RCA 1183
Producer: Milton Okun
Track listing: Windsong / Love Is Everywhere / Spirit / Looking for Space / Shipmates and Cheyenne / Late Nite Radio / Cowboy’s Delight / Two Shots / I’m Sorry / Fly Away / Calypso / Song of Wyoming
October 18, 1975
2 weeks
“The country album Back Home Again was to a large degree about how people live in the country,” says John Denver. “Windsong is on a more spiritual level. Some of the songs are a little further out there. It’s more about the environment.”
The title track was written one night at Denver’s home in Aspen, Colorado, with frequent Denver collaborator Joe Henry. “One night he was at my house and we were talking about the wind,” Denver says. “I went to bed that night and the next morning Joe had left, but laying on the kitchen cabinet was this poem. It was beautiful. I sat with that poem and found music there. I ended up changing a few words and a phrase here and there and we ended up having a song. It was a wonderful way to open the album and concerts.”
Other songs, such as “Looking for Space,” had a deep philosophical bent. “It’s about looking for the definition of who you are, by finding out where you are, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally.”
In 1975, Denver was still one of the top male pop singers, so popular that many of his peers were inspired by his music. Olivia Newton-John had covered Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads” in 1973. Denver was so taken by Newton-John’s version that when he decided his song “Fly Away” needed a female voice on it, he called her and asked her to guest on the cut. “I gave her a tape and she took it home and came up with a number of complex vocal parts that were beautiful,” Denver says.
“Calypso” was inspired by one of Denver’s heroes, famed marine specialist Jacques Cousteau. For one of Denver’s TV specials, the singer spent six days on Cousteau’s ship called the Calypso. Denver had hoped to write a song to serve as backdrop for the piece when it was broadcast on television, but he developed writer’s block. “Moments after coming aboard the ship I had the chorus and a great idea for this song, but I couldn’t finish it and it was driving me crazy. I had in my mind that I wanted it to be a cowboy’s version of a sea chantey.”
Frustrated, Denver returned home to Aspen and hit the ski slopes. “I skied two or three runs, but then I knew I had to go back home to finish the song,” he says. In a burst of creativity that mirrored the writing of “Annie’s Song,” Denver returned home and finished “Calypso” in 20 minutes. It was three weeks after the first chorus had come to him aboard Cousteau’s ship.
“Calypso,” the flip of a double-A- side single that also included “I’m Sorry” became Denver’s fourth and final Number One single on September 27, 1975. Denver says that putting two songs on one single was a big mistake. “I got a little arrogant,” he says. “I wanted a two-sided hit to go to Number One.” Denver is convinced that Windsong would have even been more successful had “I’m Sorry” and “Calypso” been released as two separate singles. Nonetheless, Windsong became Denver’s third and final album to hit the top in its third week on the chart.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of October 18, 1975
1. Windsong, John Denver
2. Wish You Were, Here Pink Floyd
3. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
4. Red Octopus, Jefferson Starship
5. Win, Lose or Draw, Allman Brothers Band