Leaving on a Jet Plane

Denver wrote it in 1966, when he was about 23, during a layover at Washington National Airport, and called it Babe I Hate to Go. It first appeared on John Denver Sings, the demo album he gave away as Christmas presents, and in 1967 Milt Okun talked him into the new title. Stereogum's Tom Breihan hears it as the song of an unfaithful touring musician.

The Mitchell Trio released it as a single in 1967, and Peter, Paul and Mary recorded it the same year for Album 1700. Their single reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on 20 December 1969, the only number one they ever had, and went to number two in Britain and Ireland in 1970. Breihan gave it nine out of ten. It was also used in United Airlines commercials.

Denver's own studio version came out on Rhymes & Reasons in 1969 and as a single that October, which did not chart. In 1973 he recorded it again for John Denver's Greatest Hits, and that later take is the one most compilations use. In 1990 his publisher sued New Order over the guitar break in Run 2, and the settlement made Denver a co-writer of that song.

Live and covers

setlist.fm records 75 performances by Denver, and it was third in the set at his last concert in Corpus Christi. Chantal Kreviazuk's version for the Armageddon soundtrack in 1998 reached 33 in Canada, and My Morning Jacket opened the 2013 tribute The Music Is You with it. The upload in the hypersongs web is the 1969 Rhymes & Reasons recording, not the better-known 1973 re-recording.