John Denver - Poems, Prayers & Promises (CD)

All Music Guide

After several albums where he had allowed cover versions to dominate the sets, John Denver returned with an album, Poems Prayers Promises where he had written over half the songs. He should have had more confidence in his own songs for this was at the beginning of a golden period for Denver when his songs would dominate the easy listening airwaves especially his big hit singles, Take Me Home Country Roads and his first US number one, Sunshine On My Shoulders, both surprisingly failing to reach the charts at all in the UK. However, the opening title track set the scene for the whole album, pleasant acoustic songs sung by John Denver backed in the most cases by the picking and strumming of his acoustic guitar. So therefore it was rather surprising when the album ended with the track The Box, a spoken poem with no music at all, relating a story similar to Pandora, of a box that was chained and locked and labelled ‘kindly do not touch, it's war' and when someone did break it open, a bounc...y bumpy ball, a metaphor for war, escaped and ran amok, bumping into everything, particularly the children. And noone had the wisdom to put the ball back into the box and reseal it. Sounds as if it would be awful but really it was quite moving. Poems Prayers Promises was actually released in 1971 but was reissued after Rocky Mountain High nearly reached the top 10 in 1973 and it became his second top 20 album. Of the covers, there were two from the Beatles, Let It Be, an even simpler version than the original version and the rather less famous, Junk from Paul McCartney's debut solo album. He also covered the James Taylor classic Fire And Rain which was rather unnecessary for it was rather insipid compared to the version the public had got used to less than a year ago. - Sharon Mawer, All Music Guide Read more Less