Rating: 
Summary: Thoughtful Treatment of John Denver's Music
Review: When I first heard of John Collis' "John Denver: Mother Nature's Son," I was tempted to ignore it, but I knew I'd not be able to do that. The dust jacket was very off-putting; what could the pub- lishers have been thinking of to put blatant lies where everyone would see them? Fortunately, the book itself was more accurate. The author went into this project prepared to denigrate John's music. That he found it difficult to do so is clear, testifying to the fact that the music is much better than critics realized. I appreciated Mr. Collis' complimentary remarks about John's voice, which to me has always been the number one factor in his amazing career. The music, too, is given more respect than Collis obviously intended. I'm glad he was finally able to see the light. I did find it a bit irritating that so much space in such a short book was devoted to marginally interesting material, such as Mr. Denver's family history and the musical timeline in which he oper- ated. Such information would have been appropriate in a full-scope book but not in one that covers only 175 pages. It almost gave the impression that the material needed to be padded, never a good idea in any kind of writing. What is there, however, is fairly informative. It should be pointed out that there are several errors: John Denver did NOT offer the Russians any amount of money to take part in their space program; as he pointed out many times, that was the price tag the Russians put on the project and Mr. Denver did not intend to pay that. The information in the first chapter about Mr. Denver's tragic plane crash and the investigation is also misleading, implying Mr. Denver did not perform a pre-flight check, when in fact, the NTSB report indicates clearly that he did. Overall, I found the book mildly interesting. I am always happy to find my assessment of John Denver's voice and music supported.
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