John Denver‘s 1966 debut, John Denver Sings, opens with a cover of the Beatles‘ Revolver classic “Here There And Everywhere” and is peppered with three more of their covers—”Yesterday,” “And I Love Her,” and “In My Life.” Denver’s second album, Rhymes & Reasons, released in 1969, featured another Beatles’ song, “When I’m Sixty-Four,” a song a 14-year-old Paul McCartney wrote, forecasting his older age.
By his third album, Whose Garden Was This, two more Beatles songs made the tracklist: “Eleanor Rigby” and a medley featuring “Golden Slumbers” from Abbey Road.
Throughout his 35-year career, Denver covered nearly a dozen Beatles songs. Here’s a look behind four more.
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“In My Life” (1966)
Right from the start, Denver jumped into the Beatles, covering four of the band’s songs on his 1966 debut, John Denver Sings. The Beatles’ Rubber Soul classic, “In My Life,” was the penultimate track on Denver’s album, and a song John Lennon says was his “first real major piece of work” and the first time he wrote about his life.
In his final interview in 1980 with David Sheff for Playboy, which was published two days before Lennon’s murder, he explained how he wrote “In My Life” remembering his childhood streets.
“‘In My Life’ started out as a bus journey from my house at 250 Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning all the places I could recall,” said Lennon. “I wrote it all down, and it was boring. So I forgot about it … and these lyrics started coming to me about friends and lovers of the past. Paul helped with the middle-eight.”
“Let It Be” (1971)
Denver’s fourth album, Poems, Prayers & Promises from 1971, features his classic “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” along with a cover of McCartney’s solo song “Junk” (McCartney). He also didn’t miss a chance to get another Beatles track on the album: “Let It Be.” Written by McCartney and released on the Beatles’ final album of the same name, “Let It Be” was inspired by a dream he had about his mother Mary, who died when he was 14.
“Mother Nature’s Son” (1972)
Rocky Mountain High was Denver’s first Top 10 album, reaching No. 4, and gave him another Top 10 hit with its title track, which was co-written with Mike Taylor and became one of the official state songs of Colorado. The album also featured another Denver rendition of a Beatles song, this time with “Mother Nature’s Son.” Inspired by Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy,” Denver also featured the Beatles’ song on his 1974 album An Evening with John Denver.
During Denver’s final concert in Corpus Christi, Texas, on October 5, 1997, a week before he died in a plane crash, he performed “Mother Nature’s Son” during his 29-song set.
“A Day in the Life” (1984)
Though he never recorded it, in 1984, Denver performed the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” at the end of the Grammy Awards ceremony as a tribute to the music of the ’60s, along with Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
Released on the Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, “A Day in the Life” was initially banned by the BBC for its insinuated reference to drugs: I’d love to turn you on.
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Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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