American folk singer, guitarist, composer, recording artist, club performer, actor, humanitarian, and environmentalist widely recognized as a cultural icon of the American West. He popularized acoustic folk music in the 1970s as part of the ongoing singer-songwriter movement of the mid-to-late 20th century. In 1974 and 1975, he was the top male recording artist in the USA.
He was the oldest of two boys born to father Henry John “Dutch” Deutshendorf Sr., and his mother, Erma. His dad was an Air Force test pilot who moved his family around the country before settling in Fort Worth, Texas. John’s younger brother Ron was born in 1949. Denver grew up a shy child. After high school, he enrolled at Texas Tech to become an architect. In college, Denver began singing with a group called the Alpine Trio. He dropped out of Texas Tech after two years and moved to Los Angeles in 1963 to pursue his dreams of a singing career.
He played the folk clubs in Los Angeles and changed his name to John Denver because he loved the Rocky Mountains. In 1964, he joined the New York folk group, The Mitchell Trio. In the mid-1960s, they toured all across the USA in colleges, concerts, and nightclubs. He left the folk group to become a single artist in 1968. The following year he released his first album and in 1971 his song, “Take Me Home, Country Road” became a hit. Other hits included “Rocky Mountain High” and “Sunshine on My Shoulders.”
Denver was recording memorable folk songs in the early 1970s that were zooming up the Billboard charts. He toured the country with his band and in 1974 he starred in his own television show specials that would continue to 1995. With his royalties from his 1974 album Back Home Again he bought a Learjet. He starred in his first film Oh, God! with George Burns. Continuing to perform at the end of the ’70s and early ’80s, he began to find that rock’n’roll audiences were more interested in punk and new wave bands, leaving folk artists behind in the fickle music industry. Despite the dwindling audience, Denver continued to tour America, the Soviet Union and Europe. In 1993, he hit a career low. He lacked a recording contract and found television executives indifferent to his television specials. He turned his attention to environmental issues and humanitarian causes.
Denver met Annie Martell, a college student in St. Paul, Minnesota when the Mitchell Trio was performing a concert at her school. They married on 9 June 1967 and settled three years later in Aspen, Colorado. He loved her deeply, writing “Annie’s Song” for his wife. They could not have kids so they adopted two interracial kids, Zachary, born in 1974 and Anna Kate, born in 1978. Denver was a philandering husband when he was touring on the road. It was his many infidelities that hurt his marriage with his wife as well as an explosive temper. He tried to strangle Annie and then took a chainsaw to the dining room table and headboard of their bed in retaliation for her cutting down trees beside their Aspen home. Annie became a psychotherapist and in 1982 asked her husband for a divorce.
He met Australian-born singer Cassandra Delaney at an Australian music award show in 1986. They fell in love and married in 1988. Their daughter Jesse Belle was born in 1989. Delaney was 18 years his junior and they separated in October 1991.
Denver was an accomplished golfer and in 1976 his father taught him how to fly airplanes. Denver purchased vintage biplanes and two Cessnas. His passion was for his music and flying, the mountains and his home in Aspen. His enjoyment of flying repaired the differences that had plagued his relationship with his father. His dad had been disappointed in Denver’s career choice in music instead of a military career. In 1995, at the age of 42, Denver shed his trademark steel-rimmed eye-glasses for contact lenses and adopted a more contemporary haircut.
In 1993, Denver was having problems with the Aspen police department. He was given a DUI in September and had his driver’s license suspended. He paid a $50 fine and sang a benefit concert for his required community service. On 21 August 1994, he was taken to the Aspen hospital with head and facial cuts from an accident in which he totalled his Porsche. His car accident occurred while he was again under the influence of alcohol (DUI). Denver wrote his autobiography in 1994 called Take Me Home in which he candidly spoke of his marijuana, acid and cocaine use and of a suicide attempt in a London hotel room.
On 12 October 1997, after playing a round of golf with his friends near Carmel, California, Denver headed out to fly a new plane that he had just purchased. He was killed when the plane crashed at 5:30 PM in Pacific Grove, California.
Denver was not legally permitted to fly at the time of the crash due to his several arrests for drunk driving. After investigation, the cause of the plane crash was released in January 1999. Investigators believe that Denver was low on fuel and, unfamiliar with the cockpit of his new plane, lost control. When he was looking for the fuel-tank switch he inadvertently put the plane into a roll and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. He left millions of fans mourning a beloved talent.
Link to Wikipedia biography