Reflections on miraculously returned John Denver CDs!

The year before he was killed in a crash in an experimental plane, I went to John Denver's concert in Edinburgh Usher Hall, 1996. Along with the Joan Baez concert in Glasgow around the same time, it remains one of the most memorable live music experiences of my life. One singer, two guitars and the best part of three hours of song, conversation, laughter and by a process of emotional assimilation a shared love of humanity, our world and all the possibilities of a life enriched by compassion, humour and eyes open to the gift that life is. Being there was a privilege, and if he had been there for more than one evening I'd have gone for a repeat performance - because he was a consummate performer who respected, liked and connected with his audiences.

Over the years I've patiently and heedlessly endured the raised eyebrows, knowing smirks, pitying shakes of the head and general dismissiveness of many who wondered about my idiosyncratic enthusiasm for a smiling bespectacled country singer with a page boy haircut and granny glasses. Don't care. John Denver's music has been a source of serious reflection, more or less innocent fun, and humanely conceived lyrics of political protest and articulate environmentalism since I was a teenager and his music was produced on that cutting edge technology called vinyl. And anyway, who else in the 1970's was singing about overharvesting the seas, the pollution of the oceans, (the track calypso is dedicated to Jacques Cousteau), the environmental impact of forest stripping, and the irreversible loss of birds, animals and flowers due to consummate consumer greed? Some others, but not many of them so persistently. Why tell you all this?

Just recovered three CD's that I was sure had simply vanished without trace into the CD warehouses of those who borrow on a permanent basis. One of them is my favourite album which I still have on vinyl - Windsong. Just spent an hour listening to it and thinking of music as an emotional holiday, a gift that takes us out of ourselves and yet can also take us deeper into ourselves. I suppose much of this album  drew on early New Age imagery and discourse - but the wider application of lyrics about friendship as the gift that dispels loneliness, about the search for who we are and where in the world we fit in, and about that world as fragile, finite gift to be cherished. Denver was all but pantheist in his worldview; but much of what he sings calls us to a responsible cherishing of our earth, and an underlying optimism about the future that as a Christian I find more securely rooted in a doctrine of creation and a redemptive eschatology.

Denver was heavily involved in global humanitarian work, particularly on behalf of charities tackling world hunger; his song 'I want to live' became an anthem which expresses the human rights issues that underlie the economic imbalance between the developed world and the two thirds world. There isn't the hard edged rage of the prophet Amos, but there is passionate protest in the plea of the hungry as sung by Denver:

There are children raised in sorrow
on a scorched and barren plain
there are children raised beneath the golden sun
There are children of the water,
children of the sand
and they cry out through the universe
their voices raised as one

I want to live, I want to grow
I want to see, I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be, I want to live

Have you gazed out on the ocean
seen the breaching of a whale?
Have you watched the dolphins frolic in the foam?
Have you heard the song the humpback hears
five hundred miles away
Telling tales of ancient history
of passages and home

I want to live, I want to grow
I want to see, I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be, I want to live

For the worker and warrior, the lover and the liar
For the native and the wanderer in kind
For the maker and the user and the mother and her son

We are standing all together
face to face and arm in arm
We are standing on the treshold of a dream
No more hunger, no more killing
no more wasting life away
It is simply an idea
and I know its time has come

I want to live, I want to grow
I want to see, I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be.....

Comments

[Judy]

We have so much in common here! Absolutely love your article. I was blessed in seeing John in Pittsburgh for a Valentine Concert in 1997. You perfectly expressed MY feelings about that wonderful concert as your concert was similar. You have reminded me to pull out my favorite "album/CD", WINDSONG, and soar with his music today. I really need it. Thanks for the reminder! And yes, you KNOW how I selected my online name!

[Faith Currant]

Thank you for this. Every word you say is true. The man was a giant among men. Now it's up to us to make sure his work wasn't in vain.

[Kay Kireilis]

I have been a fan since my teenage years hearing John sing about all the things that I cared about and I am passionate about too. Have always loved the Windsong album! It’s one of my favorites♥️
I was blessed to get to be the first violinist in the string quartet on his last concert in Denver at fiddlers Green. Getting to meet him, perform with him and thank him for all his music and what it has meant to my life is certainly a cherished memory!