John Denver

I have a DVD with John Denver and most of his Guitars are Taylors.

How old (new?) is the DVD? I may be totally off base, but I thought Taylor wasn't even around when John Denver was really big in the early 1970's. They are probably an old company than I think, but I really thought they didn't get started until later that decade, if not the 1980's.

Peace

EDIT:

Decided to answer my own question and looked up the Taylor guitar website. They started in 1974. So John denver obviously played guitars other than Taylor at least up until then.

Peace

I recently watched a PBS special about him and I could swear I noticed him playing some big Gibson jumbos, 6 and 12 string.

I sent an email to his website, so we'll see. I think David is right, though He must have played something besides Taylors because he started in 1963.

He had a beautiful handmade Nakamoto Yamaha L-53 and an old Guild on the cover of "poems,prayers,and promises"

Yes , definitly i have seen him in a pic on the net , playing a Jumbo guitar (Gibson probably ...and SJ200 more so.I maybe wrong on the model)

And how curious is this ...for sometime even i had been really wanting to ask this question about john denver's guitars.

An even more mind boggling question is that , did John played all the guitars in his songs himself (multi - track) or he played the leads or he played the rhythm ?

I am the resident John Denver fanatic fan.He's my true idol.A great country musician :)

Rahul

His first guitar was, apparently a 1910 Gibson acoustic
Grevel White Lady
Ovation Adamas 12-string
Yamaha L-53 guitar, designed by the noted Terrumi Nakamoto and built in 1978 by Mr. Ito (from Yamaha) for the late singer/songwriter and environmentalist John Denver.
BC Rich
Ervin Somogyi
Taylor

An even more mind boggling question is that , did John played all the guitars in his songs himself (multi - track) or he played the leads or he played the rhythm ?

Easiest way to answer that is to read the album liner notes. In a live setting, such as a concert, he was almost always rhythm, either strumming (for the faster songs) or fingerstyle. But he would toss in a fill or two from time to time.

In the studio it's harder to tell because only the musicians who were there can attest to who played what (and there have been no end of arguments about that on occasion), but it's a good guess, judging on the stylistic differences you can hear, that he had other musicians playing most of the fills or leads.

Peace

An even more mind boggling question is that , did John played all the guitars in his songs himself (multi - track) or he played the leads or he played the rhythm ?

Easiest way to answer that is to read the album liner notes. In a live setting, such as a concert, he was almost always rhythm, either strumming (for the faster songs) or fingerstyle. But he would toss in a fill or two from time to time.

In the studio it's harder to tell because only the musicians who were there can attest to who played what (and there have been no end of arguments about that on occasion), but it's a good guess, judging on the stylistic differences you can hear, that he had other musicians playing most of the fills or leads.

Peace

just out of curiosity, why would he do that? He obviously was plenty talented enough to play them himself.

Wish somebody could tell me , how the leads were done on 'Take me home country roads' and 'Thank god i am a country boy' (I mean lessons/simple hints/tips as to how to play them)

David..........or anyone else please ?

Its time that we had some popular country music discussed in the intermediate songs on guitarnoise :oops:

Wish somebody could tell me , how the leads were done on 'Take me home country roads' and 'Thank god i am a country boy' (I mean lessons/simple hints/tips as to how to play them)

David..........or anyone else please ?

Its time that we had some popular country music discussed in the intermediate songs on guitarnoise :oops:

I agree. I'd like to see some of those as well.

Its time that we had some popular country music discussed in the intermediate songs on guitarnoise :oops:

Naturally, this is dependent on having a country fan or two on the site, but if anyone reckons they've got a good take on something and feel they'd like to write a lesson then send a rough outline of the idea to David or Nick.

Writing for GN doesn't pay but there's heaps of kudos from having your name on the newsletter and the home page. This place gets several million hits a month.

Best,

A :-)

Growing up in the Midwest (US, that is), I've played lots of country music in my days. There are a lot of parallels between country, bluegrass, and the Celtic music I (mostly) play these days. I just submitted a new lesson yesterday and was thinking about writing a lesson on a different topic before the next Celtic lesson...it's been a while since I looked through the GN lesson archive and I really don't remember what kind of country lessons there are, if any. I'm open to suggestions :)

I'd almost forgotten about this...years ago (mid '70s) when I was in high school, a girl had me play guitar with her for a talent show. I recall that we did two songs by John Denver - she sang one, and the other was an instrumental. I have no idea now what what songs we did, but it was definitely two guitar players. Maybe Steve Weisberg or John Sommers, I don't remember. But at that time I was mostly into classical music and rock of the day (Zeppelin, Sabbath, Deep Purple), and I remember being mesmerized by the instrumental - just two acoustic guitars. After that, I somehow got into Doc Watson, Leo Kottke, Alex DeGrassi, and Will Ackerman, but it was John Denver that got me into the acoustic.