The Quest for Silver with Chris Tuffer Episode EXTRA

Hi folks - this episode is the beginning of a new season with an amazing interview and collection of songs by the late John Denver.  We hope you enjoy listening to the candid comments of a legend of great tunes and a man who was an influence on society in the twentieth century.  He left tragically due to a design flaw in his experimental aircraft but he left us with a plethora of great songs and memories.  Please give us your opinion of this episode - thankyou.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Hi, folks, Chris Tuffer here as we Quest for Silver. Today we have the privilege to share this hour with John Denver, who will begin our program with introspective remarks about his career and life as a communicator, singer, songwriter par excellence.

SPEAKER_09 0:57

I love to sing, and when I'm really singing, it's it's the most wonderful thing in the world to me. And uh it's a glorious thing, though, to have the audience in the palm of your hand and to take them where you want them to go, and to know that the things that you're feeling that you're recreating out of your own experience and expressing are bringing the same kinds of emotions up for them. I mean, what kind of a netwit is that? You know? Uh so sometimes that's people perception out of that kind of thing, but I don't think happy go lucky. I think optimist, positive to a fault, you know, really looking on the bright side to a fault. I think that's true.

SPEAKER_07 2:09

Will life on the farm is kind of led back? Ain't much an old country boy like me can't hack. It's early to rise, early in the sack. Thank God I'm a country boy.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

John, in your very candid autobiography, you share what I would describe as the dark side of what it's like performing night after night on the road. And you actually give us a glimpse of the repercussion of one night stands trying to survive in an industry, a way of life with substance abuse from the likes of some of the not-so recreational drugs such as cocaine and LSD.

SPEAKER_09 2:50

Didn't do very well for cocaine. I did LSD a few times, and it was back at the time, you know, I can't imagine. Uh you know, most of the people I knew, uh I I know, in fact, even uh our president says he tried marijuana, he didn't inhale. But uh there are some things that I regret. There are some things if I had to to do it all over again I I w I wouldn't have done or wouldn't do.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

I expect that it was certainly not funny at the time. But as you laid out in your book, how you suddenly leaped into your house with a chainsaw in hand and proceeded to hack into your dining room table.

SPEAKER_09 3:27

Oh, yeah, I think it's pretty funny. I think Annie and I are are pretty straight about that. I you know, she was scared. And I and I didn't mean to scare her. I would I it it didn't even occur to me that she would ever think that I would hurt her. You know, here I am standing with a chainsaw, and what else is she gonna think, right? But I I just didn't I can't conceive anybody would think that I would hurt them. I'm not that kind of person.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

After the next clip of your incredible music reflecting your love of flying, will you please give us a verbal image of your song, Rocky Mountain High?

SPEAKER_10 4:03

Well, I guess it should probably know by now I was one who wanted to fly. I wanted to ride on that arrow of fire right up into heaven.

SPEAKER_09 4:17

Annie and I were lying out uh outside of our tent, and you saw the little flash here and there, and all of a sudden, and you'd swear you could hear it, as it would swoop all the way across the sky, about like that, lasting about that long. Oh and every from all over the campsite, wow! Did you see that? So we were up until about three o'clock in the morning, and and you you would see those flashes, and and ones that you would swear you could hear. Right in front of the screen. It was raining, fire, and sky.

SPEAKER_12 4:46

I've seen it rain fire in the sky.

unknown 4:52

Run around a campfire.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

So the ambiance of Colorado is virtually palpable, yes?

SPEAKER_09 5:00

Well, yeah. You know, the the the smell of the air here, the color of the sky, it's different than any other place that I've ever been, and I don't think there's anything more beautiful in this. There's some places I've been that I think are as nice as the Rocky Mountains here in Colorado, but nothing more beautiful. I was just in Alaska a couple of weeks ago, and it's glorious up there. And it's not this.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Allow me, if you will, to segue into the amazing song Back Home Again.

SPEAKER_09 5:26

Back home again. I remember it was it was a time like this when I came home, and uh I'd been on the road for quite a while. Annie was downstairs cooking, and I was sitting up in the loft of my home and saw this storm coming in all of a sudden, just like this.

SPEAKER_10 5:42

There's a storm across the valley, clouds are rolling. The afternoon is heavy, all your shoulders. There's a truck out of four, the miles for change, and the wine in other eels just makes it cool. He's an hour away from that All your prayers are just scratch Ten days on the road to fairly gone There's a fire soft burns suffers off the light in your eyes makes him watch Hey it's good to be back home again, yes it is sometimes this old far feels like a long lost friend. Yes, hey, it's good to be back home again.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

This song, which you wrote for Annie, has had a massive impact and a lasting one at that. It just might surprise some of our audience, John, how quickly it came about.

SPEAKER_09 7:22

In ten minutes, a little over ten minutes, it was on the Bell Mountain uh ski lift. I had just done the ski run, and as I say, it was it was very shortly after uh this difficult time that Annie and I had gotten through, and um uh it was a beautiful day, spring day in the mountains. Uh it was before it starts getting real busy, so it was pretty quiet on the mountain, and I skied in the from the top, not quiet to the bottom, to the bottom of the Bell Mountain lift, which is right above Ruthie's Run, and skied right onto the lift. And I was sitting there and my thighs were burning and my heart was pounding, and I was catching my breath, and there was like this whole physical thing going on. And as I began to, you know, get it all together again, sit back and relax, I was looking up at that blue sky that you can only see from mountaintops, and the smell of the air here, and uh uh the the sounds of the uh of the lift going over the towers or skiers going down the mountain, and uh uh it filled up your senses. I mean there was something that oh, I thought, what a what a notion that is. Something that fills your senses. What are the other things like that? And I thought of Annie immediately. I thought of love in in my life, and and it was personified in Annie at that time. And then thinking for love in anybody's life, and what does it feel like for me? What are the other things that fill up my senses? A night in the forest, the mountains in springtime, these mountains. And uh all of a sudden the song just spilled out, and uh I got to the top of the mountain, I had the entire lyric in my head. I skied straight down to the bottom of the mountain, raced home, went upstairs to my little office and picked up my guitar, and it was there.

SPEAKER_10 9:06

You fill up my senses, like a night in the forest, like the mountains in spring time, 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, come, let me love you. Let me give my life to you, let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your eyes, let me lay down beside you, let me always be with you. Come, let me love you, come, love me again. Let me give my life. Come let me love you. Come love me again, you fill up my sense, like a night in the forest, like in mountains in spring time, 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.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Was it really easier, John, to sing for thousands of fans than to talk to one person?

SPEAKER_09 11:53

It absolutely was.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Such as your wife?

SPEAKER_09 11:55

Yeah, absolutely. And and uh uh Annie and I talked talked about that a few times, you know, and uh uh I'd and I've tried, and I think actually I've gotten much better in being able to communicate to uh to the one who's close to me. Uh I thought I was doing real well with Cassandra.

SPEAKER_10 12:17

Lady Are you crying? Do the tears be lying for me? Did you think our time together was all maybe you've been dreaming? I'm as close as I can be. I swear to you, our times just because close your eyes rest your weary mind. I promise I will stay right, lady, are you happy? Do you feel the way I do? Are there meanings that you've never seen before? Lady my sweet lady.

SPEAKER_11 14:39

I just can't believe it's true that's like I've never ever tears belong to me?

SPEAKER_10 16:03

Did you think our time together was all gone? Lady my sweet lady, I'm as close as I can be. I swear to you, our time has just begun.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

So ironically, despite the claims of many about your songs, it has been said that you are a great communicator, and yet you admit that you have suffered regarding this kind of intimacy.

SPEAKER_09 16:54

Well, I think it is common, and I think it's common in in all people. You know, there are there are things that happen to us that we don't we don't know, we don't recognize, uh, we don't understand, and consequently we we don't know how to deal with them, we don't have the tools to deal with them. I think that more that more than anything else, I'm lonely in my life. And at the same time, right now, I can't get close to anybody. I just I'm having a real tough time with that. I'm gun shy, I'm awfully goddamn gun shy.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Some criticism has been levied upon you, John, that you are possibly cynical about love.

SPEAKER_09 17:33

No, no, not cynical about love. And and with a with you know, with the same longings that I've expressed in so many of those songs. For you, uh Annie's song is is as much, you know, a longing for to really feel like that. You know, you might feel like that for a moment, maybe the moment within which the song comes out, or some night when you're singing it, but to have that the ongoing reality of your life, to wake up every morning and have someone next to you who you know that you would bend over right now and give your life for, you know, and just to be with that person, just to have them around. You're not not you don't have to be talking, you know, it's like in those when I rode back home again, up in the loft over here, and Annie was down in the kitchen. But I was home and she was here, and we were together, and it was home, and you know, that's what we longed for.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

It seems to me, John, that we need to revisit for a moment that graphic scene of you rushing into your home, brandishing a chainsaw. Can you give us, in your own words, a visual of that spectacle?

SPEAKER_09 18:43

It didn't even occur to me that she would ever think that I would hurt her. You know, here I am standing with a chainsaw, and what else is she gonna think, right? But I I just didn't I can't conceive anybody would think that I would hurt them. I'm not that kind of person. And uh and and even within that, uh, as I said in the book, you know, at one point when she started wagging her finger at me, and I had laid the chainsaw down over here, and we were talking. And I asked her why she cut these trees down out here. They were as much a part of this home as the walls and the floor and the roof. And how could she do that without talking to me about it? And she started wagging her finger at me, and uh, and I grabbed her, and I had her up on a counter, and I don't know if I still had my hands on her shoulders or around her throat, but just as quick as it happened, I stopped. And I don't I'm not gonna hurt you, I don't mean to hurt you, I would never do that. But this is what I want to do.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

And that was when you actually cut through the dining room table?

SPEAKER_09 19:43

Yeah. Yeah, I felt fantastic. I mean, I felt just absolutely great. And it was the first time in my life that I'd ever expressed my anger.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

I am confident to state, because I'm sure you agree, that flying is risky.

SPEAKER_09 19:59

Well, y you know, you take a risk when you get out of bed in the morning. You take a risk crossing the street, certainly to get on an airplane and fly halfway around the world to do an interview. That's that's risky life. Uh, I feel much better when I'm in control, quite honestly. And uh I feel a lot more comfortable out there. Again, there's there's a risk. So you take care of your engine, you be responsible for your airplane, you know what you're doing, you know what your uh parameters are, and uh you take you pay attention to the weather, and there were things we did today that on a hot summer, blustery, windy day, we would not have been able to do. And and part of the greatness is to share it with somebody.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Many of our listeners, John, may not be aware of your extensive and somewhat influential involvement with the United States space program.

SPEAKER_09 20:45

Actually, what happened was uh out of a whole uh bunch of uh of of uh of titles, in a sense, uh uh vocations that people could be chosen from to fly as citizens in space, uh it got narrowed down to three photojournalist, educator, and communicator. That's what I was gonna be. And that decision then went from NASA to the president. And the president, who Ronald Reagan, didn't have too good of a record in regard to education in this country and with teachers, said, I know how we can get teachers on board our campaign coming up. We'll get a teacher client space first. And that's how that happened.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Very interesting, John. And what happened with you recently regarding the silver anniversary of the first lunar landing?

SPEAKER_09 21:35

I had a great experience this summer. Um uh I was invited down to be a part of the celebration of our twenty fifth anniversary of landing on the moon. And I participated both at Cape Kennedy in Florida and in Houston. And in Cape Kennedy, I was down there for the uh uh installation of the Apollo wing of the Astronauts Hall of Fame. And so thirteen of the twenty four. Men who have been to the moon were there. At the very end of the program, there was this long video acknowledging these men and what they had accomplished. And at the end of it, I was found standing on stage, starting the song Flying for Me that I wrote for the Challenger astronauts. With these 13 astronauts. Then I started singing the song. And and I was I wrote it for these guys. As much as I wrote it for Krista McAuliffe and the rest of the astronauts of Challenger, I wrote it for the astronauts. They were flying for me. They are. And and with these guys there, uh and somehow, I mean, I found very quickly I realized that I'm okay, John, you gotta sing the song now. Don't let this be what it is to you. And I got to stand there, Ray, and look them in the eye, these guys, and all of them were watching me and the whole audience there. And I was singing to them, and I looked each one of them in the eye and said they were flying for me. And there was not a dry eye in that house. I'll tell you, it was just one of the greatest moms ever made.

SPEAKER_10 23:10

They were flying for me. When I was a little bitty boy, just to fall for the floor. We used to go out to grandma's house every month and so would have chicken pie, country ham, homemade butter on the red. But the best darn thing about the grandma's house was the great fit and the bed. It was nine feet high, six feet wide, soft as a down eight chick. It was made from the fetters of four eleven geese, took a whole boat of both for the tape. It holds eight kids and four hand dolls and the baby's cold from the chair. Didn't get much sleep, but we had a lot of fun, oh grandma, feather bed. After supper, we'd sit around the fire. The old folks would spit and chew. All the talk about the farm and the war and the bread and sing a bell and door too. And I'd sit and listen, watch the fire till a cobweb's filled my head. Next thing I know, I'd wake up in the morning in the middle of the old in the bed. It was nine feet high, six feet wide, soft as a down each chick. It was made from the feathers of four eleven eats. Took a hold of the clothes from the tick. It holds a kids for the hole to the baby and stole from the check. Didn't get much sleep, though it had a lot of fun. I've been fitted with my uncle, I wrestled my cousin. I need the kids that ain't blue. But if I ever had to make a choice, I guess that's all the feet stand, that I fit them all.

SPEAKER_07 24:40

Plus the gown down the road for grandma with a bed.

SPEAKER_10 24:43

It was my feet high, six feet wise, and that's a bit chick. It was made from the feathers full of the leaving kids, took a hole with the pot for the dick. It holds kids full hand dolls in the picket stole from the shed. Didn't get much sleep, but we had a lot of fun on grandma's feather bed. Didn't get much sleep, but we had a lot of fun on grandma's feather bed.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

So what was it, John, that made that bed so special?

SPEAKER_09 25:13

Well, uh, the way that I remembered back on the farm in uh in Oklahoma is my my father's mother, uh, where that song kind of came from. And there was up on the in the attic is where all the kids slept. And it was a very special thing when we'd get to go early down into grandma grandpa's bed, and uh we'd have six or seven kids in there and a couple dogs and a pig. Took a whole bolt of cloth for the pick for the tape.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Okay, fair enough. We can summarize that as good memories.

SPEAKER_09 25:48

Wonderful, wonderful memories, life on the farm. I think so. I the there was a lot of support always from everyone in my family, and uh a lot of life, a lot of enthusiasm. And I think it was uh, you know, my my parents, it it was wonderful to be enthusiastic about that, but singing wasn't a real job. It wasn't something you would really do for a living. I I always loved including my parents in the television specials I did in the States, and I remember having mom at Carnegie Hall once, and uh I did uh her favorite song when I was a kid was It's a Sin to Tell a Lie. And so I dedicated this song to my mother in the audience at Carnegie Hall, and I had her stand up and sort of take a bow.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Your grandmother was maybe embarrassed, but she cried.

SPEAKER_09 26:34

Well, I think so, you know, but she was just so happy for me and so proud, and uh it was a pretty wonderful moment.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

What was your recollection of the strangest place you performed?

SPEAKER_09 26:44

I remember singing uh in a village in Africa with mud huts all around me. People who you could not imagine, you know, would have ever heard a radio even, and they knew Country Roads. I I remember walking in a uh in a slum area in Bombay, India, the largest slum in the world, people living in the most desperate conditions you can imagine, and little kids were following me along. John, never talk to sing Country Road, sing any song.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

How surreal is that to have people with such differing cultures on your heels singing your songs.

SPEAKER_09 27:18

The time that made me laugh, I think, the most is when I I learned uh sunshine on my shoulders in Japanese. I worked real hard to learn the Japanese to sing this song, and uh and the audience kind of tittered and laughed and they you know didn't know the song. And so I stopped and explained what I was trying to do, and maybe I better sing it in English. And then when I started singing in English, the entire audience sang.

SPEAKER_08 27:43

Well, anyway, why don't you solve all our problems?

SPEAKER_00 27:53

And they upset the natural balance.

SPEAKER_08 28:14

I don't believe the red sea.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

One day to create the world. Anyway, you have to remember that one of my days is not exactly one of yours. When I got up this morning saying Floyd was still in medical school. How can I permit the suffering? I don't permit the suffering. You do free will. All the choices are yours. You can love each other, Jerry. It's not waste. If I meant waste, I wouldn't run that waste. You're doing some very funny things with the word. You're also turning the sky into mud. I look down and I don't believe the film. Using rubber for toilets. Poisoning my fishes. You want a miracle? You make a fish.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

At the risk of being too personal, John, I want to ask you about a rather sobering aspect of what you outlined in your autobiography regarding your life and attempts to end it.

SPEAKER_09 31:03

I walked out that that door, I you know, I I can't imagine what would have happened if I hadn't picked up my guitar on the way outside and saw the Concord going across the sky, and it just put me back in touch. And see, see, here's here's the thing. I'm a human being. You know, I mean, I'd love to be the world's greatest guy, and I'm not. I'm a pretty good guy, I've been a pretty good father, I've made a bunch of mistakes, and uh and I've learned a great deal. I've gone through some difficult times, some of them I'm still in. The the songs that have made me well known have come out of an honest uh introspection in a sense of of both my experiences, my feelings, and my perceptions.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Okay. Now I have to ask this question. Silly as it may be. Do you have what you consider to be a favorite song of yours?

SPEAKER_09 31:57

Yeah, I d my favorite song is usually the most recent one that I've written. It's the one that I can't get out of my head, you know. And uh I I just have a have a terrible time. Uh on on any given night in a show, one song will hit you all of a sudden, and it's like you've never sung it before, like you're singing it for the first time. And and that's a pretty amazing feeling. I don't know how it happens, you know, and and especially some of the songs like I think of uh of For You, the song that I wrote for Cassandra. And uh Cassandra and I are not on very good terms and have some real hard things between us, I think. And yet that song I think is one of the best love songs I've ever heard.

SPEAKER_10 32:37

Just to look in your eyes again. Just to lay in your eye.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Picture, if you will. There you are on stage, and the audience sings right along with you. What are you feeling in a moment like that?

SPEAKER_09 32:56

I feel like I have a lot of friends. I feel like I I there are people out there who know how I feel, who who feel like I do, and like I'm not alone.

SPEAKER_10 33:05

Just the words of a love song, just the beat of my heart, just the pledge of my life, my love for you.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

And yet this happens even where they do not speak English. What's up with that?

SPEAKER_09 33:33

Isn't that something? I mean, what an incredible thing.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Even in Vietnam.

SPEAKER_09 33:37

I was in Vietnam in the spring. I was the first American to s to be in to sing in Saigon since 1975, and the first Westerner ever to sing in Hanover. And I was invited there. Is one of the neat things. Uh they sing country roads with it. Isn't that far? I said to myself, yeah, well, if I ever go to Vietnam, I'll go to sing. Never dreaming, you know, that would really happen like that. Not to go to uh enforce and separate and push something away from me, but to bring bring it closer together. I truly believe that the kinds of things we've been talking about happen in people's lives in Vietnam and in India and in China and in Russia, the same kind of things we were talking about in families, that happens everywhere. The love that you feel for your child, the miracle that happens when you watch a baby born, the love you feel for a woman. These that's that's part of what human beings are. And so I I want to point that out, and I want to keep pointing it out in a world I think that is longing for a way to express itself as family and as community.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Thank you so much, John. We have so much to be thankful to you for. Your music, of course, which is not to ignore how candid you've been about your personal life. Thanks again, John.

SPEAKER_09 34:59

You're welcome anytime, right? My pleasure. Thank you.

SPEAKER_10 35:02

I know how it feels to be head over heels, to be lost in true love, and the light of the moon. When everything seems to be calming up roses, and every word seems to be rhyming with you. Suddenly, all of your dreams have come true. Happiness lives in your heart. Then out of nowhere, one becomes two, and everything seems to be falling apart. When your heart feels like it's broken, and you just can't take anymore. When there's nothing left to be spoken, and there's nothing worth listening for I know what it means to get caught up in dreams and in prayers that are answered with each passing day when loving and laughter are birds of a feather, and sharing and care in this one simple way. You know you'll never be all alone, but someone will always be near. Then you turn around and your best friend is gone. But where do they go when they just feel quite broken? And you just can't take any more time to fall and pop up, and you fear there won't be any more. In your eye, would you even hear anyway? It was matter, somehow it broke. It was somehow turned into hell.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

Thank you once again, John Denver, for being a part of our quest for silver. I'm Chris Tuffer. But before we wind up this incredible hour of music and a peek into the life of John Denver, let us hear that famous duet with Placito Domingo entitled Perhaps Love.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

Perhaps love is like a resting place, a shelter from the storm, it excuse to give you comfort, it is fur to keep you warm, and in those times of trouble when you are most alone, the memory of love will bring you home.

SPEAKER_10 39:10

Perhaps love is like a window, perhaps an open door, it invites you to come closer, it wants to show you more, and even if you lose yourself and don't know what to do, the memory of love is still What's up away of the beef? What's up away to the team?

SPEAKER_03 40:06

Like a fire, when it's full of what you want to do, I think it's not a little bit of a start.

SPEAKER_10 40:50

Perhaps love is like full of comfort, full of fire, like a fire when it's cold outside.