John Denver’s Testimony At The PMRC Hearings Was Transcendently Good

by Mallory Ortberg · May 24, 2016

You’ve seen VH1, you either remember, or have seen reenactments starring Dee Snyder thereof, the Parents Music Resource Center hearings of the mid-80s, where a group of Congressmen’s wives (what a sentence!) tried to enact a stricter music ratings system, and how it didn’t work out too great for said wives, and how Frank Zappa yelled at everybody, but what you mayhap weren’t in knowingment of was that John Denver gave the sweetest, sincerest, John Muir-iest testimony of all time before the same committee! A of all, how much does using John Denver to testify on behalf of the Filthy Fifteen exemplify the exhortation to be as cunning as serpents and as harmless as doves?? B of all, LITTLE BUDDY!

Here’s part of the speech he gave:

I have had in my experience two encounters with this sort of censorship. My song “Rocky Mountain High” was banned from many radio stations as a drug-related song. This was obviously done by people who had never seen or been to the Rocky Mountains and also had never experienced the elation, celebration of life, or the joy in living that one feels when he observes something as wondrous as the Perseids meteor shower on a moonless, cloudless night, when there are so many stars that you have a shadow from the starlight, and you are out camping with your friends, your best friends, and introducing them to one of nature’s most spectacular light shows for the very first time.

I just! Can you imagine, listening to Frank Zappa and Dee Snyder with all your Congresspeople friends, and waiting to hear a lively debate about censorship and responsibility, and then John Denver shows up and won’t stop talking about how great the Rocky Mountains are?

They’re great, we can definitely all agree on that, but the issue we’re discussing today is–

Because I think anyone who thinks that Rocky Mountain High is about drugs probably hasn’t even BEEN to the Rocky Mountains. 

I – sure. Moving on,

I’ve been to the Rocky Mountains.

okay

They’re a wonderful starlit place, full of enwonderment and joydears and all your friends are there, your best friends, and they can see meteor showers with their own opened eyes, under the friendly smile of the night sky 

I think everyone’s in agreement about the Rocky Mountains, John

Then why are you trying to ban them

This isn’t a committee on the Rocky Mountains, John

Then what are the Rocky Mountains doing here

what

[Everyone looks out the window to see that John Denver, mountain-man and son of America, has brought the Rocky Mountains with him. The committee unanimously votes in favor of camping with some good friends under the Colorado sky.]

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.

75 Comments

    1. lizzythecat +45

      I CANNOT PROPERLY EXPRESS MY LOVE FOR THE JOHN DENVER AND THE MUPPETS ALBUM.

      My family listens to this on repeat every Christmas. I cannot.

      1. middlemarch +83

        In my head I kind of conflated the relationship between Christ and his disciples with John and the Muppets and honestly it still kind of holds up.

    4. mbculver +18

      My dad and I listened to that album every year whilst decorating our Christmas tree, and now I’ve ruthlessly foisted it on my family when we do the same. They don’t seem to mind too much, even though I always cry and drink a lot because I miss my dad something awful at those times.

    5. Dorothea_Brooke +8

      Was there ever a time before the Muppets Christmas Album? I thought not. But then, my husband didn’t grow up with it, so apparently it belongs to a specific place and time after all. When I finally introduced him to it, he immediately fell in love. It is now our annual staple for ushering in the Christmas season. And! “Alfie the Christmas Tree”! Followed by “It’s In Every One of Us”! That’s some serious religion stuff going on there. *Sniffs. Looks up at ceiling.* I’m not crying. You are!

      “You see some folks have never heard a jingle bell ring
      And they’ve never heard of Santa Claus
      They’ve never heard the story of the Son Of God
      And that made Alfie pause

      Did that mean that they’d never know of peace on earth
      Or the brotherhood of man
      Or know how to love, or know how to give
      If they can’t, no one can

      You see, life is a very special kind of thing
      Not just for a chosen few
      But for each and every living, breathing thing
      Not just me and you

      So in your Christmas prayers this year
      Alfie asked me if I’d ask you
      Say a prayer for the wind and the water and the wood
      And those who live there too”

      1. middlemarch +10

        Can we please take a moment to reflect on the fact that “Dorothea_Brooke” replied to “middlemarch”.

        1. Dorothea_Brooke +9

          High five, middlemarch! Who would have predicted that John Denver would bring us together?

      2. lilotelasserie +4

        True story: my family named our fake Christmas tree Alfie after this song.

    6. ann_surely +12

      My dad and I loved the Muppets Christmas Special and listened to the album many times every Christmas.

      I played “When the River Meets the Sea” at his funeral; that was 10 years ago and I still can’t think about most of the songs on the album without choking up.

  2. dreadfulwind +125

    “The committee unanimously votes in favor of camping with some good friends under the Colorado sky.”

    More committee meetings should end this way, honestly.

    1. jackan7 +10

      I have long thought that it should be mandatory for people in power to have to experience the great outdoors for x amount of time per year.

  4. brigidkeely +55

    So. What you’re saying is that John Denver needs to write a Steven Universe song about friendship, beauty, magic, and glimmering rocks falling through the night sky beautiful enough to break your heart and inspire you to greater levels of love and friendship?

    1. alahmnat +18

      I’m sad that we’ll never get to hear it, because that would be super awesome.

  5. Dexteress +63

    Ok but really Colorado people are legit very attached to their mountains. I do not recommend transplanting them out of their native environment, because you will never hear the end of it.

    1. StoatCat +48

      I imagine John Denver summoning the mountains as a land-based version of the “drinking the primordial magic, turning my sisters into fish, and creating a massive tsunami in order to find my boy-friend” scene from Ponyo.

      John Denver just rides a churning, charging hillock and plays “Annie’s Song” as Long’s Peak rolls through and over Ohio.

    2. Beakses +30

      Yes, can confirm, am very judgemental of other people’s mountains due to Colorado upbringing. Also other climates and their inferior winters.

      1. SarcasticFringehead +12

        I live in Seattle now. This winter it snowed once, I think? Meanwhile, my mom was sending me photos not two weeks ago of her car under two feet of snow.

      2. maryoftheassumptions +14

        Grandmother lived in Colorado. Much of my life has been spent saying, “No. That, my friend, is a hill.”

      3. GinnyQ9 +2

        Can also confirm, as a Colorado transplant via Kansas and Massachusetts, that:

        1) Coloradans are *very* all about their Colorado-ness.
        2) Other mountains are looked down upon.
        3) As are other climates and inferior winters.

        Having lived in various wintery and unpredictable climates, these are my personal feelings: winters near the Great Lakes (e.g. CHICAGO, Minnesota) are far colder due to lake effect; winters in Boston are snowier due to bay-effect and also general northernness (at least than Denver, where I am); the weather in Colorado is the most volatile I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and I grew up in Kansas.

        Also, the mountains are pretty sweet.

        1. Beakses +5

          I feel that Colorado winters are superior largely because you still get to see the sun (looking at you, Seattle) but also get amounts of cold and snow sufficient to indicate that it is indeed winter. Plus the snow is usually fluffy instead of wet and miserable. It’s like Disney winter compared to ghastly damp and cold and clouds and lake effect snow you get other places.

          1. GinnyQ9 +3

            Ahhh, I see, you meant superior in the sense of preferable, not better because we have it worse than you. In that case, you are right. Colorado winters are DA BEST winters because they’re wintery enough without being too wintery 🙂

  6. Blarghle +98

    John Denver Story:

    My English teacher in 7th grade set aside *one whole week* of class time to teach us everything about John Denver. There were documentaries/news footage, song lyric transcriptions – it was a lot.

    When we got to the tragic plane crash bit, my Gilbert Blythian nemesis said some sarcastic thing that made the teacher cry. He was kicked out of class for the remainder of the week (that day and the next one.)

    Reader, I married him – in spite of this story, not because of it.

    2. aintnothingtoit +59

      Everything about this story is fantastic, especially how inappropriately long your GBesque husband was barred from class.

      1. Teka Lynn +15

        He dissed JOHN DENVER. For someone who grew up in the 70s, no punishment is too harsh for such heresy.

  8. mattintoledo +40

    I love this piece.

    I have to admit, reading his testimony, when he mentions there being so much starlight you cast a shadow, I thought, “Wow, is that a real thing?”

    2. mbculver +25

      I always assumed it was, because L.M. Montgomery talks about “the shadow of Venus” in Anne’s House of Dreams and she’d NEVER make that up, right?!?

    3. pigeonsquid +13

      I feel like maybe it was before we all ruined our eyes with this electric lighting fad?

    4. jackan7 +32

      My wife grew up in the south, on our first trip to Montana, we arrived at 3:AM. She stood there transfixed. “What is that?” She had never seen the milky way at a mile high, on a moonless night, in low humidity. She had never even seen the milky way before.

    5. GruntledDave +13

      I’ve been places in Colorado and Texas where there was absolutely no light pollution, and this is definitely a real thing. Amazing amounts of stars are visible on a cloudless night during a new moon.

  9. emmysuhweeks +34

    My mom would really like this article and that’s why it is a good one.

  10. sam_ll +96

    From a little further on in the transcript:

    Mr. DENVER. The only thing we have to fear, as President Roosevelt said, is fear itself. I am not afraid of anything. I am not afraid of what my children might see. I am not afraid of anything that might be shown them or done in their presence that would lessen my influence on them or their opportunity to grow, to be fine upstanding adults, and perhaps some day serve in this very august body.

    Senator HOLLINGS. Well, most respectfully, President Roosevelt never heard these records.

    O_O

      2. freshwaterpearl +23

        I feel like the US is due another Alice Roosevelt in our public life.

      3. pigeonsquid +25

        What if Alice had been a President Roosevelt though. Somebody please write me this alternate history novel STAT.

  11. Marthooh +20

    I totally started singing the chorus inside my own head reading that speech snippet. Rocky Mountain High…goddamn, just goddamn.

  12. fridog +87

    My mom looks exactly like John Denver, so I will always love him and think highly of his meatloaf.

    1. tinypaperme +11

      One of my mom’s friends looks almost exactly like him. We do in fact refer to her as “John Denver” when talking about her.

    2. Brooks +9

      I’m often told that I also look exactly like John Denver when my hair is the appropriate length of shaggy (which it frequently was until I gave up on that battle with laziness and let it get significantly longer than that).

      I have been told this by, among other people, a somewhat tipsy Italian Italian-restaurant owner who then proceeded to serenade me and my party with his rendition of “Country Roads”. It was quite a thing. A memorable thing.

  13. rococopacetic +69

    I was in the 8th grade when those hearings were going on, and hoooo boy was I invested. I remember actually cheering when John, who everyone clearly expected to be pro-labelling, stepped up and proceeded to demolish them in the most John Denver of ways. He was my hero from that point on (and I still hate Tipper Gore, but I held my nose and voted for Al because I HAD TO AND THIS IS A LESSON FOR TODAY omg sorry my nerves are extremely frayed)

    1. rococopacetic +42

      I also MAY have drunkenly bellowed “I WANNA FUCK JOHN DENVER” at my best friend when we were in college, and 20 years later said bff MAY still remind me of it on at least a monthly basis

      1. CleverManka +41

        I cannot imagine him being other than an incredibly caring and attentive lover. You have good taste.

    2. maryoftheassumptions +7

      Even Frank Zappa’s musical ode to the hearings ends on the calling of John Denver, because it simply must. (“Porn Wars,” if I remember correctly.)

  14. Unreadaethel +80

    I do enjoy the “earnest cultural icon gives pure, heartfelt testimony about the inherent goodness of the world, thus defeating the world-weary cynicism of members of Congress” genre. It’s a good genre.

    1. flying_ghoti +56

      I mean, you’ll never beat Fred Rogers in that genre. Or in most other genres, come to think of it.

      1. Unreadaethel +79

        No, Mr. Rogers is at the very pinnacle of that genre, but the great thing about the genre is that it’s not super-competitive. Let’s all take a moment to imagine Fred Rogers calling John Denver to tell him how much he enjoyed his testimony.

      1. Unreadaethel +32

        It never fails to make me misty-eyed. Not even the US Senate Subcommittee on Communications can withstand the gentle intensity of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

  15. flying_ghoti +45

    I found myself wondering just now, “wait, was ‘John Denver’ actually his name, because that seems a bit on the nose,” and no, as it turns out, his name was Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., and that’s not quite as magical as Sir Michael Caine being born Maurice Micklewhite, but it’s definitely going on my mental list of birth names that should by all rights have prevented someone’s career from taking the path it did.

    2. tinypaperme +39

      Then there’s Neil Diamond, who was actually named Neil Diamond and when he wanted to change it when he started recording, his first agent was all, “lol wut u nuts, dude. Best name EVAR.”*

      *paraphrased

  16. Givemebackmehat +47

    My middle school choir director made us do a John Denver medley for our concert in 7th grade (tiny punk rocker me HATED it, of course). This lady was a John Denver superfan for life. She daily referenced the one John Denver concert she had been to as if it were literally the best thing that had ever happened to her. When she told us the story of his death she started sobbing. This in itself would have been uncomfortable enough, but she was also wearing a pale pink Minnie Mouse sweatsuit at the time, which made the whole experience take on an oddly sinister cast.
    Ever since then I can’t see or hear anything about John Denver without also getting a memory flash of a woman in her early forties, wearing a pink Disney sweatsuit, and sobbing about him in front of a group of very shocked 12 year olds.

  17. decantate +20

    (quiet comment about John Denver choking his wife and using a chainsaw on their furniture)

    1. brasspaperclip +7

      (Omg. I have always hated his corny-ass music and persona, but I didn’t know this.)

    2. bitzyboozer +7

      I JUST saw this on his wikipedia page (because I was trying to remember what high school he attended in my hometown). Wow.