John Denver

This past weekend was the 15^th anniversary of John Denver’s death in a plane crash. I can still recall being home from work for the Columbus Day holiday and IMing (ah, those  AOL days!) with a friend about the news. It was jarring to learn, even though I really hadn’t thought about John Denver or his music in years and years.

But certain artists, like certain songs, are imprinted in you, as Scott recently wrote. And once the imprinting takes hold, it very seldom lets go.

[That sound you just heard was Scott doing a Victorian swoon and falling to the floor, unconscious. So stunned to learn that yes, I actually read his posts.]

But with John Denver there was certainly a connection that went way, way back to well before my musical tastes were even formed. It goes back to the early 70s and being barely 6 or 7 years old and hearing his music play in the house. Our house was a split level, with the TV room (we called it the family room) downstairs and the formal living room, sans TV but with stereo speakers, upstairs.

My dad had a pretty expansive stereo system back then and it was also housed in the family room—I recall it being seven different pieces, not including large speakers up in said living room and smaller speakers up on shelves in the family room. But there was a custom-made cherry-wood stereo cabinet that was the size of a couch and maybe four feet high, and in it it held my dad’s turntable, receiver, dual-casette deck and 8-track player (yes, Virginia, it was the 70s), along with separate equalizer and Dolby system components as well as an old reel-to-reel tape player my dad had from, I am guessing, dating back to the 60s. The cabinet also held his entire cassette, 8-track and record collection—there were easily a few hundred of them in there.

But with the speakers upstairs and down, and the general openness of the split level design, a record or tape being played on my dad’s stereo system would be heard throughout the entire house, even up in the bedrooms on the top floor. Easily. If music was on, everyone heard it.

And this is where John Denver (and others) crept into my subconscious, where he still resides today. My parents were big fans of his and his music would play throughout the house on Saturdays and Sundays, or maybe during family events or holidays. And sure, by the time I was 10 I was ready to never hear him again.

But as it is with music, time brings with it revisited and reclaimed appreciation. The same way we can hear, say, “Free Bird” or “Won’t Get Fooled Again” today and recognize them for the sheer musical masterpieces they are (whereas when they played non-stop on FM radio 25 years ago we grew dead tired of them and wouldn’t have minded if we never heard them again), so too can the music of our childhood become desirable again.

The truth is John Denver was a fine songwriter with a very nice, clear voice and a wonderful sense of melody. He didn’t write angry or confrontational and he met no one's definition of dangerous or edgy, but his songs—particularly his love songs—always came through with a sharp sense of confidence, a singer-songwriter in command of his material. His was a decidedly American sound and, born out of the American folk movement as he was, it certainly sounds like it belongs to an American era of the past. But play the songs today and they interestingly enough do not sound dated. That’s impressive in itself.

Case in point—maybe his finest song.

Sure, it’s sentimental and makes a play for the heartstrings. But it’s also honest and on-point, and it possesses such a damn lovely guitar lead and gently moving vocal line that it’s easy to forgive any melodrama that may come with it. And it stays inside you for a long time—it did with me anyway. And the main reason? It’s not necessarily rooted in Pavlovian conditioning or even subdural trickery. It’s way simpler.

It stays with us because it’s good, sweet music. Period. That’s something Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. left as a lasting legacy. And imprinted, I am guessing, in many, many of us.

Thanks for that, sir. Greatly ‘preciated.

Imprinting

Imprinting is a funny thing. When DT and I were in high school, every year there'd be ducks that would come and nest and lay eggs and raise little ducklings. You'd be trying and failing to concentrate on, say, trigonometry because there'd be a momma duck leading a row of ducklings around the courtyard right outside the window and how on earth could trig compete with that?

(Also, you lost all respect for your very nice trig teacher when she mentioned that René Descartes was not only a mathematician but a philosopher and his most famous insight was the saying, "I exist, therefore I am," and you looked around the room, slack-jawed, and saw all the other students writing that down and wondered if you were the only one who'd watched Monty Python sing "The Philosopher Song" and how was it possible that Monty Python were a more reliable teacher than the very nice woman who was paid to teach trig at your high school and yet the evidence was inescapable?)

Every year there were strict warnings, more from the fellow students than the teachers or administrators, not to touch the ducklings, no matter how adorbs they were, as if you did, the mother would from that point on refuse to have anything to do with the duckling, as the slightest touch of a human would embue it with the human's stench forever and ever and it would die a horrible death of starvation and neglect. Years later, I was told that such a horrific scenario was not, in fact, true. Be that as it may, the result was that no one, as far as I know, ever did actually touch one of the ducklings. (Although, yes, it is possible one young jackass jumped out the chemistry window and tried to catch a duckling but found the little bugger too fast and yes he was kinda relieved to fail at least that one time.)

We've all seen the videos of ducklings or goslings or whatever having imprinted upon a creature that's clearly not its mother—another kind of bird or a deer or a person or a scooter or whatever. It's a real thing, something which isn't news to most music fans.

Hey! Hey! DT! Check it out! A new live Bruce album! Yeah, another one! I know! Isn't it great?! Let's go get! Oh, wait, I think it's over here! No, no, it's over here! It's over there now!

What we first liked or at least first heard tends to have a long and lasting impression upon us. Even if we later grow out of our, say, Barry Manilow phase, there's often a lingering fondness for his fluffy cheese (ew) that never quite dissipates entirely. Or we find ourselves so sick of and turned off by an early love (hello, Doors!) that you very much run in the other direction. Either way, those earliest impressions make a big impact on us and our development.

Which can make objective listening a difficult thing. A good friend, hearing some later Elvis alternate takes without the huge backing choirs and strings, wondered why he always preferred hearing songs stripped down. Part of it, maybe most of it, I think, is the simple novelty factor of hearing something as familiar as "Suspicious Minds" in a new way (and also too, admittedly, much as I love the official release, more and clearer Elvis does tend to be better Elvis to my ears).

This is why I often prefer hearing R.E.M.'s "Finest Worksong" in one of its alternate mixes, with the cool guitar intro and horns. Meaning, if we only knew the barebones version of "In the Ghetto," would the full orchestral version be spine-tingling or would it seem hopelessly overwrought? (I love both but if forced to choose would instead eat a downy little baby duckling.)

And so "Talent Show" by the Replacements. I loved the official release from the first and all these decades later still love it. But it's hard to deny the power of the original studio demo. The question I can't answer is, if this was the version I'd imprinted on, would the official version seem terribly soft or would it feel as though a rough masterpiece had finally been brought to completion.

As the boys themselves said on the previous album, I don't know. I understand why they did what they did and I think, conventional wisdom be damned, it was a fine idea and done quite well indeed, commercial failure aside. But it's hard not to feel something was lost in the process and impossible to know how I'd feel if the order had been reversed.