A John Denver tribute band. Now there’s a concept. I would never have imagined such a thing, but there it was, last weekend at the red-roof church out on Bitner Road, a concert put on by the “Friends With You Band.” They travel around performing the music of John Denver. Who knew?
John Denver is kind of generational metaphor. In my high school and college days, John Denver’s music was the soundtrack of my life. It was idealistic, green, almost painfully innocent. He sang of a world where we all lived in harmony with each other, with nature, and everything was in a blissful, simple balance. With John Denver on our two-pound Sony Walkman cassette tape players, we could walk barefoot in the woods, at one with nature, giddy with love and proud of the un-materialistic, simple life. I actually knew people who got round wire-rim glasses, despite perfect vision, just to look more like John Denver. I didn’t know what true love felt like at that tender age, but I was sure that it looked like West Virginia and sounded just like John Denver’s “Annie’s Song.”
“Annie’s Song” became an official and essential part of every marriage ceremony performed for a decade. Friends would write their own vows and get very creative about the wedding, but you didn’t mess around with “Annie’s Song.” My friends ran a wide spectrum from orthodox Mormons to flat-out hippies. The one constant was that nobody got married without “Annie’s Song.”
We all ran out and bought each new album when it came out, and played them over and over again until the vinyl got old and scratchy. We sang John Denver songs around the campfire after backpacking deep into the Uintas. My first car was pretty basic, with just an AM radio instead of the deluxe eight-track tape player. But after a few years, I was able to buy a cassette deck, and John Denver was among the first tapes to be transferred from the worn-out records. He was the poet laureate of Colorado, for whatever that was worth.
Then, as success went to his head, John Denver and his beloved wife, Annie, split the sheets. Everybody had to find new music for the wedding. He moved to Starwood in Aspen. In his songs, it was some kind of Walden-west idyllic paradise. We all imagined John sitting in a rough little cabin, warmed by a wood stove, writing new emotion-laden songs on his guitar, while the wildflowers blossomed outside. But it turned out that Starwood was one of those high-snoot gated communities full of McMansions. That kind of ostentatious living was even more unusual then, and was shockingly out of context for John Denver. The gates were to keep his unwashed fans away. It was coupled with all kinds of excesses – fast cars and private planes. Rumors leaked out that John Denver was just another spoiled-rotten rich pop star, living the fast life and snorting cocaine with the likes of Hunter S. Thompson. There were DUI arrests, and death in a plane crash that reeked of pilot impairment. Had it all been a fraud?
The John Denver albums abruptly quit spinning, the cassette tapes rattled their way to the bottom of the glove box, never to be heard again. We grew up, got our hair cut, and took jobs we didn’t necessarily like. “Sunshine on my Shoulders” gave way to a necktie around my neck, a mortgage, and all that stuff. I hadn’t thought of John Denver in at least a decade, maybe two. And then, from out of the blue, there is a John Denver tribute band playing out on Bitner Road. Far out!
I suspect that there are still John Denver albums in a box somewhere in the depths of my basement. I don’t know that I have any equipment left that would actually play a record album. So far I’ve resisted the urge to revisit my youth on iTunes and download a bunch of John Denver classics for the iPod. In a way, I’m afraid to. His music seemed almost profound 35 years ago. I’m not sure I’m ready to run the risk that it seems sappy now. Some memories are better left undisturbed. Yet other musicians from that era are still on the current playlist. James Taylor, Carole King, the Simons – Paul and Carly – and others are right there on the iPod, along with Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane and some really odd country western selections. So it may be possible to do a John Denver revival. But it seems risky.
John Denver wasn’t the only ghost from the past to come roaring back to center stage this week. Ralph Nader is once again going to save the world by running for president. Nader, who is best remembered now for having pulled enough votes from Al Gore to elect George Bush, seems to think that he is the man of the hour again. He always maintains that he didn’t take any votes from Gore – that there were millions of voters who didn’t vote at all, and that Gore ran a crappy campaign and failed to excite people. There’s a lot of merit in that, but in the end, the whole mess in Florida likely would not have happened without Nader’s votes. It’s impossible to know how the world would look today if Gore had been elected instead of Bush eight years ago, but it’s hard to imagine it could be any worse.
While Nader is going to stir the already confusing pot on the national scene, perennial candidate Merrill Cook announced that he would run for Congress again in Utah’s Second District. Not even the Republicans like him. But maybe this is a year when the Republicans would be wise to run candidates they don’t mind seeing lose.
But with Nader and Cook back on the scene, it seems like old times again. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Tom Clyde served as Park City attorney in the 1980s and is the author of “More Dogs On Main Street.” He has been a columnist at The Park Record for nearly 20 years.