John Denver “It’s About Time”
Though Buddy Holly, Elvis Costello and Rivers Cuomo got all the headlines, it was ultimately The Lambda Lambda Lamda house band from “Revenge of the Nerds” who taught us the most about Geek Rock. For one thing, they proved that Geek Rock didn’t even have to be Rock and Roll — that it could incorporate Rap and Electronic music. Similarly, Lamar, Takashi and Wormser reminded us of the genre’s lack of diversity. But, most of all, they demonstrated that funny glasses are not enough to qualify music as Geek Rock — that while many geeks are in fact visually impaired, the defining quality of geekdom is a deep and abiding passion for science and technology.
This is not up for debate. It’s the very definition of the word “geek” (and its synonym “nerd”). Lewis Skolnik and Gilbert Lowe were obsessed with robotics and computing. They were men of science. Buddy Holly was not. Neither are Elvis and Rivers. So as ironically cute as those glasses once were and as unironically chic as they now may be, our most famous geek rockers do not technically qualify as geeks. And so, sorry Ben Folds. Sorry Gordon Gano. Sorry Proclaimer twins. Visual impairment and semi-popularity do not suffice. Strictly speaking, none of you are geeks.
But you know who were geeks? Thomas Dolby, whose music was shaped by his interest in computers. So were They Might Be Giants, who were named the official musical ambassadors of NASA. But, more than either of the “Giant Johns” or the guy who was blinded by science, the biggest, most successful, most no bones about it geek in the history of Pop music was Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. — John Denver to you, me and everyone else who survived the Seventies.
John Denver was not a geek because he wore funny glasses (though he did). He was not a geek for his embroidered shirts and vests or his “i cut it myself in the mirror” hairstyle. He was not a geek for how he suffered in comparison to his more cosmopolitan peers, like James Taylor and Cat Stevens. He was not a geek for his complete lack of critical respect. He was not a geek for the breezy simplicity of his sort of Country, kind of Pop, mostly Folkie songs, or for the schmaltz of his arrangements or the cloying sentiment of his ballads. He was not a geek for how well he blended in with The Muppets, as though he was Janis’ uncool younger brother, not in on the inside jokes. Those are all perfectly good explanations of why Denver was wildly popular in the middle of America and completely unfashionable most everywhere else. But the reason that John Denver was Pop’s geekiest geek is definitional. He was obsessed with science — specifically environmental science and aerodynamics. So, while both men wore glasses and both died tragically in airplane crashes, history has at least partially gotten them mixed up — it’s John Denver, and not Buddy Holly, who is actual patron saint of Geek Rock.
While his geekdom is not up for discussion, Denver’s music inspires passionate debate even today, a quarter century after he died. Between 1971 and 1977, he was one of America’s best selling artists. During that span, he recorded six platinum-selling albums, scored three number one Country hits, four Billboard Pop number ones and eight Adult Contemporary chart toppers. He hosted The Emmys and The Grammy Awards telecasts. He had his own variety show series, a bunch of live concert specials, a couple Christmas spectaculars and, not one but two Muppets specials. And to top it off, in 1977 he starred alongside George Burns in “Oh God,” a major motion picture comedy, directed by Carl Reiner.
Denver’s ubiquity was unprecedented. There had been many more popular musical artists. There had even been some who’d succeeded on the big screen and the little screen. But none had achieved such an inverted supply to demand ratio. Elvis was the star of many films, but as his fame grew, he toured less and hid more. Same with The Beatles. Johnny Cash also had a variety show but was more a legend than a Pop star. Denver, however, was unlike all of the above. He seemed to have willed his pervasiveness into existence, appearing everywhere regardless of his qualifications or the market’s demand. He was far from the biggest Pop star of his day, but his on screen geniality, which crossed over into hamminess, was a perfect fit for the mildly depressed, slightly conservative tenor of the mid-Seventies.
Unlike his more famous forebears, John Denver appeared unconcerned with both privacy and oversaturation. He wanted to be doing things, in front of people, all the time. His eagerness, his inoffensiveness and his versatility set him apart from other stars of the era. He lacked the wry comedy of Paul Simon. And aside from his acoustic guitar, he was light years from Dylan. Moreover, he was a solo act with a simple (stage) name and a recognizable face, which meant that he was not KISS, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles or any number of far more successful recording artists. If you needed a guy to sing a holiday song or host an award show or, even, provide color commentary at the winter Olympics, John Denver was your man.
If you needed somebody who was cool, however, Denver was the opposite of your man. The underside of his ubiquity was both critical derision and backlash. More knowing music listeners bristled at Denver’s extreme eagerness as much as they did his strident sincerity (which many suspected was actually insincerity). Writers and higher brows resisted the wide-eyed gee willikers of Denver’s act. They rolled their eyes each and every time he said “far out,” which was quite often back then.
Even more so than his image, however, critics loathed his music. They recoiled at the sing song quality of his hits (“Rocky Mountain High,” “Thank God I’m a Country Boy,” and “Back Home Again”) — how they sounded both like music for toddlers but also like music for people who wanted to hear music without actually listening to it. And they saved the real bile for his ballads, which lacked the complexity of Gordon Lightfoot or the melodic elegance of The Carpenters. Adult Contemporary (and Pop) hits like “Annie’s Song,” “I’m Sorry” and “Like a Sad Song” were dismissed as conspicuously gilded, cheaply sentimental Folk Pop disguised as something deeper and more meaningful.
In important ways, those critics were not so wrong — Denver’s music exists somewhere between salve and opiate. By and large, it lacks grit, tension and excitement. But those broad strokes also obscure the talent at play. He was an inordinately skilled melodicist. He had almost perfect pitch. He had vocal range. He was economical with structure. He knew what h was good at and he stuck with it. More to the point, Denver worked his ass off. He was not a manufactured product — he toured and toured and showed up and showed up. He was affable, affordable and reliable. His image was practiced and measured but not insincere or craven. It was a genuine reflection of both who the man was and who he wanted to be. Overt sincerity and oversaturation do not always equate with some lack of interiority or talent. And John Denver possessed both deep interiority and talent.
Which is also not to say that his success was proportional to his talent or that his sincerity was so sincere. No, John Denver was the right man for the job at a time when Americans needed their dials turned down. His success was more a product market fit plus exceptional hustle than it was creative vision or unparalleled performance. And as for that cloying sincerity — well — that had an underside as well. Denver was a depressive whose struggles with alcohol are well documented and profoundly dark. According to his ex-wives, his amiable, almost milquetoast, persona was betrayed by his petulant and occasionally violent behavior at home.
There are plenty of theories as to why Denver struggled so mightily, so privately. And many of those theorists will use those theories as evidence of alleged artistic insincerity. Some have even suggested that his fatal plane crash was an act of suicide, an escape from his commercial backslide, marital struggles and private despair. That his death was a reprieve from being the butt of jokes. An escape from being the guy in the silly vests and shirts. The guy whose music you either quickly turn off or play but disregard. The guy who was rendered obsolete around the time of Punk and Disco. The guy who was so uncool by 1985 that his request to join USA for Africa for “We Are the World” was soundly rejected.
During the height of his popularity, Denver was an easy target. In the sunset of his career, he was just as easily dismissed. And since his passing, he has been memed, forgotten and reappraised. His legacy has proven elusive, but what is not in question is Denver’s interest in science — the source of his geekiness. He was an unabashed, card carrying environmentalist who established a foundation to protect land in Colorado, who protested drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and who helped raise millions of dollars for assorted sustainability and world hunger projects.
As committed as he was to nature conservancy and sustainability, though, Denver was equally obsessed with flight. He was an accomplished pilot, an avid supporter of America’s space exploration, a recipient of NASA’s “Exceptional Public Service Medal” and a citizen finalist for the 1986 Space Shuttle launch that ended in disaster. In middle age, when his records were no longer gold or platinum, when Hollywood was no longer calling, after he’d taken a chainsaw to the bed of the Annie who inspired “Annie’s Song,” when he the relic of a decade that many Americans wanted to forget, John Denver was still a man of science.
Which is what makes “It’s About Time” such an unexpected and complicated affair. Released in 1983, the year after he and Annie Martell divorced, which was also the year that his father died, and the moment when Michael, Prince and Madonna took over the charts, Denver’s seventeenth studio album was his poorest selling record since 1970. And while it features several songs about mother earth and a couple about flying, it is functionally an album about divorce and death. For years, America was happy to hear about blue skies on shoulders and the magic of aviation from Denver. We tolerated — even sang along to — his sappy love songs. But apparently we did not want our once popular geek singing about heartache and loss. Not one bit.
Before you can even press play on the record, “It’s About Time” tries its darndest to repel. It’s cover is a clumsy, embarrassing example of early desktop digital design — a mosaic of digitized blue sky, with Denver’s last name in fluorescent, dropshadowed lime green, with his first name awkwardly fitted into a yellow triangle that rests inside the “V” of “DENVER.” But, trust me when I say that the background image and typography are the least of the cover’s problems. The photo of the singer-songwriter is so bad that it goes past “bad good” into a zone that is like “bad to the power of bad.” In the picture, Denver trades his cowboy getups and cable knit sweaters for an all white suit, white dress shirt, pale pink tie and pastel sweater vest. Denver’s hair is shorter, coiffed and slightly feathered, just short of pageboy. His glasses are gone, revealing a taut, uneasy smile. Behind him are beautiful mountains, a river and a sliver of sky, but none of their grandeur matters in the face of Denver’s radical uncoolness.
Years before his divorce and the death of his father, Denver’s music had begun to take a detour. At first, the turn was slow and gradual enough to be barely noticeable. But, by the early Eighties, he’d largely abandoned the acoustic jangle of his Folk and Country hits for something firmly Adult Contemporary. And by “Adult” I really mean something that sounds like music for children performed with a string section, and guitars and synths turned down so as not to disturb. And by “Contemporary” I mean corny like late Seventies Margaritaville James Taylor or like Barry Manilow without the camp. That’s the sound of “It’s About Time,” an album of depressed ballads and worldly aspirations performed admirably by one of the most overqualified bands ever assembled. Denver’s band includes most of Elvis Presley’s “TCB” band (whom Denver hired after Elvis died in 1977), guitar icon James Burton on lead guitar, Patti Austin singing backup, and appearances by The Wailers, Rita Marley and Emmylou Harris.
It would be easy, but not entirely true, to suggest that the problems with “It’s About Time” have nothing to do with the band. Denver’s vocals are mixed far too forward, they drench the field so that, even when there is a sunshower, you notice the shower but not the sun. It’s not as though his voice is unpleasant — to the contrary it goes down easy and it has great range. But its complete lack of grit, its absence of friction makes it somehow both too sweet and totally forgettable at the same time. That being said, when the record struggles (which is more often than not) it is not exclusively on account of Denver. The band plays it too straight. They are easy but not loose. Precise to the point of being stiff. Saxes and flutes serve as leads, betraying any tension that guitars and drums could affect. The entire record teeters on the border between too polite and completely schmaltzy. It’s a tough balance and one that Denver seems uniquely unqualified to navigate, especially at a moment when his heart was broken and his career as a Pop star was hanging by a thread.
Because his vocals are both obviously sad and slightly overwrought, the best moments on “It’s About Time” are those wherein he’s in harmony with other singers or when the lead instrument is not sax or flute or strings, but rather the electric guitar, which can be sharp in ways that Denver’s voice seemingly cannot. “Somethin’ About” checks both boxes. Though not exactly loose, it’s bluesy and just slightly funky in ways that the rest of the album is not. The backup singers almost steal the lead from Denver and Burton gets permission to solo for about fifteen seconds. It may not be the best track on the record. It may not even be great. But it’s almost cool.
“Wild Montana Skies” is neither cool nor atypical. It’s not the state’s official song (Colorado and West Virginia both claim Denver songs for their official state song) but it easily could be. What starts out as a charming handclapper — all Denver — becomes a hootenanny by the third verse, when (thankfully) Emmylou Harris joins in. By the second half, there’s banjo, foot stompin’ and an energy that Denver is simply incapable of conjuring on his own. It’s much more fun than “Rocky Mountain High” and far more interesting than “Take Me Home, Country Road.” But, in 1983, unless you lived in Wyoming, I suspect that no one noticed. Scratch that — I bet that in 1983, even Wyomingites were more interested in Michael Jackson and Prince (or at least Bruce) than they were in John Denver.
But those are the exceptions. The balance of “It’s About Time” is either depressed or plain weird. “Thoughts of You,” for instance, is all woodwinds, strings and crazy-making melodic tricks that I think were stolen from nursery rhymes that dare us to sing along to Denver wailing stuff like:
I know that it's late, I'm sorry I called
I'm surprised to have found you at home
It's just once in awhile I remember your number
I was hoping that you'd be alone
I know that it's over, but I can't discover a way to erase how I feel
I remember the nights and the passionate fights and I know that I love you and I always will
Elsewhere, on “Falling Out of Love” (really the title), Denver tries to woo us melodically, using sax and strings to signify romance, while actually singing about the opposite — or rather the death — of romance. The persistence of the horns. The pulling of the strings. The insistence of the sadness. It’s all too much. Denver cries:
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 true love ends
First of all there's no one to talk to
When there is they just don't seem to hear
Words don't seem to matter much anyway
They can't describe the pain
They can't explain the fear
Unto itself, depression might not doom an album. Nick Drake and Elliott Smith entranced us with their sadness. Marvin Gaye and Kris Kristofferson both made extraordinary records about divorce. But there is something about Denver’s wallowing that presents as insincere. It’s less that I disbelieve his claims of loving Annie or of missing his father and more that they sound like revisionist history. That there’s a whitewashing of all the other stuff. The drinking and cheating. The violence. The love he wanted but never found. If any of it is true, it sounds true in the way that a great Hallmark card can rather than the way honesty does. Like the arrangements and performances, Denver’s words read a little too neatly — too staged. And the manner in which he milks every line, dabbing at his eyes while holding his heart, only serves to poke at my distrust.
Ultimately, though, it’s not Denver’s schmaltz or my own cynicism that truly dooms the album. It’s the Caribbean turn on the record’s penultimate track. “World Game” is a song with the best of intentions — a Reggae number, featuring The Wailers and Rita Marley, about sustainable living and the preciousness of our shared resources. But Denver’s hypothesis for how to share his message proved wildly invalid. Rather than picking up his guitar and singing a folk song like Pete Seeger, he goes straight Peter Tosh — affecting a Jamaican accent and exacting a metronomic beat where there should be some wiggle, if not groove. The band does their job. Rita sounds good. But this is a John Denver Reggae song, sung by John Denver. It’s as wrong musically as its message is right. It almost helps explain why Michael, Lionel and Quincy declined his request to join “We Are the World.”
Denver released eight more studio albums after this one. He eked out one more Country hit in 1985, with “Dreamland Express,” but his run as a Pop star ended many years earlier. He married once more and got divorced again. He went through rehab. And he tried — desperately and unsuccessfully — to resuscitate his recording career. He died in 1997, with many albums’ worth of material but no label interested in releasing them. The year after he died, he won a posthumous Grammy for his final album, “All Aboard,” in the “Best Musical Album For Children” category. While it is unclear if the locomotive-themed album was actually intended for kids, the honor confirmed his reputation as the geek who made children’s music about mountains and airplanes (and trains) for adults.