John Denver

Air takes four of his ten planets, with two apiece in fire, earth and water, and six of the ten were retrograde at his birth. More than half this chart faces backwards, including Mercury and all of the slow half except Neptune. The record calls Denver an American singer and names Take Me Home, Country Roads.

Mars sits conjunct Uranus at thirteen hundredths of a degree, both of them retrograde and both in Gemini with Saturn, so three planets fill sixteen degrees of that sign. The standing reading of the pairing is sudden force: decisiveness, physical daring, and a genuine dislike of being controlled, with an old caution about haste. The record gives no cause of death and this chart is not being used to supply one, so that caution is printed as what the aspect means and left there.

The Sun sits on the tenth degree of Capricorn, built on competence and on having actually done the thing, and the Moon answers from Pisces at twelve, absorbing the mood of a room whether or not it wants to. Both lights are certain. Venus sits square Jupiter at just over half a degree, pleasure without a brake, extravagance, and valuing more when the problem was never quantity. The Sun stands at an awkward angle to Pluto at just under a degree. For a singer the record fixes to one song, two certain lights is more than most entries here have to work with.

He died at Monterey on 12 October 1997, at fifty three. Neptune stood sixty degrees from his natal Venus at eight hundredths of a degree, the closest thing in that sky. Venus and Uranus both ran into the natal Mars to Uranus conjunction: Venus directly opposite the Mars at half a degree and the Uranus at two thirds, and transiting Uranus in easy contact with both from a little further out, including its own natal place at four fifths. The Moon was at its first quarter and eighty four per cent lit. That is the phase that acts decisively and often has to break something to do it.