Switched on Pop - How John Denver got huge in Asia

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

“Take Me Home, Country Roads” is a song about West Virginia, but its message of homecoming has resonance far beyond Appalachia. Songwriter and producer Ian Fitchuk found this out when he was requested to perform Denver’s music at a music festival in Tibet. Fitchuk discovered that Denver has a huge following in East and South East Asia, where Denver toured multiple times from the 70s through the 90s. Denver’s songs first came to the region through the US Armed Forces Network radio as well as a diplomatic performance for China’s leader Deng Xiaoping at the Kennedy Center in 1979. Denver performed alongside the Harlem Globetrotters and the Joffrey ballet, and he left such an impression, the show led to an invitation to be one of the first western musicians to tour China. To better understand Denver’s meaning in the region, Switched On Pop co-host Charlie Harding speaks with Ian Fitchuk about his performance and interviews journalist Jason Jeung who wrote about “Country Roads” in The Atlantic. Songs Discussed John Denver - Take Me Home, Country Roads Kacey Musgraves - Oh, What A World The East Is Red John Denver - Rocky Mountain High Creedence Clearwater Revival - Fortunate Son James Taylor - Carolina in My Mind Carpenters - (They Long To Be) Close To You John Denver - Thank God I'm a Country Boy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Ian Fitchick has become one of my favorite producers and songwriters. You've heard us talk about. Ian's work on the show with Casey Musgraves, Moona, and just last week, Stephen Sanchez. I recently had the opportunity to meet up with Ian, and he told me this surprising story. Back in 2017, while in the middle of recording Casey Musgraves' album, Golden Hour, Ian gets a phone call from a Nashville songwriter friend named Kai Welsh. He gives me a call out of nowhere and says,

I've been asked to put some music together for this international music festival. This is wild, but would you be interested in going to Tibet, like, fairly soon? Ian's friend Kai helps organize music experiences out in nature, and China is preparing to open its biggest conservation project ever. It's roughly the size of England. It's called San Juan National Park, and the local government wants to recruit musicians to play a small music festival, but not just any musician. They were interested in tracking down John Denver to come and perform at the festival. And John Denver at that point had been not with us on earth for 20 years. But it was imperative that take me home country roads be played at the festival.

We thought that was really funny, but it made me go, you know, come to think of it, that does seem to be a song that transcends wherever you go. The chances are people are going to be able to sing along to that chorus. Of course, getting John Denver to perform wasn't going to happen, but the festival still wanted something John Denver-esque. Well, in the absence of John Denver, are your friends in Tennessee capable of coming and bringing some traditional American and folk music to this festival? And I immediately said yes, you know, with no other kind of details. So Ian and Kai get together a small crew of Nashville musicians. They rehearsed some Americana songs, including John Denver, and within a few weeks, they're off on a flight to China.

I just was kind of blindly going into it saying that I don't know a whole lot about the Chinese government, but let's just go ahead and say this is going to be great and just started to prepare for the unknown. The project sounded interesting. Ian finds out that it's been organized by this American rafting guide who's trying to raise awareness for the importance of Chinese rivers, given that the government had spent a decades-long campaign damning many of its waterways. And there's some support from Patagonia and National Geographic in partnership with the local Chinese government who want to shine a light on this important ecosystem. And so while on his flight, Ian's thinking... It was a great honor to be traveling that far to represent American music, especially for the cause, at least that I was aware of, which was as an act of conservation. So the convergence of like being a musical ambassador of some sort and also this sense of exploration and conservation. I mean, it was just all of my favorite things lumped into one mysterious trip.

After a long flight from Nashville into Western China, Ian and his crew touched down. I find out that we'll be landing in the Yushu Airport, which is the highest elevated airport in the world. It's the 10th highest at 12,762 feet. But yeah, that's pretty high up. This is when I'm realizing, yeah, I don't, this, we're really out here. The crew settle in for a night to acclimate. and the next day are put on a bus going west into Tibet. We're heading towards the headwaters of the yellow Yangzi and Mekong rivers, sometimes called Asia's water tower.

Apparently our stage is going to be backed up against one of these rivers. This is one of the most important headwaters in the world, feeding into rivers that serve roughly two and a half billion people. But where Ian's heading is pretty remote, up in the mountains, far away, from most population centers. And we pull up. And it just, you know, it resembled more of a backyard party than a music festival. There were some flags and kind of a flatbed truck looking stage.

And then several beautiful yurts and some motorbikes. And it seemed mostly like people that had traveled from some close, but maybe also some not so close distances and had camped. And by the time the festival was in. full swing that were maybe 150 to 200 people. You've got people bringing out their instruments and starting to play. And the next thing I know, we're in a year, playing, rehearsing, country roads, take me home. And this woman just starts improvising and singing along in interweaving this traditional

Tibetan folk music with country roads. It was, I mean, in that way, it resembled a backstage at a festival. Everybody kind of hanging out. And then the show begins. It was all traditional folk music from predominantly Eastern countries. And we just enjoyed the show, just sat out and watched these amazing musicians perform. And then it was our turn, and we get up, and we play our little blues folk rock set. And we get to Country Roads and sure enough, like, everybody's singing along.

That was our big number at the end. Just singing along and harmonizing, it was just bizarre and beautiful. All the music in the festival, Country Roads was the real hit. People couldn't get enough. Later that night, after the festival, it was kind of like an after festival. party. We were all sat in this big, large yurt. And basically, the night consisted of one at a time. Each table from different country would go around to each other table and sing a song. We probably did country roads five or six times that night. There's nothing to talk about. We're just sharing music.

That seemed to be the song that everybody was able to sing along to. Just the, the passion with which people always find within themselves to sing in the middle of the chorus. Don't you know the place. You see the arms go up. You see the facial expressions change. It's just this, it really resonates. After this one-day music festival, Ian goes home to Nashville to finish his recordings with Casey Musgraves on what will become the Grammy Award winning album, Golden Hour. One of the songs they write for the album is called Oh, What a World.

It has this sense of natural wonder. Here's a cut of the song they released for Earth Day. It's awful nature speaks to me in a similar way to John Denver's Country Roads, a song that still holds an important place for Ian. I love that song, and I love the purity that you feel from his voice. I know he had a complicated life. A lot of beautiful music comes from complicated people. most does, I think. But I think about all the beautiful places that I've been, and I genuinely,

when I hear that song, think about the way that music's made a home for me in so many places. John Denver is remembered for his music and as an environmentalist. But as Ian said, his legacy also includes his challenges, including a troubled upbringing, struggles with alcohol, and, of course, his tragic early death in a plane crash at the age of 53. And just as this icon of Americana had complications in his life, it turns out that the land Ian visited, unbeknownst to him, also has a complicated past. After speaking with Ian, I dug deeper into the story of San Genuai National Park. And even though the music festival was a relatively small event,

it took place on land with a troubled history. China, of course, annexed Tibet in 1951, and an armed uprising in 1959 led the Dalai Lama to flee Tibet and establish a government in exile. Since then, human rights organizations have consistently reported human rights violations committed by Chinese officials against Tibetans, including arbitrary arrests. arrests, torture, and executions. When it comes to the San Genuan National Park specifically,

human rights organizations say that thousands of nomadic Tibetan people have been forcibly removed, displaced, and some detained from this land, which has been their home for thousands of years. The founding of San Genuine National Park has even been compared to America's own colonialist past in which indigenous people were removed from their lands to create the U.S. national parks. With this context, the music festival and the use of John Denver's environmentalist message feels like it was inadvertently misappropriated to fit a political message. But here's the thing. Those voices singing along to country roads declaring that they belong, those were real voices.

The festival goers knew and loved that song because it turns out that Denver has a huge and very genuine following outside the U.S. So what I want to understand is how John Denver built this fan base and how did he get so big in China and elsewhere? Because it turns out that this is not the first time his music has been used as a tool. of cultural diplomacy. We'll get into that right after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough.

Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no, no.

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The official John Denver website has an archive of his entire touring history, and so I used this data to create a map of every place he performed. And it turns out, in addition to countless tours in the Americas, Europe and Australia, he visited East and Southeast Asia multiple times. Starting in the 70s, he toured Japan. In the 80s, he visited China and played the Philippines. And in 1994, he went on a multi-country tour hitting Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and South Korea as well.

To go deeper on his popularity in these Asian countries, I spoke with writer Jason Jung. Jason Zhang. Hi. You wrote an article for The Atlantic called The Song That Sold America to a Generation of Asian Immigrants. Yeah, I did a few years back. You said that John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads

had an unlikely resonance across Asia 50 years ago and that today his ode to West Virginia it conjures up a different kind of longing. Yep. John Denver's Country Roads is a larger metaphor for a lot of Asian people's relationship with America as an idea. Okay, fascinating. Yeah. Let's start by listening to the song.

Almost Heaven. West Virginia. Blue Ridge Mountains, Shannon Gold. Take me home. Country Roads from John Denver's 1971 album, Poems, Prayers and Promises. He really did have a lovely voice, didn't he? Oh, my gosh. So pure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so pure.

Just break down the elements. What are you hearing in Country Roads? There's a lot of duality to it. There's the emotional element, and there's also the idea the song presents. I think listening to it in 2023, as a modern listener, there is something kind of corny about it, kind of kitchy, like something you'd listen to when you walk into an antique shop or something. But at the same time, it's incredibly earnest and really sweet. in a way that I think has resonance to audiences today as well. So, like, the man is singing about homecoming.

How much more relatable can you get? It doesn't necessarily feel like something that was written in 2023. But at the same time, there is something immortal to it. There's something eternal. It's still very much a part of the culture. It feels like a song that has entered the folk music canon and sounds even older than it really is. It might be 50 years old.

But if you said it's 100 years old, it's 100 years old, I'd probably buy it. 100%. What are the lyrics communicating at a base level? At a base level, the lyrics are very pastoral. They're very bucolic. So you see a lot of imagery about Americana. He talks about the Shannon Doe Valley.

He talks about Appalachia. Places, you might not necessarily have seen yourself personally, but there is an idea of what that place looks like. It's sort of like America the Beautiful. It's very lush with imagery, but at the same time, it's much more emotionally resonant than it is very. visually. It's about going home. It's about the feeling of returning somewhere you haven't been in a while, a place where I belong. This music is resonant far beyond Shenandoah, Appalachia.

You say that he has a very large Asian, especially East Asian fandom. How can we quantify that? So one of the more interesting data points would be to look at karaoke data. So karaoke is a massive part of a lot of Asian cultures. There's a lot of karaoke companies that produce machines, and they saw it either directly to homes or to karaoke businesses, and a lot of them still track the most popular songs played. So, like, nowadays, if you look at these karaoke charts, you'll probably see Taylor Swift, you'll probably see some Doja Cat. But a track that seems to be permanently on all of these lists,

whether it's in China, Japan, or Korea, is country roads. So there is an immortality there. And I think it says something about the fact that a lot of people still choose to sing this song voluntarily. Like, it brings them joy. Another data point that I think might be helpful. In 2009, there were two sociologists who went around college classrooms in China, basically trying to find out how pop culture, Western culture, disseminates throughout younger people. And when they asked different classrooms, they found that the most popular song among,

an age cohort that extended from 18 to 24-ish was country roads. It wasn't, this was at the era of Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne, but no, John Denver was the most popular, which I think goes to show there's something bigger at play. A lot of lasting appeal here. Yeah. What's the history of how John Denver built this fan base? John Denver arrived in Asia at a time of really profound cultural, political, and social demographic change within the continent. And specifically when you're looking at the political side,

one of the more interesting instances in history is how John Denver entered China. So China essentially from the end of the war until Mao's death was in a state of cultural and political isolationism. During the cultural revolution, during Mao's reign, the country was essentially closed off to the West. So culturally, socially, the only music that was technically permissible were what they called Red. which were essentially songs espousing the virtues and values of the Communist Party or or China's great history. Red songs, okay. Red songs.

So after Chairman Mao died, the person who took over was a man named Deng Xiaoping. And in 1979, Deng Xiaoping became the first sitting Chinese leader to visit Washington and meet the U.S. head of state. So that was when Jimmy Carter was president. And as is customary with a lot of these diplomatic functions, President Carter held ceremonies for him at the Kennedy Center, which featured the likes of Parliament Globetrotters because everyone loves a trick shot.

There was the Joffrey Ballet performing to Aaron Copeland's Rodeo. And then there was also John Denver. So very much programming a lineup that someone like Jimmy Carter, a Baptist preacher from Georgia would very much enjoy, something that was inoffensive and clean, I guess would be the word? What kind of impression does Denver leave on China's leader after this performance? So from what we know, he left a pretty big impression on Deng Xiaoping because a few years later, Deng Xiaoping invited Denver to be one of the first artists from the West

to come perform in China. So here of mind, China was entering a new period of daint, opening up to the daytime, opening up to the West, but at the same time, the CCP still had a lot of control over what was allowed in and out of the country. So Denver fit an idea of America that was friendly enough that dang saw permissible perform in front of the Chinese people. You reported that John Denver is one of the first Western artists to be invited to perform modern China. He visits in 1985 on a cultural trip and part to negotiate a venue for a performance that eventually takes place in 1992 when Denver makes a historic multi-city tour of China.

Yeah. After this tour, John Denver said of himself that he is the most famous artist from the West in China, which is if you think about it, kind of a wild claim to make about yourself, but he had every right to because apparently there were issues with crowd control. There were issues with scheduling and planning because John Denver coming to Shanghai, coming to Beijing was like the Beatles coming in New York. So clearly there was not only an audience that really enjoyed Denver's music, but also the CCP thought favorably of Denver himself to grant him these privileges. Wow.

Okay, so John Denver establishes a important fan base in China through the acceptance of the safe messages of country roads, Take Me Home, and his music, which was perceived as being non-threatening to the Chinese Communist Party. But he also develops a fan base beyond just China. So a lot of the popularity of Denver was tied to the Armed Forces Radio. So throughout the 20th century, the U.S. had military forces within Asia across World War II. So the Battle for the Pacific, there was the Korean War, Vietnam War. And with each of these, there were military bases stationed throughout the continent. So these military bases, in a sense, became cultural hubs of American dissemination. So if you look at a lot of countries in Asia today, so like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, for example,

the most popular sport isn't soccer, it's baseball because a lot of them learn how to play baseball at these military bases. And when it comes to music, Armed Forces Radio, I think, was a big part of a lot of Asian people's exposures to Western music for the first time. And I assume that the programming on Armed Forces Radio has its own, we'll say, lower C conservative slant in the same way that the Chinese Communist Party is wanting to also broadcast things that are considered safe for the population. And so John Denver is making it through both of these filters. 100%. So just as China and the CCP had their own reasons for censoring what came in, the U.S. military had similar motives to censor what came out. So a lot of the content inevitably became kind of muted, not only in its politics, but also in its vulgarities.

When you think of some of the biggest artists and the biggest songs, although they might have been big in America, you probably wouldn't be hearing anti-Vietnam War anthems by CCR. What you got at the end were essentially what we would call easy rock today. They were artists like James Taylor. In my mind, I'm gone. The Carpenter's. Close to you. Carol King. And also John Denver.

I feel like at this point in our conversation, it might seem as though there might be some cynicism. John Denver's music is just safe, and that's the only reason why he has a fan base. He gets past both the CCP's filter, the U.S. military's filter, He's safe Americana. But the music deeply resonates. This is a period of a lot of upheaval, disruption, a lot of change that's going on in various countries, whether it's the rapid development that's happening in Korea, the post-war Japan, rebuilding, the opening of China. And you're reporting, what did you find that people are hearing in John Denver and specifically taking home country roads?

I want to clarify that when he's speaking about Asia, Asia is a very big continent. It's impossible to describe sweeping claims about a large group of people. I think a lot of people project their own emotions onto the song. And a lot of people might have different relationships with the song. But Take Me Home Country Roads is part of the ideation of America. So at a time when there was a lot of, I think, cynicism and wariness of America from Asian people, John Denver represented something really pure and beautiful. It was about really good. beautiful images of the American countryside. Life is all there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze.

I mean, how can you not fall in love with that? It's a really simple idea of what America could be. And it also coincided with the time when a lot of Asian people began moving to America. So throughout the 80s and 90s, Asian immigration from the continent to America more than tripled. Specifically, the number of Asian immigrants from 1980 through 2000. the number of Asian immigrants who moved to America increased from 2.5 to 8.2 million people. I think a lot of these people came to America with a specific vision of what America would be like.

So the stuff that they took from the culture that they loved, because they were exposed to John Denver and Carol King, and all these people who presented something really pretty about America. The pastoral vision of opportunity, the land of mountains and oceans and beauty. The music that they were listening to most likely didn't talk about Jim Crow or Japanese internment or McCarthyism. It was a song of opportunity, and that's what Denver represented to a lot of people. How do you feel his meaning shifts in the intervening years from his first introduction via state-sponsored tours in China, U.S. military bases? In your reporting, how do you hear that his music has evolved in its meaning, especially for those immigrants who've come to the United States?

If John Denver represented something aspirational about America, I think Asian immigrants have found that it isn't so easy. John Denver represented an idea of America that was really pure, an image of suburbanity and stability. And I think it's safe to say that, especially in the past few years, a lot of Asian people's relationship with America has felt a bit more precarious. It's been well documented, but the Asian hate crimes that we've been seeing increased throughout the country. not only have Asian hate crimes gone up, but I think just living in America for a lot of Asian immigrants is tough. The idea of moving to a different country, a place where you don't really know the language, don't have any family, you fall in love with an idea, but you find out that the idea doesn't really love you back. So going off a personal experience, my parents moved in 2001, so when I was four. And they moved to America because it represented, like for so many immigrant families, just a better opportunity for their kids.

But what they found was a place where they had no family. The language spoken wasn't their primary one. And it was challenging in ways that I don't think anybody could have foreseen in 2001. So when we think about the idea of homecoming at John Denver, there's an inversion that happens. When you're thinking about homecoming and the idea of John Denver, it goes the other way. You're nostalgic for your home. My parents were a part of the generation that grew up with John Denver. Going back home to Korea, you could still see all my dad's records.

in the attic of his child at home, and you see it, you see Denver, you see Eagles. A lot of his idea of America and moving abroad came from the records that he loved. But while he was in America, I think he desperately longed for home. He wasn't able to go back off and all his friends were back home.

His parents who were aging were back home. Yeah. And the song became a song about longing for Korea rather than one for America. It's kind of as if most people, in America probably don't ever travel to Appalachia. Like Appalachia is a picture of a beautiful mountain majesty. It really is just like an image of America. And it was the one my parents fell in love with. And there's a beautiful passage in Interior Chinatown about a man who sings country roads

at a karaoke bar. And as a frat boys around him are snickering, as the patrons are slowly getting hammered. By the time he gets a mountain mama, everybody will be listening because there's a man who understands what it means to go back to a place where he belongs. The mountain can metaphorize any mountain, any sense of homecoming? 100%. My parents live in Korea now. So they left the United States. They left the United States a few years ago. So while I was growing up, my dad especially would talk about how everything was better in Korea. There was a profound nostalgia for the motherland. It was kind of like, I don't know if you've seen Black Panther, but at the end, Michael B. Jordan's character says in the end how my dad always told me, sunsets in Wakanda were the most beautiful. It was very much the same for me. Everything was better back in Korea. And I think America was a place that was difficult in ways. It was isolating. It was remote. And it was, it wasn't home, essentially. So my parents are back in Korea now. I think they're happier. I hope they're happy. Mom, Dad, be happy. Did they still play John Denver? They do play John Denver.

John Denver was a part of like very, very folksy stuff. You recently traveled back to Seoul. Yeah. Did you hear John Denver at all? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You hear John Denver all the time. And I didn't get a chance to go karaokeing this time. But it really is one of the, it's in his own way, entered the great Asian songbook.

How about your relationship to the song? What does it mean to you when you hear it now? I think after writing the piece and after reflecting on its relationship with my parents, it's kind of sad. I don't like to, I don't listen to it too often, but it is something that makes me think of home. Home for me now, I guess, is Korea. It's where my parents are, and I get to see them every couple of years. So I guess in a full circle moment, it's what I imagine they felt listening to it when they were living in America and they would think about their parents. I think another thing that's important to say is it's one thing to pontificate about like the larger metaphor of what country

Roads means. But at its core, like, Country Roads is an incredible song. It's a hit. Like any singer-songwriter would be lucky to have a hit that last 50 years. And that's what John Denver did because it's an incredibly catchy melody. It's very singable. And the themes that it hits on is eternal. I mean, Homecoming comes back to like The Odyssey and Homer, ancient Greece. So there is a magic to Denver itself and the record that he produced. Well, thank you for sharing your story. I really appreciate it. Yeah, of course.

Thank you for having me. You can read the rest of Jason Jung's article over at The Atlantic. I'll post it in the show notes and on our website Switchedonpop.com where you can find merch and all of our other episodes. You can also find those on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. We'd really appreciate it if you enjoy the show that you'd leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Switched on Pop is produced by Rihanna Cruz, engineered by Brandon McFarland, illustrations by Iris Gottlie, editing by Art Chung,

community management by Abby Barr, our executive producers on a shot Karwa and Hanna-Rosom, or a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture, and special thanks to Tripp Jennings and Balance Media for some of the archival footage from this episode. We'll be back again on Tuesday talking about the artist's seal, trying to uncover some of the mysteries of his famous song, Kiss from a Rose. Until then, thanks for listening.