I remember hearing John Denver for the first time in the early 1970's. The connection was instant and permenant.
My friends would call me a "rabid" JD fan they were right. I bought ever album, every tape (no CD's back then) and literally lost myself in his music and his voice. The "message of the mountains" he brought haunted me and I longed to go to Colorado and Aspen and experience the things that inspired such beautiful and meaningful music.
As an artist I had images in my head that I wanted to paint. The things that were sung about with such feeling by John Denver inspired the painting I did of him. Not for profit ir anyone to "admire" but for myself as a tribute to the only singer who has ever touched me so profoundly.
I saw JD in concert eight times and every time was memorable and special. Whether standing alone on a stage in a small theatre in Boston or on a huge one with video screens and a full orchestra in Ft. Lauderdale he was incomperable.
I did finally get to visit Aspen in the early 1980's and felt like I had."come home to a place I'd never been before". I brought my painting with some small hope of being able to present it to him but that didn't happen. I did photograph it in front of the famous Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake above Aspen, though.
That painting still hangs on my wall to this day and I never tire of listening to.the music of John Denver... singer, slng writer, environmentalist, humanitarian.