is Donovan really this much of a tw*t?

So I will.

And I like Donovan's music. A "Best Of" suffices, though.

haven't heard "honest with me," have you?

anyways, anybody who could come up with "first there is a mountain" needs no one to defend him

otm.

Although I will allow I had a thought about Dylan this past week when I heard him in a CD shop - "why do so many people seem to hate Dylan? I mean he's not my preferred thing to listen to, but the hate is hard to understand"

Giles Hattersley, eh? Any relation? Should we blame the parents, or instead blame the sham media meritocracy which continues to ensure that you can only earn a living as a broadsheet writer if you had the correct parents?

I can see them. We're both rather soft-spoken Scots with a line in whimsy and a certain kind of Aquarian starry-eyed quality, as well as a tendency to mock same. I sat in a hotel lobby in Paris with Donovan in April. It was just the two of us, and I was tempted to tell him "My records are often compared with yours!", but I thought it would have been a bit twattish, and I didn't want to disturb him as he read "Uriel's History: Uncovering the Secrets of Stonehenge, Noah's Flood and the Dawn of Civilization".

Hey, guess what Giles, these days people from Donovan's background still don't have "gap years"

----I am so sick of reading about the Don't look back scene. Donovan requested he play It's all Over now Baby Blue. The thick headed Dylan fans will never see this because they don't want to see it. Donovan hands him the guitar and says "I want to hear It's all over now Baby Blue." Then Dylan asks, "You wanna hear that." and he asks what tuning his guitar is in. Donovan tells him its in a D tuning. People really need to watch this movie more closely. Donovan wasn't embarrassed at the song he friggan requested, how could he be? Enough ranting.

You shouldn't be laughing, you should have been in awe that the greatest singer songwriter was performing right in front of your eyes. You should have been praising him, and by the way, Beat Cafe is an amazing album. Better then anything the old 60's artist are doing these days, including Dylan's recent album and McCartney's.

Still though, I don't see how anyone could say Donovan's in the same class as Dylan, that's just insane, on many levels, beginning with volume alone. For every transcendend moment Donovan has, Dylan's got 20.

Also, I've read large portions of his book (which no one has mentioned), and it's unintentionally hilarious, evidence of massive self-involvement and an ego spun far out of proportion to actual ability.

Donovan can carry a vocal melody better (or at least more accurately) than Bob.

I'm not a huge fan of either, but have records by both. I can understand Bob's "importance", but I prefer to listen to Donovan. As others have pointed out, it's the journalist that's the real idiot here...

agreed, the only people who should interview artists are their #1 fans

I'm a long time Donovan fan, but lately been hearing stories like this. So not fitting with is image. Bit of an old fart to be playing these games. Ah modern medicine.

-----Maybe she meant Donovan's son Donovan Jr, and who is Issac Brock?

Brock is the singer with Modern Mouse. Saw them and Donovan at Bumbershoot Festival a couple of years ago.

If I may say so, that's awesome.

---opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one. How many Donovan albums have you heard in their entirety? Can you name more than 3 without googling Donovan Albums? What is not original about Donovan's songwriting? Donovan wrote far more tracks on his first LP then Dylan did on his. I might add the songs that Donovan wrote on his first LP Whats Bin Did are a lot better then Dylan's. Song to Woody was about the best, other than that they were weak. Dylan was a Woody clone. No one puts Dylan down for ripping him off when he was a rookie in the music world. Listen to all of Don's albums before you judge. Forget about Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, he is much deeper then that. Listen to HMS Donovan, Dylan could never match that album.

Because in the intervening years, this crazy thing happened where Bob Dylan invented the modern concept of the singer-songwriter!

Also, it's always seemed to me in that Don't Look Back scene that Dylan says, in his amphetamine-enhanced frog voice, "I wanna play 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue'" as he takes the guitar.

Better than Donovan ripped him off.

On another front: That scene in Don't Look Back is like a Rosarch test for music writers. After hearing about how confrontational it was, when I finally saw it, I was surprised at how confrontational is wasn't. I think the whole idea of Dylan dressing Donovan down there was created a bit in the editing and mostly in the imaginations of music writers.

Nope, You can actually read Donovan's lips and hear him say "I want to Hear its all over now baby blue" Donovan had heard Dylan play this from previous nights of the UK tour and liked it because it was a brand new song at the time. But I do agree that the editing and press made it look a lot worse then it ever was. It was a friendly jam, can't forget folk banjolegend Derroll Adams, The Banjo Man. He was there watching his young prodigy at work. Alan Price from the Animals said that Dylan was listening to Don's first album quite a bit during that tour and really enjoyed it. They were fans of eachother. The scene where Alan tells Bob that Donovan is a better guitarist then he was brilliant!!

i respectfully disagree. some good songwriting, but many of the lyrics make me wretch.

plus, some dude, straightfaced, is cooing quasi-eastern spiritual babble wrapped in thin beatnik vocab is pretty funny when he's sitting right next to you.

You shouldn't be laughing, you should have been in awe that the greatest singer songwriter was performing right in front of your eyes.

doh! that's what i should have done! thanks for the input.

i was somewhat in awe. i guess i don't have a username to reflect as such.

Funny how when hippy dudes talk (brag) about how at peace and in tune with the universe they are, the more insecure and fucked up they sound.