March 14, 2007
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Rocky Mountain High
Colorado has just made “Rocky Mountain High” the co-state song. It has been an unofficial state song for years. John Denver made the song popular. He died about 10 years ago in a plane crash.
There are those who thought the song shouldn’t be the state song because they thought the song was about drugs. Here is the link: Link
Here are the lyrics to the song:
He was born in the summer of his 27th year
Comin’ home to a place he’d never been before
He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again
You might say he found a key for every door
When he first came to the mountains his life was far away
On the road and hangin’ by a song
But the string’s already broken and he doesn’t really care
It keeps changin’ fast and it don’t last for long
But the Colorado rocky mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
The shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullabye
Rocky mountain high
He climbed cathedral mountains, he saw silver clouds below
He saw everything as far as you can see
And they say that he got crazy once and he tried to touch the sun
And he lost a friend but kept his memory
Now he walks in quiet solitude the forest and the streams
Seeking grace in every step he takes
His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand
The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake
And the Colorado rocky mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
You can talk to God and listen to the casual reply
Rocky mountain high
Now his life is full of wonder but his heart still knows some fear
Of a simple thing he cannot comprehend
Why they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more
More people, more scars upon the land
And the Colorado rocky mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
I know he’d be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly
Rocky mountain high
It’s Colorado rocky mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
Friends around the campfire and everybody’s high
Rocky mountain highIs Rocky Mountain High about drug use?
Comments (84)
I don’t think so.
yes, and i go to school there, its been a big topic for about a week now…i think i’m first
YES! 2nd time making it to the #1 spot
Could be, but I don’t think so. I’d say it’s about getting a “high” or “rush” from the beauty of nature.
We were just voted the drunkest state in the country why the hell shouldnt we also be the highest???
Its always been a popular song here like most of John Denvers music….hell you cant go to a sports game without hearing “Thank God I’m a Country Boy”!!
Might as well just make it official. And no I dont think its about drugs…..one day spent in the Rocky Mountains looking at the beauty and you know exactly what he is talking about.
Uh, no, children…it’s not. If you’ve never hiked or walked in the Rockies, you won’t get it. The high is called altitude influence. Being up there and seeing the natural beauty is a major high. But then, there’s not as much oxygen up there. The song never was about drugs, never will be about drugs. It’s about frigging time that CO gave something back to the man that gave them everything!
i’m thinking its a natural high from the beauty of the rocky mountains… like its bliss or something
No. I think that was a fair choice…
Popular songs are popular because people can read what they want into them.
You people are lame.
it could be but aren’t most songs in some way about drugs?
No. It’s about the Rocky Mountains, which are high.
you people
what do I mean by that?
You know very well what I mean by that
I suppose it could be, but I think it more likely is about the effect the beauty of nature had a the writer of the song.
Only if nature is a drug.
One can read whatever they want into anything, that is the power of the human mind.
I can see how people might think that it is about drugs but I have trouble coming to that conclusion even when I want to. The song, as I see it, is about the joys of being in the mountains of Colorado with ‘high’ refering to those joys as well as the height above the rest of the earth that you can see from there.
People really need to find something more productive to do with their time.
PS–Dan, you forgot part of the lyric:
And the Colorado rocky mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
You can talk to God and listen to the casual reply
Rocky mountain high
(High in Colorado)
Everytime the Rocky Mountain high is sung, the descant behind it is “high in Colorado.” It does make a difference.
Could be…
if so, it’s no worse than Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, right?
maybe
I have always thought about it as high on life and the sheer beauty God put in the Rocky’s is overwhelming at times. I think it gets a bum wrap because it was written at a time where getting high was just becoming publicly talked about and dealt with. It doesn’t refer to drugs as the cause of the high but of the creation around them so it makes me think they are so overwhelmed with what God has done they can barely stand the site of it. My thoughts.
i think it is more about the beauty and magnificence of colorado which is the most beautiful state of the union !
cosmic high
No, I don’t think it really is. I think it’s about being out in the nature of the Rocky Mountains.
As per my usual opinion on these sorts of things, some people need to get a grip.
No… and if you’ve ever lived in the mountains you would know that.
I don’t think the song is about specifically about drugs but the feeling of the high of the mountains. We know that John Denver did many many drugs and was probably as high as a kite when he wrote the song so while the song is not about the drugs it may have been influenced by them.
Not in my opinion…
i wasn’t saying the rockies aren’t beautiful, just the line about sitting around a campfire being high…for someone like john denver that sounds like a drug line
people read way to much into songs….
I think the repetition of “Rocky Mountain High” is kind of an explanation of what the artist means by high. So I honestly think that it’s not about drugs. But it could be easily misinterpreted.
From reading the lyrics, I don’t think so at all.
It sounds like it’s talking about being “high on life” and the beauty of God’s creation (i.e. the Rocky Mountains) to me, not drug abuse.
no, but you have to be stoned to enjoy Colorado
I’m looking at Pikes Peak as I write this. I sure hope the song isn’t about drug abuse. Kinda funny that you wrote about this today. Last night, we were attending our small group study with people from our church. During our prayer time, someone’s cell phone went off… Her ringer was Rocky Mountain High. Everyone started laughing and the whole prayer time went downhill fast!
Honestly, who hasn’t “seen it rainin’ fire in the sky”? (On acid!) But really, a state song choice is causing controversy? That’s almost as pathetic as people who argue about sports.
It wasn’t my initial thought. If I hadn’t known there was a debate about it, I would never have thought it.
maybe.
as found on the variably reliable wikipedia this is what they site John Denver having to said on the matter of his song being banned on some radio stations.
“This was obviously done by people who had never seen or been to the Rocky Mountains, and also had never experienced the elation, celebration of life, or the joy in living that one feels when he observes something as wondrous as the perseid meteor shower on a moonless, cloudless night, when there are so many stars that you have a shadow from the starlight, and you are out camping with your friends, your best friends, and introducing them to one of nature’s most spectacular light shows for the first time.”
: )
No but I think we could have a better co-state song than that. What about that song “if I had a wagon I would drive to Colorado?” That’s decent.
Anything but “The Land Where the Columbines Grow.” That just doesn’t cut it.
I’m not allowed to think anything bad about John Denver. I liked keeping the peace with my wife! She still gets sad if you bring up John Denver’s death…
I don’t think it’s about drugs though. Denver was passionate about nature.
could be figurative and talking about the feeling you get from drugs.
or it could be literally the rocky mountain.
who knows.
you’d have to ask john denver.
No, no way.
uhh no way.. It’s about a natural state of mind you get when you are one with nature. Yeah I’m a tree hugger lol so what.. and I don’t do drugs, I get high on life, just like in the song
the closest John Denver came to drugs was Tylenol.
Heh, I think it’s like the Beatles’ songs, they can be interpreted either way. My brother once said “I think poety and lyrics are not meant to be understood by the writer’s point of view. I think they should only be interpreted into what it means to you.”
The lyrics to John Denver’s song are beautiful. And it should be left at that.
No, it isn’t about drug use. It is about taking in all that is around you and allowing it to sweep over your mind and body. I miss John Denver.
no, I don’t think so. I mean, there are some parts where you could read that into it if you really wanted to, but, I don’t think it was intended to be that way.
No – it is the high you get from the altitude of the mountains and nature. Drug use is optional.
that is so not about drugs
The lyrics read like more an anthem for pantheism.
I meant “more like an anthem for pantheism”
No. This is almost a completely spiritual song – amazing actually. Thank you for printing these inspiring lyrics.
if you want it to be.
this reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a man at our church who asked if the song “You Raise Me Up” sung both by a ‘secular’ singer, Josh Groban, and by a Christian group ‘Selah’ was a secular song or not.
for that matter, is ‘Time After Time’ sung by both Cindi Lauper and Nichole Nordeman a secular song?
I think it has to do with the setting in which it is performed and the mindset of both the artist performing and the audience.
When John Denver was asked this he told them it was about being with nature, a natural high, nothing to do with drugs
nah
As the wife of an avid backpacker, I read the lyrics and see nearly nothing about drugs. The song, to me, is about falling in love with being in the mountains, with seeing the beauty of nature, and lamenting that more people and civilization are encroaching onto that sacred space. If you casually hear a line or 2 or the title you may assume it’s a “high” from drug use, but again reading the lyrics and knowing someone who loves and appreciates the “high” that comes from being in the mountains, this song isn’t at all about drugs.
Nah…natural high from the beauty and altitude of the Rockies. John Denver and his Colorado music inspired me to talk my parents into taking us on vacation there when I was in high school in the 70′s….it was amazingly beautiful, awe-inspiring – and I can see why it inspired him to write this song exactly the way he did.
He must be on some shit if he thinks he can talk to god.
It’s whatever the listener wants it to be….
Personally, I adore the song….
Candy
I saw John Denver in a concert and he said when you ae in the Rockies you are on a natural high and do not need drugs…so no It is not about drugs.
dosent sound like it to me. but what do I know
define drug
Then I’ll answer
interpreting a song is like interpreting poetry…what you want to hear or read you will. if you want it to be about drugs well then so be it. it doesn’t really sound that way, high doesn’t mean blown all the time, high can mean happy, or up high. like maybe up high in the mountains? any visit to any spectacular natural setting, like yosemite, can elicit a similar response. seems stupid to link everything to drugs to me!
I don’t think it was intended to be
but it really reads like it at least to me.
No. If you’ve ever been to the Rocky Mountains in the summer when everything is green and lush and clear, it’s breathtaking. Literally. It’s about nature.
John Denver writing a song about drugs, don’t think so.
No, it’s about mountains.
I see a lot of existentialist philosophy in there. Taken as a narrative, it is almost an existentialist apologia. The man receives a life-changing experience through an aesthetic encounter with nature. “His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand / The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake”– that could have come straight out of Sartre.
Not fully satisfying as philosophy, but a good lyric nonetheless.
Uh… NO…
How is that about drugs? Just because it says “high” in the song doesn’t mean it’s about drugs. It’s talking about altitude. It even makes me think more about altitude because it says “tear the mountains down” not “take away my drugs.” lol
People need to be a little more sensible and a little less stupid.
“these rocky mountains dont seem that rocky to me…”
“yeah, that john denver is full of sh**, man”
what movie? i kno u kno!
Nah John Denver was all about nature.
i find that when someone’s going through a particular situation they tend to interpret poetry or lyrics in a way that relates to them. Narcissim, perhaps, but it’s human nature, I suppose.
no.
You betcha! Sure sounds that way.
In Denver’s autobiography, he wrote: “I remember, almost to the moment, when that song started to take shape in my head. We were working on the next album and it was to be called Mother Nature’s Son, after the the Beatles song, which I’d included. It was set for release in September. In mid August, Annie and I and some friends went up to Williams Lake to watch the first Perseid meteor showers. Imagine a moonless night in the Rockies in the dead of summer and you have it. I had insisted to everybody that it was going to be a glorious display. Spectacular, in fact.
The air was kind of hazy when we started out, but by ten p.m. it had grown clear. I had my guitar with me and a fishing rod. At some point, I went off in a raft to the middle of the lake, singing my heart out. It wasn’t so much that I was singing to entertain anyone back on shore, but rather I was singing for the mountains and for the sky. Either my voice gave out or I got cold, but at any rate, I came in and found that everybody had kind of drifted off to their individual campsites to catnap. We were right below the tree line, just about ten thousand feet, and we hadn’t seen too much activity in the sky yet. There was a stand of trees over by the lake, and about a dozen aspens scattered around. Around midnight, I had to get up to pee and stepped out into this open spot. It was dark over by those trees, darker than in the clearing. I looked over there and could see the shadow from the starlight. There was so much light from the stars in the sky that there was a noticeable difference between the clearing and everywhere else. The shadow of the starlight blew me away. Maybe it was the state I was in. I went back and lay down next to Annie in front of our tent, thinking everybody had gone to sleep, and thinking about how in nature all things, large and small, were interwoven, when swoosh, a meteor went smoking by. And from all over the campground came the awed responses “Do you see that?” It got bigger and bigger until the tail stretched out all the way across the sky and burned itself out. Everybody was awake, and it was raining fire in the sky.
I worked on the song – and the song worked on me – for a good couple of weeks. I was working one day with Mike Taylor, an acoustic guitarist who had performed with me at the Cellar Door and had moved out to Aspen. Mike sat down and showed me this guitar lick and suddenly the whole thing came together. It was just what the piece needed. When I realized what I had – another anthem, maybe; a true expression of one’s self, maybe – we changed the sequencing of the album we’d just completed, and then we changed the album title.”
Is camping out and doing lsd with your close friends really a bad thing?
Definitely not. People who says so are just perverting a good John Denver song.
It’s art, therefore it’s up to interpretation. But do you want your state song to be possibly interpreted as being about Drugs? But it could just be about the mountain.
John Denver said it was a tribute to God for making such a beautiful place as the Rocky Mountains – that they made him serene and appeciative of the beauty of life. A natural high.
I doubt it. I can see why some might think so, but I think he’s talking about nature.
I think that John Denver was really one of those kinds of people who actually liked the feel of Colorado so much that it made him intrinsically happy just to be there. And he was still saying “far out” at his concerts until he died. He was just blessed with a sort of optimism.
Next topic: Peter, Paul, and Mary’s ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’….
NO! I always saw it as being more about a spiritual experience or something like that.
Of course its not about drug use. As a Coloradoan, I can vouch the whole ‘drug use’ thing is a joke. Its only politicians and people with no sense of humor who take the joke seriously.
“friends sitting around a camp fire and everybody’s high”
no, this son has nothing to do with drugs whatsoever