Music Before the Money

In September 1981 the band I was playing in at the time, Sensation, was performing in Calgary at the Scotch Room in the Four Seasons. It was a big Vegas-style room and we had just finished out last set when the manager came up and announced that the John Denver Band was in the audience and would like to perform a few tunes.

The band got up and my eyes could not get off John Denver He was there too and, to my surprise, picked up our guitarist’s Telecaster. But it was the rest of the band that had my friends in awe. “Do you see who’se got my Strat,” Ray Anderson asked, trying to get his jaw off the table,. “That’s James Burton and the guy on your boards is Glen D. Hardin. That’s Elvis’s band, man!” Well they started playing and Joh Denver sounded as much like rockstar as he did a folkie. He was that good. 

The son of a U.S Air Force officer, Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. began his foray into music after the family moved to Tucson, where at age eleven, he was given his grandmother’s guitar. John eventually took up guitar lessons and joined a boy’s choir, which led him at age 20 to take matters into his own hands and pursue his dream of a career in music.

In 1963 he struck out on his own, moving to Los Angeles to be in the heart of the burgeoning music scene. It was during this time he was urged by friends to change his name . The name John Sommerville was suggested but he ultimately took his stage name from the capital city of Colorado, his home state.

Picture from http://www.rollingstone.com

I used to practice the guitar parts in Poems, Prayers and Promises and, of course, Rocky Mountain High. I always liked tuning the low E string to D to play that.

We are now coming up to the 10th Anniversary of his death which was on October 12, 1997. A pilot with over 2700 hours of experience, Denver was a more than good pilot with multi-engine and instrument ratings. He also was checked out on lear Jets. He had recently purchased the Long-EZ aircraft and had taken a half-hour checkout flight with the aircraft the day before the accident. The NTSB cited Denver’s unfamiliarity with the aircraft and his failure to have the aircraft refueled as factors in the accident.

I miss John Denver. Like Buddy Holly and Jim Croce he died far too young. My greatest memory of him - as I did not see him live - was driving through the Rocky Mountains in early October, the top down on my Fiat sports car and John Denver’s Greatest Hits blasting from the 8-Track.

When the protagonist of The Millennium Man, Harley Melanson, leaves his job as a barnstormer he joins the Lincoln Brigade as a fighter pilot and fights against the Facists forces of Francisco Franco. Supporting Franco is Adolph Hitler and he sends his Kondor Legion and its new Messerschmitt 109 fighters.

Ernest Hemingway is a real-life character I used in this part of the novel in my zeal for a Forrest Gump-type theme throughout the book. As an ambulance driver in norther Italy at the end of World War I Hemingway witnessed the carnage and misery there that was being repeated in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, between General Franco and the (Republican) Loyalist government. In the fall of 1936 Hemingway was invited to cover the War as correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance. He spent an initial two months there in the spring of 1937, the first of four visits over the next year and a half.

The war was actually a dress rehearsal for World War II and the German Kondor Legion performed the first terror bombing campaign in history. During this time life in the besieged city of Madrid went on: bullfighting, partying and movies. The surreal atmosphere was a great setting.

Melanson enters the war as a mercenary pilot for the Loyalists. He is paid to shoot down German and Italian aircraft using his obsolete, open-cockpit Boeing P-26. This aircraft is the poster object for deco-art of the time and its fixed landing gear added to the drag coefficients.This ads to the David vs. Goliath scenes where skill is needed to survive.

The duel between Melanson and Benito Mussolini’s son actually happened except the American pilot, of course, was not my character. But Bruno Mussolini in a more modern Fiat fighter was shot down - and lived - and Captain Derek D. Dickinson landed with 326 bullet holes in his antiquated Russian Mosca.

I don’t like changing the facts like some writers, especially screenwriters, like t do. I want my characters to experience the historic moment.

Maxwell Maltz of “Psychocybernetics” fame wrote about the “Theater of the Mind” and how we can go to this theater any time we want and play our life plans. And like the movie producer we can add to and cut from this picture.

From before Alexander the Great- who used to win the battle in his own “mind cineplex” before it was actually fought - men and women have been achieving their goals by replaying them in their minds over and over before the date of the event.

In previous writings I have mentioned how the first hour of the day is the most important because this is the time when you not only feed and exercise your body but also fill your brain with positive affirmations. And if exercise is not in this hour of power then breathing is absolutely important. This is also the time to replay your movie in great detail and go over your plans.

Sometimes this will not be a pleasurable experience. You might be going through the “eleventh hour blues,” as I call it  it. This is the “rapids” where your boat is rocking so badly that you want to get to the nearest shore and give up the trip. This might be the time when your dream might be stuffed in the closet to suffer like a wounded animal. In other words this is the time when dreams die.

By revisiting your theater time-and-time again to watch the impending joy and happiness of achieving your success you will build a great defence against the pain that comes when your dream is just around the corner, when your soul is cold and at its bleakest. This is the time when you can block out the well-intended advice of your friends and loved ones who, out of concern for your welfare, want you to move toward a safe harbor.

The Mind Cineplex is another great tool to help you achieve the life you always wanted.