is Donovan really this much of a tw*t?

Kerouac and Burrows were on his bookshelves... Burrows!!!

But it's The Sunday Times, people. A paper that is obviously going to value knowing your place, being class-obsessed, being blandly self-deprecating, and curling your toes over 1960s values, art values, or knowing how to spell the names of important writers.

Who?

This writer goes on and on about how Donovan doesn't measure up to Dylan. But is he making an honest assessment? I doubt he even has a real appreciation for Dylan, frankly. I think he just buys into the received view: Dylan is a Great, Eternal Artist, and Donovan is a Sad, Washed-Up Old Hippy. What do the records sound like? Er, get back to you on that...

Come on, dude, Burrows is the SHIT, man!

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0406977267.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I never saw that scene this way at all. To Sing For You is a great song, and like whoever said so above I think Dylan is pretty much a douche in that scene and in most of the rest of the movie.

Joseph Cotten OTM - the writer obv. came into this rarin' for a takedown.

"Bob Dylan's 115th Dream," "I Shall Be Free" and "Ballad of a Thin Man" are all funnier and more surreal than anything Donovan or any other second-rate Dylan wanna-be could ever dream of.

Sorry, but this "Shucky darn, Donovan is so much better than Dylan and fuck Bob because he's no fun and a self-obsessed Important American has a bad singing voice and also Don't Look Back proved he was a dick" stance that always comes up on ILM makes me gag.

Honestly, this Dylan-is-the-true-twat-here! kinda thing is just reflexive contrarianism.

Which is fun and all, I know, but it leads to ghastly statements like these:

Does a Dylan song ever make anyone smile? Is he ever funny?

Someone else came up with the examples. But I do recommend that you try actually listening to Bob Dylan records someday, some are quite good.

And why tell your readers that Donovan has less influence than Dylan on young songwriters when influential characters like Devendra Banhart are citing Donovan and not Dylan in their interviews?

So -- by the "influence as measured by namechecks in interviews" standard, we have, in the Donovan corner, neo-freak-folkie Devendra Banhart.

Brooooce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Paul Westerberg, John fucking Lennon, Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Johnny Cash, and just about everyone else who ever picked up a guitar post-1964 to thread please.

Dylan was a speed-addled asshole in the Don't Look Back period, but to go from there to "Donovan is more influential" is just fucking madness.

I think the point, for me at least, is that ok, Dylan is obviously the greater songwriter and contributed more to music and on the whole I will have logged ten times as many hours listening to Dylan as Donovan in my life.

But that doesn't diminish Donovan, who was a really great songwriter and musician in his own right, and whose best work actually sounds nothing like Dylan and often does a fantastic job of gently mocking psychadelia while reveling in its excess. Yeah, Dylan is greater. I just hate the cliche that sad, weighty songs are "important" and pleasant, sweet songs are "fluff," and that Donovan sounded exactly like Dylan, except when he didn't, and then he wasn't any good anyway because he was too "light."

But hey, Donovan's a nice guy though.

I like hime better than Dylan bcz of Season of the Witch (and multifarious cover versions) and Get Thy Bearings. I'm not saying he's more important, but I am saying I listen to him and I don't Dylan.

He would, being British. Dude also hated Springsteen, apparently. No accounting for taste, etc.

"Season of the Witch" is a great song, though, and has been covered excellently. I also have a soft spot for "Atlantis" 'cause of Goodfellas.

Donovan plays him the saccharine To Sing for You

as:

Donovan plays him the Saccharine Trust.

that would have been more interesting.

yes. dylan's not humorless but a lot of his "followers" are.

people are definitely better looking today

TS: Hurdy Gurdy Man vs. Tambourine Man

It's irrelevant in terms of the two's quality, but not in terms of their legacy, of which I think Donovan has fairly little.

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.

Hi Katie,
'
----Where do you work that Donovan would just drop by and play in the office? That is so cool!!

Why such a vulgar response to a friendly debate?Is this the typical peace love and brotherhood of man Donovan fan?Maybe so.Donovan came to town awhile back and created quite a scene with his roadie and some teen girls in a local night spot.Made all the local news.I can go with the roofie story after this.

uh...Yay! I guess some people have to be careful 'cos their parents are reading, or posting, or whatever, or maybe they're even on here pretending to be 30 years old again...

I wasn't trying to be vulgar, everyone has an opinion like everyone has an asshole. Meaning we all can express our opinions. Has nothing to do with Peace and Love.

---I thought I heard something about this.. Was this the Mountain Goat band or something like that??

www.everlastingsea.com this was listed on the 4 remastered EMI cd's issued in the UK this past spring.

cheers
HGM

J0hn Darn1elle to thread.

----Took him about 40 years to do it, and he brings it on the road with him. Pretty humble

I suppose this is true of his music.But his well publicized escapades are the antithesis.I've put Donovan's CDs aside for awhile.I have daughters.I can't let them think I condone his treatment of women by playing his music.

Obviously

Hurdy Gurdy, I have a question about some Donovan trivia. Is it true he helped Paul McCartney with the lyrics to Rocky Raccoon?

---- Good question but the answer is no. One thing I can tell you is that Paul wrote Mother Natures Son for Donovan while in India.

Sunday Herald
9/10/05

We changed the world

By Peter Ross

ALTHOUGH he considers himself a visionary, I see Donovan before he sees me. He is standing in the reception area of Glasgow’s Malmaison hotel, talking to a blonde woman holding a yellow flower. He’s wearing the standard issue beatnik black polo-neck and his greying hair is as long and curly as in his hippy heyday. He has just come from performing a short acoustic set in a bookshop; when he started playing, one woman burst into tears, presumably from pleasure. We walk downstairs to the brasserie to talk. Donovan is celebrating 40 years since his first chart success – his debut single Catch The Wind went to number four in 1965, the first of 10 hits in that decade. His auto biography, The Hurdy Gurdy Man, is being published to coincide with the anniversary. It’s all very well-timed; his music has more currency now than at any time since the 1960s, Devendra Banhart and the new American folk movement he spearheads having cited Donovan as a key influence.

Donovan became a pop star aged 19, packed it in at 24, and is now 59. Born Donovan Philips Leitch in Glasgow in 1946, he grew up in a (now demolished) tenement “a stone’s throw” from the hotel in which we are sitting . The Glasgow of his childhood was a post-war city of bombed buildings; he hunted for shell casings in the rubble.

His father, Donnie, had helped build Spitfire engines, and after the war continued to work as a tool setter. The family was poor but Donnie was an autodidact, a great reader who could be counted upon to stand up at parties and recite the works of Robert Burns and Robert Service; he was also a staunch trade unionist. “I was brought up on a diet of Celtic mysticism, poetry and socialism,” says Donovan. He was no stranger to jeely pieces either.

Donnie Leitch was Protestant, his wife Wynn a Catholic. Through the example of their marriage, Donovan reached an early understanding of a common humanity, beyond religious and other differences, which would inform his work in the peace and love era. The family moved to the south of England in 1956 when Donovan was 10, but his accent becomes increasingly Scottish when he reflects on his Glasgow years.

He was given the polio vaccine when he was four but the dosage was too strong and his right leg began to wither. Donovan wore a leg brace and walked with a limp, which meant he couldn’t run with the gangs. “It’s possible that one is an outsider immediately when one is a sick child,” he says. “I kind of look back on it and think it was positive for me because it made me withdraw from my pals and realise I was different.”

When local kids battered him, he didn’t fight back. His mother told him to stand up for himself, but that sort of aggression wasn’t in him. He thinks now that his eventual success was partly rooted in this need to triumph over his physically superior peers. Anyway, he took comfort from his father, who would cuddle him and recite from the Romantic poets.

He seems to have had a more complex relationship with his mother, who appears to have been rather highly strung; when she discovered her son had been masturbating, she locked herself in the bathroom and threatened to commit suicide. “Why was it so shocking to her?” Donovan wonders aloud. “Was it her background? Had she not come to terms with her own upbringing, or was her marriage not as she had imagined it would be? She thought it was her fault that I was masturbating.”

He says he may have had more sexual fantasies that most boys his age, and my impression from the book is that he was a very sexual person from quite early on. Is that fair to say? He puts his cup of Earl Grey down, rattling, on the saucer. “Yeah, I would say so. One has to move into the world of astrology. My wife Linda, my muse, my sunshine supergirl, we met God knows how many lives ago, and she studied astrology.”

This is how Donovan speaks, David Blaine meets David Brent – and you’d better get used to it. Anyway, Linda told him his character has been shaped by his star sign, Taurus. “And Tauruses are very earthy, connected to the earth. Our sign is the bull, and bulls are ... ” He breaks off, chuckling, then continues. “Bulls are very productive, and into the other cows in the field. So, yeah, I guess it’s because I’m a Taurus. But also I didn’t have a sister; it was just me and my brother. So maybe with being Taurus and having no girls in the family, I was attracted to women very early.”

His sexual libertarianism was also shaped by teenage reading of the Beats, particularly Jack Kerouac. “When I read On The Road it seemed like there were gals in the bohemian world who were willing to break the conditioning of their background, and refused to be pushing a pram, refused to marry in the normal way, and wished to be artists. These gals were not just sexual objects, they had freedom and an artistic bent. I was fascinated by those liberated females – not just because of the sexual freedom but because they had left society.”

In the early 1960s, he studied art at college in Welwyn Garden City and began to get into the new acoustic music coming out of America. The poetic ballads and socialism Donovan had learned from his father meant the folk scene was instantly familiar to him. He dropped out of college and bummed around, hanging out with the beatniks of St Ives, getting stoned and laid, washing dishes for a living. “I did not disagree with society’s aims,” he says, “but I realised that it was full of hypocrisy and greed, and I did not want to join.”

Returning home to Hertfordshire, his enjoyment of folk music became an obsession. He learned as many songs as he could, and persuaded a musician known as Dirty Phil to teach him the fingerpicking guitar style. Donovan would later show this technique to John Lennon while he and The Beatles were studying transcendental meditation in India.

The Peacock pub in St Albans was the place to hear and play folk music. But Donovan felt that he wasn’t liked by the other folkies. He writes in the book that it may have been because he was lame and regarded as a dreamer, but tells me he thinks the real reason is because he was an authentic working-class boy in a scene of middle-class kids slumming it. However: “I used all that derision and people looking down on me. I just got stronger with it.”

Not being taken seriously has always been a problem for Donovan . A Los Angeles Times review on his 1969 concert at the Hollywood Bowl – at which he performed to over 20,000 people – states: “Donovan is an unexceptional singer and guitarist. His songs smack heavily of dimestore incense. And he’s almost laughably pretentious and showbiz.” This is not atypical. Even in the 1960s, the press saw Donovan as something of a cheesy hippy, and he has come to stand for the worst excesses of the decade – drippy, twee, a bit daft.

He also had the misfortune to appear on the national stage in the very year – 1965 – that Bob Dylan was abandoning folk and pushing forward the frontiers of pop and rock . They met when Dylan toured Britain that year, and Donovan appears in DA Pennebaker’s documentary, Don’t Look Back. Conventional thinking on the film is that Dylan is sneering at Donovan, who performs a song for him, but Donovan doesn’t see it that way. “Absolute bullshit,” he snaps. “If you actually look at the movie, Bob is honouring my work.”

The allegation clearly hurts. I hadn’t even asked about Don’t Look Back; he brought it up himself. I do want to know, however, what it’s like for Donovan, trying to celebrate his 40th anniversary when suddenly 2005 turns into the year of Bob Dylan. Surely it must be frustrating that even after all these years he can’t escape the man’s shadow? “I’m going to have a pee,” he says, “but I’ll be back, and we’ll address that.”

He must be fed up having to talk about Bob Dylan. The comparison isn’t even appropriate. Four Donovan albums from the 1960s, reissued earlier this year, demonstrate the excellence and variety of much of his music. There are folk songs (Catch The Wind, Colours), catchy pop (Mellow Yellow, Jennifer Juniper) and tremendous psychedelic rock (Barabajagal, Hurdy Gurdy Man, Season Of The Witch).

But there is a lot of rubbish too. Donovan’s willingness to experiment with styles has made his body of work very inconsistent; he can be brilliant and awful, a dichotomy exemplified by the fact he had a hand in writing one of The Beatles’ very best songs, Julia, and one of their worst, Yellow Submarine.

Not that he is the sort to admit his failings. Back from the loo, he says: “When I met Bob through Joan Baez in 1965 of course I knew who he was, but I wasn’t particularly influenced by him. I sounded like Bob for five minutes, but Bob sounded like Woody Guthrie for a whole album. For me, it was a passing thing. The true link between us is that two solo singer-songwriters brought meaningful, poetic lyrics into pop culture. We have had more influence over the whole world of songwriting than any other two solo artists. We brought with us a poetic understanding and influenced forever the way songs are written. The Beatles learned from me as well as from Bob.”

Blimey. This is the egomania which spoils those chapters of his book dealing with his years of pop success; in the 1960s his head expanded along with his mind. But far from repenting, he exults. “The Celts boast,” he says. “And why should we not boast? Read Celtic mythology; every Celtic hero tale is boastful. We have to stand up and announce how strong we are because poetry in the 20th century was looked down on with derision; a poet was an effeminate, weak creature who should have a real job. Standing up and banging a staff was the ancient pagan way of the poet announcing himself. So boasting in my book is totally honest. In the book it looks like I am really full of myself, but we’ve got to be full of ourselves because when you start nobody believes in you.”

I’m tempted to believe that a basic insecurity is at the root of Donovan’s extraordinary ego – the sick child picked on by schoolkids, then again by snooty folkies and snidey journalists, giving himself the love that others denied him. Interestingly, his creative insecurity seems to manifest itself as sexual jealousy. There is a scene in the book where he has gone to bed with the American folk singer Joan Baez, but when she reminisces about sex with Bob Dylan his ardour is considerably dampened.

More significantly, Donovan’s relationship with Linda Lawrence, his wife since 1970, struggled in its early days because he suspected she was still in love with Brian Jones, who Donovan regarded as “the most creative and brilliant guitar player” in London. Jones and Lawrence had met in 1962 when she was 15, and she became pregnant in 1963. However as The Rolling Stones rose to prominence, Jones was encouraged to make a financial settlement and keep away from her and his son, Julian. By 1965, the year Donovan met Lawrence, it was more or less over between them.

Why did Linda’s relationship with Brian Jones make it difficult for him to admit his feelings for her? “Because she still wanted it to work out between her and Brian. She had a boy with him. And when you are 16 and you fall in love there is something unresolved. So I always felt that Brian was somewhere there in the background.

“You have to remember what Brian represented in those days. He was the business. And you have to beware of such a guy. Did he still have the love of my Linda’s heart? She didn’t feel guilty about anything, she just loved him. It was a love made in heaven, but it was bound for difficulties, bound for problems. She knew it. But surely that young girl would feel an ache for the father of her child? He wanted to marry her, but was convinced otherwise.”

In 1969, Brian Jones’s body was discovered in his swimming pool. I can’t help but wonder whether Donovan was glad his rival was gone. “I didn’t feel: ‘Oh well, maybe she’ll come running to me,’” he says. “I was too involved in my own trauma in 1969. I didn’t know where my life was going. No, I didn’t say: ‘Good, Brian’s gone. Now I can have Linda.’ That would be calculating and totally against my character ...”

I interrupt him. Surely it would be quite natural to feel glad? “No, I wouldn’t feel that,” he says. “I’m way beyond that. I didn’t worry that Brian was going to take Linda away from me. What I hated was not Brian but the love that Linda may have felt for him.”

As he struggled with these feelings, Donovan became involved with the American model Enid Karl, with whom he had a son and a daughter – Donovan and Ione. However this relationship failed and he did not see his children grow up; he didn’t meet Ione until she was an adult, and at one time expressed doubt that he was the father. In his book he writes that he felt powerless to be a dad, but doesn’t really explain why. So I ask him.

“Physically, geographically it was impossible because I was a rambling musician,” he says. “So that was difficult. And there was a great heartache that our relationship didn’t work, and it was being transferred to the children. I found that to be wrong when I spoke to my daughter, Ione, many years later. She said she would rather have gone through that heartache than the heartache of not knowing her father.

“I made a decision. Was it wrong? No, it was perfectly right. I can’t go back and change it. But in retrospect, children who don’t see a parent for years and years feel that they would rather be in a tug of love than not see the parent at all. I didn’t know that then, so I was wrong in that sense. All I can say to Ione is that had I known then what I know now, I would have gone through that [difficult experience of spending time with the children]. But when I did see the child, Dono, Enid would be bitter and call him back after two days. I thought it was breaking his heart.”

Hmmm. “Did you not think,” I ask, “that you were doing to Enid and your children what Brian Jones did to Linda and Julian?”

“No, I didn’t know that then,” he says. “Not until Linda said, ‘Don’t let this hap pen.’ I knew then, but I still couldn’t do it. I felt torn. Recently, of course, me and my American children have tried to repair those bridges, to meet and talk about it.

“But don’t imagine that was the only thing happening to me then. There was great fame and the overpowering trauma of the personal experience I was going through as a superstar, as all my friends were. The 1960s were coming to an end, and we were in danger, not only from ourselves through drugs and alcohol abuse, but also from the great fan base out there who wanted to love us to death.

“If you read the mythologies of the world, the hero is honoured to a point and then he is killed either by his own hand or by others. I was feeling a lot of other things, not just about my relationship with my children, but about my life and career, and also a great sense of boredom. I didn’t want to do any of it any more. I wanted out.”

He effectively dropped out of the music business at the end of the 1960s, married Linda Lawrence , had two daughters with her – Astrella and Oriole – and raised Julian as his own. He has released music and toured sporadically since then, but his association with flower power still clings to him like pollen. It must be odd being almost 60 and having your entire life defined by those five years in which you were truly famous.

Donovan is not an easy man to like nor to understand. His constant references to Buddhism and Celtic mythology tend to cloud his meaning, and there is definitely a sour irony in an icon of the love generation, the son of a loving and influential father, effectively cutting himself out of the lives of two of his own children.

Not that he has any regrets, or at least none he will admit to. He tends to overvalue his achievements, just as posterity has undervalued them, but to hear Donovan tell it, his life has turned out just as he planned.

“At 16, I knew what I wanted to do,” he says. “I intended everything. There was no luck in it whatsoever.”

The Hurdy Gurdy Man is published by Century, price £17.99. Donovan’s new album, Beat Café, is out now

09 October 2005

Just tryin' to get the facts straight, ma'am.

On the plus side, he did actually do that funny thing with his voice live and also his guitar playing was amazing.

teehee

and the best, which is jason donovan of course, was 5000% times better

Oh my God, that is hilarious.

-- hurdy gurdy man (hurdygurdyma...) (webmail), September 22nd, 2005 7:28 PM.

I thought Donovan helped out with 'Yellow Submarine'?

Hmmm...I bet Macca wrote 'Mother Nature's Son' for himself. It was inspired by on a lecture by the Maharishi, as was a John Lennon song 'Child of Nature' (he later scrapped the lyrics and turned it into 'Jealous Guy').

Sep/Oct 2005
Reviews
Reissues
Donovan

Try for the Sun: The Journey of Donovan

Epic/Legacy
By Richard C. Walls
Let’s give Donovan his due. Often dismissed for not being Dylan, for being, at times, too airy-fairy and too embarrassing a relic of the hippie era, the fact remains that when he was good he managed to be both distinct and representational, one of those unique performers who, for better or worse, had ingested and then reflected a portion of the temper of the times. His two best records, Sunshine Superman (’66) and Mellow Yellow (’67) are period pieces, but then so is Sgt. Pepper’s, and their pop/rock/folk fusion still sounds like nothing done before or since. More often than not Donovan constructed a vibe that sounded like a new twist on the emerging language of the youth culture. And he was, it seemed, a little ahead of the Zeitgeist curve. “The Trip” is genuinely trippy before that became a wretched cliché and “Sunny South Kensington” is cobbled from so many then-contempo influences, from the Beatles to garage rock, that it sounds sui generis. And if Donovan was never quite as deep as he seems to think he was (and that alone would make him a good spokesman for the era), he could still be a lot of fun.

That said, this box set does much more than portray Donovan as a late-’60s avatar, comprising three discs and a bonus DVD, 60 tracks and 12 previously unreleased songs, with a noncritical but informative liner essay by Anthony DeCurtis (Who’d have thought that Donovan’s breathy close-to-the-mic style was an idea he got from listening to Buddy Holly?). And given the hit-and-miss quality of the post-Mellow stuff, the box is ultimately for the dedicated fan. For every song that reminds one what a clever boy he could be (e.g., “Epistle to Dippy”, “Hurdy Gurdy Man”), there’s a handful where the preciousness is layered on with coyly mannered abandon and the results are just too bloody twee. When the poet-troubadour moves past the point where he engaged us by making spontaneous history, he can become a taste you may no longer be inclined to acquire.

DONOVAN
Try For the Sun: The Journey of Donovan
(RCA/Legacy)
Rating: 8
US release date: 13 September 2005
UK release date: 12 September 2005
by Maura McAndrew



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A decade before Bruce Springsteen held the title of "the new Dylan", a British teenager named Donovan Leitch lay claim to it, even befriending the man himself. Donovan rose to fame strumming earnest folk songs and psychedelic rockers in the late 1960s, recording his first album when he was in his teens and gaining international stardom by age 20. Inspired by Woody Guthrie and Buddy Holly as well as his peers, Donovan collaborated with and befriended some of the great musicians of his time, such as The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Mamas and the Papas, The Animals, Jeff Beck, Ron Wood, and members of Led Zeppelin. After a short, successful career, this particular "new Dylan" seemed content to fade into the background, withdrawing from the spotlight in the 1970s and releasing few albums after that. As a result, Donovan's rightful place among the great folk-rockers of the '60s and '70s has been somewhat overlooked.

I never knew much about Donovan aside from the oh-so-'60s party tune "Mellow Yellow", and I had always thought of him as just some silly hippie. I would smirk at my mother's copy of Donovan's Greatest Hits and its close-up shot of the young Donovan with his wild hair, large honest eyes, and boyish grin. Though Donovan was silly, it was a good silly, and his songs were not only catchy; they really said something about the spirit of a certain era of rock 'n roll. Epic/Legacy's new three-disc box set (including a live DVD and previously unreleased recent material) will perhaps put Donovan back on the minds of all the Dylan and Beatles-worshippers who have neglected his influence.

The box set, though a big project to tackle for any but the most obsessed Donovan fans, is extremely well put together. The first disc is the one that will attract casual fans: it contains the early Dylan-esque folk tracks "Catch the Wind" and "Josie", as well as the fantastic über-hit "Sunshine Superman", which I instantly recognized from years of oldies radio and my parents' records. This song is, to me, as emblematic of the 1960s as any of The Beatles' hits. Also heard here are "Season of the Witch" and the strangely endearing "Mellow Yellow". One highlight of this box set is its killer liner notes, written with obsessive glee by Rolling Stone writer Anthony DeCurtis. He lets the fans in on Donovan's days partying in swinging '60s London, as well as little known collaborations (like Paul McCartney's barely audible cameo on "Mellow Yellow").

What is startling about Donovan, both in the story of his life and in his music, is how honest everything is. There is no mystery about him, which is most likely why he was never a cult figure like Dylan. He is not evasive, not depressed, and his lyrics are not cryptic. When he writes a song about a woman, he calls it "Jennifer Juniper", "Legend of a Girl Child Linda" or "Celia of the Seals". He doesn't change names, nor does he hide behind metaphors. Song One on the second disc, the hopeful "Epistle to Dippy", was written for Donovan's childhood friend, nicknamed "Dippy". When Dippy heard the song, he and Donovan got back in touch with one another. This is Donovan through and through: earnest and well intentioned. Throughout Disc Two this is displayed in hits such as "Hurdy Gurdy Man", and the flute-laden "Lalena".

Disc Three showcases more of Donovan's confessional folk from the early 1970s, most of which draws on the Celtic influences of his Scottish upbringing. A trio of more recent tracks, 1994's "Please Don't Bend", 2003's "Love Floats" and 2004's "Happiness Runs" show him growing with the times, but not neglecting his classic style. Especially "Happiness Runs", an updated version of his 1969 song, which sounds like something any modern folk hero would die to create.

These three discs are not only packed with the hits of Donovan's heyday, but are also full of surprises. His delicate Celtic timbre, combined with his honest lyrics and sunny melodies, make him much more than a silly hippie or a 1960s throwback. He is an important musician with a real place in rock history. Don't let the earnest smile fool you; with Donovan, happiness is just as beautiful as sadness.

— 14 September 2005

Anyone who hastily dismisses his catalogue because of impressions or radio hits is potentially missing out. Hurdy Gurdy Man, Flower to a Garden, Wear Your Love Like Heaven, Open Road, all stone cold classics--among others.

cheers

Friday, November 25, 2005

Donovan

Ticket Price: $35.00 adv / $38.00 dos
All Ages - Doors Open at 7:00 PM

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Donovan ROCKING IN THE PERFUMED GARDEN OF DONOVAN

Donovan had everything going for him in the '60s. His jawdropping 1965 debut on London's cutting-edge TV series Ready Steady Go!-- strumming his Dylan-ish folk-rocking protest songs--got this denim-clad, shaggy-haired teenager plenty of early notice. A meteoric rise to stardom would follow in 1966, as Donovan's infectiously rocking, psychedelic epics "Sunshine Superman" and "Mellow Yellow" bolted into the top ten of record charts all around the world.

For the rest of the decade, it was into the mystic for the Glasgow, Scotland-born troubadour. An entire generation of Summer Of Love kids sat at the feet of this robed prince to soak up wondrous ballads, ("Atlantis," "Wear Your Love Like Heaven") love songs, ("Jennifer Juniper," "Lalena") and mind-bending chants ("There Is A Mountain," "Goo Goo Barabajagal")--all from the perfumed garden of Donovan.

Meditating at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi along with the Beatles, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull and Beach Boy Mike Love, Donovan and his beatific smile were never out of the newspapers for long. Working on the Beatles'
"Yellow Submarine" in exchange for Paul McCartney's contributions to "Mellow Yellow" had to be a "wish I was there" moment for legions of young rock fans.

Then, in 1970, Donovan just walked away from a career that had seen him scale the loftiest pinnacles of the music world. "Six years of fame was enough," he told the press at the time. "You couldn't get any more famous, any more successful. I had done everything."

But now, with the release of the Sony/BMG Legacy Donovan box set, TRY FOR THE SUN: THE JOURNEY OF DONOVAN, he's back with a steamer trunk loaded with everything you ever wanted to hear by this generational icon. From rare early singles on the Hickory label plus all his Top Ten classics for Epic produced by hitmaker Mickie Most (Animals, Herman's Hermits), to obscure album tracks and unreleased gems--as well as amazing recent studio excursions--this is the 3-compact disc/1 DVD/60-track package Donovan fans have been clamoring for.

Relevance to today's indie-rock market? Donovan has it in spades. Current forays by budding superstar Beck--not to mention even more recent material from underground West Coast folk guru Devendra Banhart--will tell you all you need to know: Donovan easily straddles the decades as a musical titan. With the release of TRY FOR THE SUN: THE JOURNEY OF DONOVAN, it's all come back into focus. Donovan's time has come again.

TESTIMONIALS

"Donovan's importance is unquestionable."
- James Mercer, The Shins

"This re-release of some of his gems is really welcome."
- Jimmy Page

"The sound of his voice and guitar was an integral part of the soundtrack of the sixties."
- Country Joe McDonald

"Donovan was—Bob Dylan aside—the greatest folk troubadour to come out of the 1960s."
- Stephen King

"As much as any seminal artist, he represents more than just the music of that time…he represents the spirit of our younger selves, enchanted with pop music and its melodies, lyrics and stories."
- Mary Chapin Carpenter

"…a terribly ace songwriter...a top man in my book, and somebody I wish I would run into in a park on a warm Sunday."
- Billy Corgan

"There's a sense of peace in Donovan's voice which is unparalleled in rock. His music makes one want to get inside of it and relax into bliss. How lucky we are to have the chance to drink in his mystic vibrations."
- Rick Rubin

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"You don't have to be stoned to grow a friend."

Donovan- 1969

James Walton reviews The Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan Leitch.

Perhaps, like me, you've always thought of Donovan as a bloke who wrote a few nice songs in the 1960s. Well, it turns out we were wrong. According to his autobiography, he was one of the most significant people ever to strum a guitar. As he puts it in what proves an unusually modest comparison between himself and Bob Dylan: "His lyrics are without equal in popular music, but I think that musically I am the more creative and influential."

By his reckoning, that influence has certainly been widespread. In The Hurdy Gurdy Man, Donovan claims - quite straightforwardly and often repeatedly - to have invented folk-rock, Celtic rock, British psychedelia, New Age music, world music, flower power and the modern rock concert. "I am proud to have been an influence on acts like Van Morrison and Led Zeppelin," runs a typical sentence - and in the next paragraph he explains how he taught Marc Bolan everything.

At times, the debts owed to him might appear slight, but Donovan spots them anyway: "Soon Andy Warhol would create a record cover for the Velvet Underground which depicted a banana. It would seem that Andy had not missed the phrase 'electrical banana' in Mellow Yellow, my number-one song."

The early parts of the book give only a few indications of the rampant and disfiguring egotism to come, with Donovan unable to resist mentioning his key schoolboy achievements. ("In time I rose to the position of House Captain.") Otherwise, his childhood in Glasgow and his youth in Hatfield and St Ives are described with an appealing sense of place and period. There's even a pretty good chapter that opens with the promising words, "Let me tell you about the St Albans scene."

The trouble starts when the young Donovan turns seriously to music. "As I listen to my earliest recordings," writes the older one, "I am surprised to hear I was a virtuoso of all the folk-blues guitar styles by the time I reached 17." (His surprise, you feel, probably wasn't overwhelming.) For a while, there's still enough half-decent material to hold out the hope that, if he'd just stop boasting, the book might yet be redeemable. Once his career takes off, though, boasting is more or less all we get.

During an early TV appearance, he unblushingly notes, the producer "saw in me a new kind of poet-minstrel". Shortly afterwards, in a predictable lurch into the third-person, "this denim-clad beatnik from Scotland with a limp and an attitude was becoming a shaman". No wonder that a few chapters later, he's "the hottest concert ticket in North America" - while in the studio "I had pulled off a folk-classical-blues-pop-jazz-poetical-ethnic jam of far-reaching influence in the years to come". (Given his endless bragging, maybe Donovan was a big influence on Snoop Doggy Dogg, too.)

Each new record or gig is accompanied by a glowing review - occasionally quoted from a journalist of the day, more often supplied by Donovan himself. At one point, he lists all the people who have ever covered his songs, up to and including James Last, the New Christie Minstrels and Jasper Carrott.

But as it transpires, our man didn't merely transform music. He also changed consciousness itself. By incorporating into the songs "a new way of seeing… I founded an Invisible School of Self-Awareness in the hearts and minds… of millions". The messianic complex that runs through the book reaches its climax when he bids the rain to stop during a concert in LA. (It does.) Sadly, his central statement of intent is undermined by an unfortunate misprint: "My mission was to prevent [sic] a cure for society's illness by introducing the Bohemian Manifesto into popular music."

Of course, a book like this (if there's ever been one before) could only have been produced by a man with no sense of humour. Admittedly, it does contain plenty of comedy - but all of it is inadvertent. Donovan, for example, keeps praising his own "meaningful and poetic lyrics", and then unwisely quoting some. ("Get together work it out/ Simplicity is what it's about.")

He retains his bullish tone long after his career is in decline. ("The single Atlantis was particularly successful in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.") Above all, he talks constantly about the importance of self-awareness, while displaying absolutely none of it.

Which just leaves the mysterious question of why nobody saved him from himself before publication. There might even be a case to be made that Donovan hasn't had the credit he deserves. Yet surely somebody from his family or publishers could have pointed out the obvious fact that 300 pages of mad boasting isn't going to make people think you're great after all. Instead, it's far more likely to make them think you're a berk.

Don't put artists up on pedestals, they are ordinary people not gods. OK Donovan comes across as a bumptious twat sometimes, Dylan as a sneering clown, Lennon as a nasty piece of work ........ and so it goes on. Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf were pretty wild when they were at their prime too.
You just have to consider their work, and either it appeals to you as an individual or it doesn't. Personally I think that Donovan's best work is of real value, I find his lyrics as close to real poetry as anyone in the realm of rock/pop has ever come and I love his voice. A fair guitar player too in my book.
This opinion does not disqualify me from similar feelings for loads of other artists nor does it blind me to the fact that Donovan's canon does inclue some lesser works. I don't think there is an artist born who has been consistently brilliant. I was just happy that Don came back with two pretty good albums.

Seems like the "Burrows" thing was down to the doubtless thrusting Thatcherkid STimes writer TOO BUSY to check the spelling of authors' names.

Either that or Donovan possesses the autobiography of top sixties/seventies session singer Tony Burrows (and anyway, isn't it "Burrowes"?).

Donovan plays him the saccharine To Sing for You, with which Dylan appears visibly unimpressed. After a pause, Dylan plays his formidable It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue and viewers experience the deep embarrassment of watching a lesser talent crushed.

Ah, received knowledge. It got so accepted that this was what happened. Funnily enough, I watched "DLB" not that long ago, and was surprised to hear Donovan actually request Bob to sing "Baby Blue". The only problem was, this fairly intimate scene got broadcast to millions, and earned an undertone that wasn't there at the time.

Since when did they cut and paste Feargal Sharkey into LANDMARK (or at least the Bed Shed) DYLAN FILM?

He's right. Anyone who says the 60s were great is right.

You were there were you?

fake Geir?

You were there were you?

I don't need to have been there to acknowledge that 60s music, along with 70s music and music from the first half of the 80s, was great.

james brown was in the 60s. therefore great. i am right.

he's right!

If only he left

I thought I heard something about this.. Was this the Mountain Goat band or something like that??

J0hn Darn1elle to thread.

-- A|ex P@reene (Pareene), Wednesday, 21 September 2005 18:32 (2 years ago) Link

people who get me drunk enough often get to hear this story, which involves Donovan turning up at a show and having his manager demand that he sit in and throwing an absolute shitfit when we said "no"

lololol

Good thing it wasn't Don McLean.

nb by "'get' to hear" I probably mean "are forced to endure"

I was feeling pretty groovy
when the radiator burst
So I ran across a meadow
a magical antelope saw me first
And then Jennifer Juniper
and then a floating merman from Atlantis

I loved my shirt so much I gave it to
a very friendly praying mantis

Don't worry, I'm done now

http://www.javno.com/slike/slike_3/r1/g2007/m04/x82137689653212655.jpg

and then a floating merman from Atlantis

dude you know I could seriously sell this line on that beat

http://www.metro.co.uk/fame/article.html?in_article_id=73158&in_page_id=7&in_a_source=

Oh hey, that didn't work.

The gist was that Donovan is opening the "Invincible Donovan University". But this youtube link it better. He sings about it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AldJWJk34ag

Listen to the cunts whooping.

lowl

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.