https://youtu.be/paFYyeAFNVc

THE GENERAL IDEA

If you remember his heyday of the 1970’s, or even if you’re familiar with him at all, it seems that you’re bound either to love or hate pop music legend John Denver. There’s little sentiment in-between.

I fall into the former camp. I came of age with Denver’s songs as a virtually uninterrupted soundtrack on both radio and television. In fact, it was my dad, hardly a fan of contemporary music, who turned me on to the promising singer/songwriter by way of an 8-track tape of the stunning yet under recognized album “Aerie”.

THE GOOD

The BBC documentary “John Denver: Country Boy” delivers a brief but informative look at the life of a man whose personality was both magnetic and moody. The highlights of Denver’s remarkable rise to superstardom are given their just due along with the dark downside of becoming world famous. However, while touched upon briefly, it is with short shrift that the film dedicates attention to his issues with alcohol in the years leading up to his tragic death at just 53 in the accidental crash of an experimental aircraft he was piloting off the California coast in 1997.

THE BAD

I really would love to have heard from some of the fellow musicians who played with Denver. Guys and gals from the Chad Mitchell Trio, The New Christy Minstrels and from his own band as a solo artist. The insight and flavor of knowing and working personally with the icon these folks would have uniquely leant to this doc would have almost assuredly been informative, entertaining and fascinating to me as a fan.

OVERALL

It is most unfair and minimizing that Denver is considered by many to be little more than an innocuous nerd. Still, if that be the prevailing opinion (and, as you may have gathered, it is certainly not that of this reviewer), there should be minimal debate that he was unquestionably one hell of an enormously gifted geek.