For Baby (For Bobbie)

In a 1992 interview with American Songwriter magazine, Denver told Deborah Evans Price that this was only the fourth song he ever wrote. It appears also to have been the first he ever recorded. In his biography of Denver – published two years after his untimely death – John Collis said he wrote it about a girl he met while playing at the Lumber Mill, and that they dated for about a year. The man himself went into little more detail in his autobiography. John Denver attended Texas Tech but flunked out of college much to the dismay of his parents, and everyone who knew him. He moved to California to play music, and got lucky making $100 a week before joining the (Chad) Mitchell Trio, but in between he was playing in Scottsdale, Arizona where he met the girl to whom he dedicated this song. It was, he said, "an early attempt to order my romantic thoughts." He doesn't say much about her except that she lied about her age to get into the club, but reading between the lines, she appears to have been the first girl with whom he ever had a sexual relationship.

As the son of a US Air Force pilot, Denver had an insular and somewhat isolated boyhood, and was a late starter sexually, although he made up for lost time after he married his first wife, Annie – the true love of his life. Like many touring musicians, being kept apart from loved ones and having temptation put in his way by adoring fans cost him his marriage.