Ready to sweep the bad out with the old? Here are some traditions around the world that people enjoy to usher in good luck for the new year.ĭanoff said that by the end of the night, they all felt like they had a hit song.
#Guitar song manyland movie#
“It took John, who was a ball of fire in those days, to say, 'Well, let's do it now, like an old Mickey Rooney movie let's put on a show!” Danoff said.
Left to my own devices, I would have had another beer and played another song," Danoff admitted. "John's incredible energy was what made it happen. Of course, Danoff did play it for Denver, and the three stayed up the rest of the night putting the finishing touches on it. “Wow, that’s really cool that’s like rock 'n' roll, so almost heaven West Virginia.” “What I liked about the Johnny Cash records, when he came on, they did that same chord and it had a whole lot power,” Danoff said. They didn’t know Cash, but his music influenced the song nonetheless. The song wasn’t finished, and he thought it was too country for Denver.īill and Taffy had hoped Johnny Cash might want to record it. Taffy suggested they sing "Country Roads" for Denver. “I’ve been writing a couple years in the basement, songs I thought sounded like hit songs unfortunately, people at the record company and nobody else did,” Danoff says.
But at that point, he hadn’t had any luck. “We had some beers and whatever else we were serving at the time,” Danoff recalled with a smile.ĭanoff admits that he was eager to get a hit song. "John whacked his hand and broke his thumb on the windshield.” Another passenger broke several of her ribs.ĭespite the broken thumb, Denver went straight from the emergency room to Danoff’s home. “They’d been in an accident,” Danoff said. Then a phone call came from the emergency room of the George Washington University Hospital. “After an hour they weren’t there and we were worried,” Danoff recalled. In Memoriam: Remembering Public Pioneers We Have Lost After the fourth night at the Cellar Door, Denver, the Danoffs and a few friends planned to meet back at the couple's basement to try out some new songs. Denver had already recorded one of Danoff’s songs, "I Guess He’d Rather Be In Colorado," when Denver was booked for New Year’s Eve week at the Cellar Door with Fat City as the opening act.ĭenver was looking for more material for an upcoming record for RCA. Their first gigs were at house parties before taking the stage at the short-lived Emergency Club on M Street.ĭanoff knew Denver from his times appearing at the Cellar Door, first with the Mitchell Trio and later as a solo act. The couple would later go on to become half of the Grammy-winning Starland Vocal Band.īut in the late 1960s, the two were struggling songwriters living in a basement apartment on Q Street NW in Georgetown. “Nobody at the club knew I sang or played anything,” Danoff recalled 50 years later.
The opening act was Fat City, a Georgetown-based band that featured Bill Danoff and his then-wife, Taffy Nivert Danoff.īill Danoff had been a doorman at the Cellar Door, and then the lighting and sound tech for years, before he ever performed at the club at the corner of 34th and M streets NW. It was the fifth night of a week-long stint for John Denver. What happened to the original second verse about naked ladies and Jesus?īill Danoff, the song's co-writer, is setting the record straight on those questions and more.Ī sold-out crowd packed into the tiny Cellar Door nightclub in Washington, D.C., on Dec. Was the song originally titled "Take Me Home, Clopper Road," inspired by a Maryland road of the same name? Was the song originally inspired by and written for Johnny Cash? Sign up here and get news that is important for you to your inbox. We're making it easier for you to find stories that matter with our new newsletter - The 4Front.
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