He was born in the summer of his 27th year

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

17/06/73 : Rocky Mountain High - John Denver


I am aware of John Denver and I like his voice and general gentle style, but don't think I'm aware of any of the tracks on this album, except possibly the title track.

And yeah, having listened to it, I think that state of affairs is still pretty much true - it all just glided past me without imprinting itself on me in any way.  There was nothing wrong with it, but there was nothing to it either.  He does have a lovely voice, there's some lovely guitar playing on it and it's all very lovely.  And well, just kinda insubstantial.

We're at #11 on its sixth week of an eleven week run and this was as high as it ever got - plenty of albums that have peaked higher have never got close to a review, so he should consider himself lucky (although I'm guessing he probably wouldn't be ecstatic about the content).  Bizarrely, this was its third run on the charts - it had a week in March, a week in April but it didn't really get going until May.  The top five this week are Pure Gold, That'll Be The Day (a new entry), Bowie, Gary Glitter and The Beatles' Blue - and there are three more compilations in the rest of the top ten.  It's not a GREAT week, is it?  The next highest new entry was Tom Jones (#31) and we're back to Linda being the highest woman in the charts at #15 (although there are a few on the compilations - but not many!).

Wikipedia has a whole four sentences on the album and the most interesting of them tells me that's Slaughterhouse Falls on the Rio Grande Trail on the cover.  To expand my John Denver horizons I also checked out the entry for the title track and there's a load more on that.  Firstly, it's one of two official state songs of Colorado - you didn't know that, did you?  And secondly, it's been pretty damn controversial over the years.  Towards the end there's a line which celebrates "friends around the campfire and everybody's high" and a US court ruling around the time allowed the US equivalent of Ofcom to censor music promoting drug use so various radio stations to ban it just in case.  Because, my man JD is obviously a bad influence on the kids...

"Customers also listened to" Harry Chapin and Gordon Lightfoot, who I believe are quite similar and Placido Domingo, who, well, isn't.  John Denver was never exactly Mr Look-at-me, but I do feel this album would have benefited from a bit more oomph to it - it was perfectly inoffensive (apart from his hard-core drug references, of course) but just a bit too low-key for me.

10/06/73 - No, no, NO!
24/06/73 - A nice bit of nostalgia

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