A Magical Time with John Denver
For the six weeks beginning April 1, 1975, Liberty opened for John Denver, playing more than forty concerts in thirty cities, from the South up the eastern seaboard to New England, to Toronto and the Midwest, and finally to Phoenix, San Diego, and San Francisco, concluding at the Forum in Los Angeles. The friendships made and deepened on that journey will stay with me forever.
My friend John…
John Denver was a prince in my experience. I enjoyed my time with him immensely. We shared stories together, and we even discussed philosophical and spiritual topics. On one plane ride I was reading a book entitled “This is Reality,” by Roy Eugene Davis. The topic was other realities behind or within the one we all believe is the only reality. John sat down next to me and noticed the book. I told him about what I’d read so far, and he asked to read it next. He did, and he let me know after the tour how much he appreciated my bringing it to his attention. This conversation, as well as several others, allowed me to feel appreciated for myself, aside from my participation in the band.
The tour ended at the Forum in Los Angeles. It turned out that our relationship with John Denver had now run its course. He and his management team had decided not to pursue their association with Liberty. For one thing, they couldn’t figure out how to market us. We had two front people, Dan and Jan, and that was an uncommon configuration. Next, we played every kind of music from folk, bluegrass, and “old-timey” to jazz and country. Our hometown audiences found those changes of pace interesting and fun, but the powers that be…well, we didn’t fit into any marketing plan they could think of. Undoubtedly there was also resistance they sensed in us, resistance to contracts and packaging and studio production values (vocal doubling, orchestral arrangements, and so on), and all the rest of the commercial music business.
John wound up summarizing his own conflict in his autobiography, “Take Me Home.” He wrote, “I’d bend my principles to support something [his agent, Jerry Weintraub] wanted of me. And of course every time you bend your principles—whether because you don’t want to worry about it, or because you’re afraid to stand up for fear of what you might lose—you sell your soul to the devil.” Today, when I tell that story, I just say that I and the rest of my bandmates just weren’t aligned with the vision of the music business held by those “powers that be.”
