedy I could do.

# Magic moments.

'I was doing Top Of The Pops with Pan's People, six dancers,

'a wonderful choreographer, Flick Colby.'

I wish we'd had a camera on the rehearsal of the choreography

because that was insanely funny, because he was pretty much

flat-footed, but Flick was clever enough to give him little moves

that he could do and of course it was always hilarious.

Me Tarzan, you Jane.

It was a joy, we did a live show every week.

Live on stage with an audience.

But it was more like a variety show.

# And daggers fly Everybody loves to see the villain. #

And we were wearing costumes and doing silly songs.

Oh, it was so much fun.

-John Denver!

-CROWD CHEERS

The series also gave John his catch phrase.

It's far out, you guys have been so great.

I thought that was far out, it made my whole day.

Far out!

The success of the BBC series was repeated in the USA

where John hosted TV specials and documentaries.

He was fast becoming one of the biggest stars in American music.

And his greatest hits album of 1973 sold over 10 million copies

in the first six months alone.

The Rocky Mountains were John's retreat,

a place where he could hide away.

Staying there in early 1974, he wrote his most famous song -

a love letter to his wife, Annie.

Although it was written after a row.

John and I were in our kitchen.

And we had had an argument.

And we'd had an argument and then we had sorted it out.

And he left to go skiing.

And I was putzing around and about a half hour later,

45 minutes later, he came back in the door.

And he had gone to Aspen Mountain and gotten on the chairlift

and he wrote the song in 10 minutes.

And he came back and he played it for me.

# You fill up my senses

# Like a night in a forest

# Like the mountains in springtime

# 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. #

There was nobody on the mountain when I started out that day.

I skied down this very tough run, all out of breath,

I skied right onto the lift.

I was riding up again, sitting there, catching my breath,

looking down at where I'd just been a few months ago -

all this physical stuff going on.

When suddenly I was hypersensitive to how beautiful everything was.

The sky was a blue you only see from mountain tops.

Then I became aware of the other people skiing,

the colours of their clothes, the birds singing,

the sound of the lift,

the sibilant sound of the skiers going down the mountain.

All of these things filled up my senses

and, when I said this to myself,

unbidden images came one after the other -

the night in the forest, a walk in the rain,

the mountains in springtime.

All of the pictures merged and then what I was left with was Annie.

That song was the embodiment of the love that I felt at the time.

In the 10 minutes it took to reach the top of the mountain,

the song was there.

# Let me give my life to you. #

It's been wonderful for me, because I've heard it in elevators,

I've heard it in St Mark's Square with violinists.

My daughter had it played at her wedding.

Erm...

but people still carry that with them

and it's just a beautiful, beautiful gift.

The songs weren't contrived, he wasn't a Tin Pan Alley writer -

he didn't go into an office in the morning

or a studio and say,

"I'm going to sit and write some songs," whenever it hit him.

He, erm, he wrote a song.

# You fill up my senses

# Come fill me again. #

APPLAUSE

John Denver's rise to stardom coincided

with a bleak time in American life.

With the Watergate crisis and the end of the Vietnam War,

his simple songs of love and nature

struck a chord across war-weary America.

# Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy. #

You know, this was the Vietnam era,

Nixon, hearings, there were problems with gasoline shortages.

It's in those crisis moments when you look to home and hearth

and meaning and taking care of the Earth and taking care of each other.

# Looks so lovely. #

Yes, it does.

So, this was post the hippie period

and it was more a middle America appeal, I think,

to people who did want that kind of kindness.

Not as a gesture of opposition.

But as a simple affirmation

of people's ability to care about one another.

# Just like today. #

But not everyone liked John Denver.

In the rock music press, he was widely loathed.

John took his shots from a generation of rock critics

in the early '70s.

Rock journalism was kind of in its nascent stages at the time

and you had people jockeying for position by pointing out

the coolest music or the newest music

or the most underground music.

And that wasn't John.

John wore granny glasses, he said "far out",

he was relentlessly cheerful.

So he wasn't going to get backing in that particular sector

and it's too bad, because they didn't pay attention to his music,

they paid attention to his image.

Well, they didn't say good things about him, you know.

They didn't give him the same adulation that they gave the Beatles

or that they gave...

And he sold as many records. He didn't get that from the critics.

He got the opposite. They'd say, "What is this about?"

John read that stuff and it really affected him.

'The last interview I conducted with John was in the early '90s

'and we got around to the topic of his detractors'

and he said something that really resonated with me.

He was called the Mickey Mouse Of Rock,

the Ronald Reagan Of Pop.

What he was angry about was what it meant regarding his fans -

the people that had seen a birth of a child to his music or

had gotten married to one of his songs -

that they were being disparaged.

That angered him. That's what got under his skin.

John would sing to 18,000 people

and the music critics would just talk about how pap his music was,

and the last tag line was

"But the 18,000 people seemed to enjoy it."

John Denver was a hugely popular live entertainer.

His concerts often had the reverence of a religious gathering,

rather than a regular pop concert.

# I had an uncle name of Matthew. #

He put together a stellar band,

many of whom had played for Elvis, like guitar legend James Burton.

His music was very disciplined.

And everything had to be just in the right spot, the right space.

And John relied a lot on his band,

but he was a very good musician and a great singer/songwriter.

And he could put the people in the palm of his hand.

It was just like a one-on-one, you know.

The people were right there with him.

I mean, even though we had 30,000 people,

it was like they were right there with us on stage.

# Blue, just a Kansas summer sky. #

Now, you hear that? That's not a Rocky Mountain High.

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen. My friend, Mr Frank Sinatra.

By 1976, less than five years after Country Roads,

this former folky had been transformed

into America's most popular performer.

Now the biggest stars wanted to be seen alongside him.

# I've got you under my skin. #

'I remember the first time they worked together,

'we did Harrah's in Lake Tahoe.'

And when we put the show on sale,

the phone lines in the western United States

went down from the reservations.

That's how big it was.

You know, Frank, I was just thinking about the time that song

was first heard, so was I.

LAUGHTER

Boy, you know how to make a guy feel mature, don't you?

Well, no, really, Frank,

do you have any idea how many romances got started to your music?

-No, I don't, but I never got any of the action either.

-Folks...

Sometime during his tenure with the trio,

I remember him saying that it was one of his ambitions

in life to become as much of a household name as Frank Sinatra.

The pay off came years later

when I found myself in Los Angeles driving up Sunset Boulevard

and looking up and seeing a humongous poster of the two of them

with their arms crossed, standing back-to-back with each other.

And I thought to myself, "By golly, he made it!"

# But I get a kick

# You give me a boot

# I get a kick

# Out of you

# Out of you. #

APPLAUSE

John was now in the superstar league -

he had his own Learjet and got his dad to fly it for him.

I hope you folks recognise me,

but I'm not sure you'll recognise the gentleman on my right.

He's my father, John Deutschendorf.

He's been a pilot all his life, he taught me how to fly.

# I guess he'd rather be in Colorado. #

And back home in Aspen, John's own family started to grow

as he and Annie adopted two small children.

Zach was the first and he was this little brown, beautiful little boy.

And then Anna Kate was the second.

And John was just thrilled and over the moon

that this was happening too, cos we'd have a boy and a girl.

You know, when I was younger, I just thought that was, I guess,

it was normal.

Erm, you know, I thought it was always like that

until I was old enough to understand that it was different.

Erm, and that all these people were coming to see him.

And for Zach and kids everywhere, John was a fixture on '70s TV

through his frequent appearances with the Muppets.

It was... Early on, it was, you know when the Muppets were big, I guess.

It's different than it is now.

But it was always a lot of fun.

Where to, Mr?

Get in.

Oh.

Already a big star on TV, John Denver next went into the movies.

Produced by Jerry Weintraub,

Oh, God was a comedy which played on John's everyman appeal

by casting him as a supermarket manager

who is visited by the Almighty,

personified by 90-year-old comedian George Burns.

I was just thinking, maybe...

-What about a little rain?

-A little rain?

Yeah, a small shower.

One small shower, you got it.

RAIN STARTS

Hey, hey, it's raining.

You made it rain!

'It was an exciting time and Oh, God was a big hit all around the world.

'I don't know how skilled he was as an actor,'

he was good because he did on screen exactly what he did on television.

He had a great smile and you accepted him in your house.

I wouldn't term him an ac... He was a singer, an artist.

It's just like Noah's Ark!

Same thing, without the smell.

# It's cold here in the city. #

Despite his huge success,

John Denver had always been prone to insecurity and self-doubt.

From the early '70s,

he'd been involved in new-age therapies including

the controversial self-awareness programme EST or est.

Est is Erhard Seminars Training,

it's one of the many self discovery actions or seminars or workshops...

Why did you want to discover more about yourself? Was it something you were uncomfortable with?

Oh, I think it's part of what Tom Wolfe called,

in the 1970s, The Me Decade.

We really want to know who we are.

There are things going on.

We learn more and more about ourselves all the time.

And to really find out what it is that makes us tick

and how we are and can be really individuals

and how our lives can make a difference.

He was extraordinarily serious about est.

That doesn't mean that I have to be, you know,

I thought it was stupid, but that's just me.

But I know a lot of people that came out of est,

they'd got a lot from it.

But he needed that. You know, people need things,

they turn to whatever it is that gets them through the day.

That helped him get through the day for a very long time.

John was complicated.

I think people have a certain vision of him -

the kind of "Gee golly, far out," those kind of things.

But he was basically a pretty quiet guy.

I think he was insecure.

But I think he had a difficult time with success.

I think that was very hard for him.

Because I don't think he knew how good he was.

Many, many artists don't realise how good they are,

that's when the darkness comes out.

I don't think he ever accepted the fact that he was as good as he was.

Because the critics always were a problem for him.

I think most of our fear comes from not thinking we're enough

and that ironically I think sometimes the more success you can have,

and particularly if it's been a rocket ship, a rocket ride,

that there's not all that time to develop perhaps other aspects of yourself.

That's just my take on it.

But for the time being, these doubts were put to one side as John

continued his reign as America's favourite singer.

He was one of the first celebrities to use his fame to raise awareness

of environmental issues and forged a firm friendship

with underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau.

-Welcome aboard Calypso.

-It is great to be here.

-Let me show you around.

At some point, I think it was during dinner or after dinner,

he asked my dad, he said,

"Captain, do you mind if I go to the bow of the ship

"for a while? I need to think." And my dad said, "Yes, of course."

So he went to the bow and that's when he wrote Aye Calypso.

# Aye, Calypso, the places you've been to

# Things that you show us The stories you tell

# Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit

# The men who have served you so long and so well. #

Typical of John and his generosity, ultimately he gave the revenue

of that particular song to the not-for-profit company of my father.

And I remember collecting big cheques.

Supporting Jacques Cousteau was only one strand

of John's political activism and this side of him,

last seen in the Mitchell Trio days, was reborn.

He campaigned against whaling...

# Have you heard the song the humpback hears 500 miles away

# Telling tales of ancient history of passages and home. #

..and worked with President Jimmy Carter

on a commission combating hunger in Africa.

He was the guy that was there before We Are The World,

the whole Hunger Project, he started that.

Working on the President's commission

on world and domestic hunger.

Everywhere he saw... And this was in the '70s, this is early

and he was ahead of his time.

The Stings and the Bonos

and the people who use their status well to help others,

I think they were inspired by John back then, he sort of set the tone.

To further these ideas, John Denver set up his own foundation, Windstar,

and bought a large tract of land near Aspen as its base.

This is late '70s, the land was purchased by the mid-'80s,

we had hundreds of people out there,

we had wind generation experiments, solar demonstrations,

we had an international symposium where 1,500 people would come,

so it was an exciting, exciting place

and probably ahead of its time.

# Usually in the morning

# I'm filled with sweet belonging. #

While he was famous as a campaigner, by the early 1980s,

John Denver's status as a pop star was fading.

Although his albums were still popular,

he hadn't had a hit single since Calypso in 1975.

His personal life was also in turmoil.

His father, to whom he'd grown closer through their love of flying,

died suddenly in March 1982.

And only three months later, on their 15th wedding anniversary,

Annie asked him for a divorce.

It's complicated.

I think anybody that's been married to an entertainer or in that

kind of industry where it's bigger than life...

I think the pressures are enormous and I didn't have the maturity,

and I don't think John did, either,

to be able to deal with each other the way perhaps we could now, today.

You know, there was hurt, there was anger,

there was disappointment and I know for me when I look back is that we

were young and we didn't know how to talk about these things.

Well, I think over the last four, five, six years,

we started drifting away from one another and part of it had to do with

the amount of time that we spent not together

and the things that we, I suppose,

got locked into and not being together

and then an inflexibility when we got back together

to sort of integrate the other's life into our own.

Within that, we sort of found that we have different interests,

we had different friends, we had very little in common.

-Do you see her?

-Yes, I do.

# This is what it's like falling out of love

# This is the way you lose your very best friend

# This is how it feels when it's all over

# This is just the way a true love ends. #

Like so many people, they look at divorce like it's a failure.

It's one of those big failures, you know.

John was depressed about it.

He loved his kids, I think he loved Annie

and John had all of the things tugging at him

that he wasn't about to give up.

And Annie wanted a guy to be around and he wasn't.

# Then the nights grow cold and hard to live through. #

The down spells cycled throughout his life

from when he was very young.

And I think he went through this enormous down spell with relationships.

And maybe because suddenly they weren't playing his music,

every star has their flourishing

and then there's a time when you're not being played,

so those insecurities might have crept in. Who knows?

All I know is John went through a very difficult time.

# This is how it feels when it's all over. #

Well, I think as we get older and we lose people...

You know, his father died and then his first marriage failed.

And then he had other disappointments

and I think you become more serious.

Yeah, I think it was a hard period for him,

but like they say, "One door closes and another one opens."

And in Australia in 1986 there was a new stage in John's life

when he met singer and actress Cassandra Delaney.

I was in Sydney, cos that's where I was raised,

and I was actually a wedding singer the night that I met John.

I was at the Sebel Town House doing a show for this wedding

and we were sitting at the bar and it was packed and in walks this...

this guy with two guys beside him and I looked over and it was...

And he looked at me and it was kind of love at first sight.

And I turned to my guitar player and he was like,

"Do know who that is?" I'm, like, "No."

And he's like, "That's John Denver," and I went, "Oh, well...

"John Denver. Well, maybe I'll just go home!"

After a whirlwind courtship, John and Cassandra married

and she joined his life on the road and his campaigning.

When I met him in the late '80s,

he was really getting involved in the politics of the environment

and you know he was passionate about NASA and going to the moon.

You know, he was going into space.

For many years, John had been one of the foremost campaigners

for civilians to go into space.

He hoped to lead the way as a passenger

on the Challenger Space Shuttle.

Until President Reagan announced a year and a half ago, during his

presidential campaign, that he was going to send a teacher first,

I thought that I would be the first one to go and that was my flight.

He sent Christa McAuliffe.

I knew all of the astronauts on board,

I knew Christa. I support NASA 1,000%.

I think it's one of the best things going on

not only in the United States, but in the world.

Tragically, the Challenger exploded on take off

killing everyone on board.

Would you go if there were another Challenger mission?

I would go right now, I would go tomorrow if it were possible.

# They gave us their light

# They gave us their spirit and all they could be. #

Although he still featured in events like the Challenger Benefit,

by the mid-1980s John Denver's star had fallen.

When the charity record, We Are The World, was produced in 1985,

he wasn't even invited to take part.

He also broke up with his long-term manager Jerry Weintraub.

And, in 1986, Denver was dropped by RCA,

the company for whom he'd sold over 100 million records.

RCA was an incredibly stupid record company.

Unfortunately, every year they changed presidents

and changed A&R people and new people came in, younger people,

they didn't care about John Denver,

they probably didn't even know who he was, you know?

# Lady, are you happy?

# Do you feel the way I do? #

His personal life went through more troubles.

Although John and Cassandra had a baby daughter, Jesse Belle,

their marriage was short-lived and ended in divorce after four years.

In the 1990s, his appearances in the media were more often

for drunk-driving offences than for his music.

# My sweet lady. #

But John Denver had a loyal fanbase

and he still played sell-out shows around the world.

In 1995, he released a double live album

which surprised many by going gold.

For his friends,

John seemed to be in a happier place than he'd been for many years.

He was turning the corner on so many things.

He was still discovering what he's going to do in this next era.

But there was a deeper peace about him, a deeper understanding

about him, much greater wisdom about this celebrity which the

flourishing star maybe had passed, but the ability to make a difference

was possibly even stronger, because he had greater wisdom.

But tragically there was to be no comeback for John Denver.

Since learning to fly with his father, he'd become a keen pilot,

owning a number of high-performance stunt planes.

On October 12th, 1997,

he took delivery of an experimental kit plane, the Long-EZ.

Test flying it at a low level over Monterey Bay,

the plane crashed into the sea.

The accident report concluded that it had run out of fuel

and that John had been unable to switch to the reserve tank.

He was killed instantly.

We got to talking one day and I said,

"John, do you ever think about something,

"maybe tragedy in a plane or something?" He said, "Never."

He said, "If it's my time to go,

"I would want to go flying my plane."

I picked up the phone and Malcolm said that,

"Cassie, there's been an accident."

And I'm like...

I, I pretty much just fell to the floor.

And then I got on the phone and started talking to everybody

and telling them how it was a mistake, it wasn't John,

he wasn't there, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And trying to cover it to keep it from getting to Mom...

for a while.

# I've been lately thinking about my life's time

# All the things I've done and how it's been

# And I can't help believing in my own mind

# I know I'm gonna hate to see it end. #

I think he was a great artist.

I think he was a wonderful man, a wonderful fellow, when I knew him.

I loved him dearly, I miss him a lot.

# I've known my lady's pleasures. #

He represented America at its best and healthiest.

He's a wonderful artist and a wonderful writer

and I think his songs will be sung for hundreds of years.

They're that good.

# I have to say it now It's been a good life all in all. #

My brother was a great guy.

I mean, he could be wonderfully generous, like all people,

and he could be an asshole like all people.

And I have experiences of both, you know.

It didn't affect my love for him or that I like his music.

# Sit and pass the pipe around. #

He was a hard guy to picture dead, cos he'd been so alive.

As I said, nothing scared him.

# How sweet it is to love someone How great it is to care

# How long it's been since yesterday. #

I feel close to him, you know, when I'm in the mountains.

And, you know, when I'm looking at things that I know he looked at,

you know, that he saw, I feel pretty close to him.

# And talk of poems and prayers and promises

# And things that we believe in

# How sweet it is to love someone How right it is to care

# How long it's been from yesterday

# What about tomorrow?

# What about our dreams and all the memories we share? #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd