Take me home song

It’s a total mystery to me how this 1994 title was stored in the brand new release section of my local public library. That’s the only way I would’ve found it some 19 years after it was first published! Long an admirer of John Denver’s music, I couldn’t resist yet another celebrity autobiography. (That brings up a rabbit trail. If you use a ghost writer, in this case Arthur Tobier, and even put his name on the cover, is it still considered an “autobiography” and not a true “biography?”)

“Take Me Home” in my mind documents the fact that Denver was a tortured soul. The older of two sons in a military family, he moved around constantly while his Air Force pilot-father took various duty assignments. Growing up, that made it difficult for Denver to make friends, to put down roots. Compounding that issue for the singer and songwriter was a nearly life-long emotional detachment from his dad. (Although that relationship was apparently reconciled somewhat once Denver shared a common interest with his father in flying.) Not being a psychiatrist or a psychologist, I think those two factors more than any other may have led to Denver’s two failed marriages.

This 250-page retrospective chronicles Denver’s first fifty years and reveals his life-long quest to find himself, first in his music as well as in his numerous sexual affairs, marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, environmental causes and New Age religious gurus. The later was a real turn-off to me personally. Denver’s chapter on finding your “inner space,” the philosophy of EST and later his essay on the practice of reiki leading to child fertility, getting in touch with your inner child and soul-retrieving through a shaman “transporting herself to some inner realm” smacks of witchcraft and the occult.

If you research Denver’s interest in aviation, you learn that his Lear 35 jet has gone through numerous ownership changes since his untimely death in the crash of Denver’s experimental plane off the coast of California. The History Channel records, “by the 1990s, Denver was still a popular touring musician, though he was no longer recording new material with significant commercial success. Over the course of his career, he had become an accomplished private pilot with more than 2,700 hours on various single- and multi-engine aircraft, with both an instrument and a Lear Jet rating. On October 12, 1997, however, he was flying an aircraft with which he was relatively unfamiliar, and with which he had previously experienced control problems, according to a later investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. At approximately 5:30 pm local time, after a smooth takeoff from a Pacific Grove airfield and under ideal flying conditions, Denver apparently lost control of his Long-EZ aircraft several hundred feet over Monterey Bay, leading to the fatal crash.” You won’t find that accident report, of course, in this Denver biography, released about three years before his fatal crash.

Don Phillips, a Washington Post staff writer, on January 27, 1999 reported the following:

According to investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, the crash was the culmination of a series of small mistakes. But the key factor seems to have been the decision by the plane's builder to place a fuel valve switch in a hard-to-get-at location behind the pilot.
Denver's final act apparently was to reach behind his left shoulder to switch the plane's engine from one fuel tank to another. The uncomfortable stretch caused his right foot to press against the right rudder, according to a final board report. The aircraft -- a single-engine Long-EZ -- pitched up, rolled to the right and slammed into the ocean.

George Petterson, the board's investigator-in-charge for the Denver crash, appeared in a board video showing what it would be like to turn the fuel switch in the cramped cockpit. His pretzel-like pose, coupled with the involuntary movement of his right foot, proved persuasive to the five-member board.

The plane had no flight data or voice recorder, so investigators had to piece together their account of the plane's final minutes.

Denver's aircraft was the only Long-EZ ever built with the fuel valve in that location. All 1,200 of the others -- based on a design by experimental guru Burt Rutan -- have the switch on the console directly between the pilot's legs.

Texan Adrian Davis, who built the plane from the Rutan plans, told investigators he put the switch behind the pilot because he did not want to have fuel lines running into the cockpit, especially down where they might rupture in a belly landing. In truth, investigators said, Rutan had accounted for that possibility by strengthening the fuselage below the fuel switch.

Some of the links in the accident chain were not Denver's fault. One was his stature: He had to have a cushion behind his back to allow him to reach the rudder pedals. This also meant he had to stretch farther to reach the fuel switch.

The plane also was new to Denver; he had just bought it from its second owner. And investigators believe he was unaware that he was so low on fuel.

"He must have exhausted the fuel in his left tank," said investigator Ron Price.

Witnesses reported the engine sputtered as he climbed away from one of his practice landings. Denver likely made his final stretch in an effort to switch to the right tank, which had fuel remaining.

Experimental and amateur-built aircraft like the Long-EZ are not subject to all the rules of the Federal Aviation Administration. The safety board recommended that the FAA, the Experimental Aircraft Association and insurers cooperate to "strongly encourage" pilots of new experimental planes to undergo formal training, which is not now required.

The board also recommended better markings: The plane that Denver flew did not even have a marking on the fuel selector switch to indicate in which position the engine was drawing from the left tank, which from the right tank, and which shut the fuel lines altogether.

Other reports I read indicated that Denver knew he was low on fuel but planned to fly for only about an hour. As the wreck badly disfigured Denver's head and body, making identification by dental records impossible, records of his fingerprints taken from his arrests for intoxicated driving were used to confirm that the fallen pilot was indeed the singer. In fact, he was not supposed to be flying because of prior DUI convictions. People magazine reported at the time, “Two days after the accident, officials announced that (Denver) had been flying without the medical certificate necessary for all approved pilots. According to wire reports, though, it had been suspended because Denver had twice been arrested on drunk-driving charges. Before the accident, the FAA had learned of his failure to abstain entirely from alcohol subsequent to drunken driving arrests, and since his medical certification was conditional on this, a determination was made that due to his drinking problem, he was not qualified for any class of medical certification at the time. At least a third-class medical certification was required to exercise the privileges of his pilot certificate. However, there was no trace of alcohol or any other drug in Denver's body at autopsy.

John Denver. A very tragic figure in American entertainment indeed. One wonders what might have been had he lived all of his too-short life as Henry John Deutschendorf, Junior.