Donovan (Donovan Philips Leitch, born May 10, 1946, in Maryhill, Glasgow), is a
Scottish singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Emerging
from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended
folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music.
Career outline
Donovan came to fame in the United Kingdom in early 1965 with a series of live performances on the pop TV series,
Ready Steady Go!, and his popularity spread to the USA and other countries.
After signing with the British label, Pye Records, he began a long and successful
collaboration with leading independent record producer Mickie Most, scoring a string of hits in the UK, the USA and other countries, including several British and
American #1 hits and million-selling records.
Donovan was one of the most popular British recording artists of his day, producing a series of hit albums and singles between
1965 and 1970. He became a friend of leading pop musicians including Joan Baez,
Brian Jones, and The Beatles, and was one of the few
artists to collaborate on songs with the Beatles. He influenced both John Lennon and
Paul McCartney when he taught them his finger-picking guitar style in 1968. [1] Donovan's
commercial fortunes waned after he parted ways with Mickie Most in 1969, and he left the music industry for a time.
He continued to perform and record sporadically in the 1970s and 1980s, but gradually fell from favour. His gentle musical
style and hippie image was scorned by critics, especially after the advent of punk rock. Donovan withdrew from performing and recording several times during his career, but he underwent a
strong revival in the 1990s with the emergence of the rave scene in Britain. Late in the decade, he
recorded a successful album with producer and long-time fan Rick Rubin and released a new
album, Beat Cafe, in 2004.
Early Life and Career
Donovan grew up in Maryhill, Glasgow, Scotland. He contracted polio as a child when he was vaccinated (this
was in the period before the introduction of the safer Sabin oral vaccine), and the disease and subsequent treatment left him with a limp.
In 1956, his family moved to Hatfield, England. Influenced by his family's love for Scottish and English folk music, he began playing guitar
at 14. He enrolled in art school but dropped out soon afterwards, determined to live out his Beatnik aspirations by going out on the road. In 1963 he took a trip to St.Ives with Gypsy Dave and other
friends from Hertfordshire.
Returning to Hatfield, he spent several months playing in local clubs,
absorbing the music of the British folk scene around his home in St Albans, learning the
cross-picking guitar technique from local players like Mac MacLeod and Mick Softley, and writing his first songs.
In 1964 he travelled to Manchester with Gypsy Dave, then spent the summer in Torquay ,
Devon. It was here that he stayed with his old friend and guitar mentor from St.Albans,
Mac MacLeod, and it was during this period that he began busking (street performing) and more serious study of the guitar and learning traditional folk and blues songs . (Donovan was interviewed about his time in Torquay for Beat
Instrumental in May 1965. [2])
In late 1964, he was offered a management and publishing contract. He went to London
where he recorded a 10-track demo tape (recently rediscovered and released on
iTunes), which included the original recording of "Catch
The Wind", his first single. That song revealed the influence of Woody Guthrie and
Ramblin' Jack Elliott, who had also influenced Bob
Dylan. Although Dylan comparisons followed him for some time, the tape also made it clear that Donovan was a performer of
considerable skill and originality. In an interview with KFOK radio in the USA on June 14, 2005,
MacLeod stated, "...the press were fond of calling Donovan a 'Dylan Clone' as they had both been influenced by the same sources:
Ramblin' Jack, Jesse Fuller, Woody Guthrie, and many more." Other significant influences in his formative years aside from
Mac MacLeod included Derroll Adams, John Renbourn, Davey Graham, Bert
Jansch and American blues and jazz artists including Jesse Fuller, Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, and Billie
Holiday.
While recording the demo at a studio in Denmark Street, Donovan befriended Brian Jones of
The Rolling Stones, who was recording in a nearby studio. Coincidentally, he had also
recently met Jones's ex-girlfriend, Linda Lawrence. (When she met Donovan her relationship with Jones was effectively over.)
Donovan and Jones became close friends, and their relationship lasted until Jones' death in 1969. The meeting between Linda and
Donovan was pivotal. They began an on-off romantic relationship for the next five years. She exerted a huge influence on
Donovan's music. Linda refused to marry Donovan and moved to America for several years in the late 1960s. Although he had other
relationships — one of which resulted in the birth of his first two children, Donovan
Leitch, Jr., and Ione Skye Leitch — he remained strongly drawn to Linda, and she became
his muse. His confused feelings about her inspired dozens of songs, including "Legend Of A Girl
Child Linda", "Sunshine Superman" and many others.
A Star is Born
Donovan had a rapid rise to stardom. Within weeks his demo tape was heard by Elkan Allen, producer of the pop show, Ready Steady Go!, who was
so impressed that he invited the unknown 18-year-old to appear on the show. Donovan made his television debut on 30 January, 1965 — a remarkable feat, considering that he had been a penniless
vagrant only months before. Unusual for pop programmes of this time, where performers typically lip-synched to a pre-recorded track, Donovan played and sang live. His performance was so well received that he
appeared weekly until the end of April, and immediately afterwards he was signed to a recording contract with Pye Records, whose
other major pop acts included The Kinks and Petula
Clark.
Donovan's first UK single, a new version of "Catch The Wind", was released soon after his third TV appearance. It was a
successful debut, rising to 4 on the UK charts and selling more than 200,000 copies. On 11
April, he performed with the biggest stars of the day at the annual New Musical Express poll winners' concert at
the Empire Pool in Wembley. At Wembley he had a
four-piece band including drums, electric bass and Mac MacLeod on second guitar. This was called the first instance of Folk/Rock
by music writer Richie Unterberger. The single was subsequently released on the small Hickory label in the USA, where it achieved
a #30 chart placing.
Donovan's early musical style and dress (including a cloth cap) led to his being perceived and promoted as a British version
of Bob Dylan, a perception enhanced by the slogan on his guitar - "This Machine Kills" - which was a shortened version of the
slogan on Woody Guthrie's guitar, "This Machine Kills Fascists".
The Dylan connection brought criticism from folk-music purists, some of whom assumed him to be merely a Dylan imitator. His
meeting with Joan Baez during his first UK tour led to a meeting with Dylan himself, and not
surprisingly, that meeting in April 1965 made headlines. Dylan was intrigued by the young
musician, as can be seen in D.A. Pennebaker's film of Dylan's 1965 UK tour,
Dont Look Back[sic] (released in
1967); they became friends and met on many occasions.
Donovan's second single, "Colours", was released in May 1965, reaching #4 in the UK, accompanied by his debut LP for Pye,
What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, which reached #3 in the UK
album charts. Retitled Catch the Wind for the US market, it reached #30 there. He
made his first trip to the US at this time, performing in New York with Pete Seeger and
Reverend Gary Davis, and appearing on The
Ed Sullivan Show, Hullabaloo, and Shindig!, as well as performing to critical and audience acclaim at the July 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
Donovan's next recording was a four-track EP called Universal Soldier, which included his classic cover of the
Buffy Sainte-Marie-written title track, as well as three other tracks with overt
anti-war content. Two of those songs — "The War Drags On" and "Ballad Of A Crystal Man" — were
among the few protest songs of the period that went beyond generalized anti-war sentiments
and made explicit references to the war in Vietnam. This was a radical move for an emerging
pop performer. Donovan's pioneering pacifist stance is often overlooked by critics: the Vietnam
War still had majority support in 1965, and he was one of the few British pop musicians who expressed direct opposition to the
war in their music. Despite the contentious subject matter, the EP was a commercial success, topping the British EP chart for
eight weeks, reaching 14 on the British singles chart and 17 on the Australian singles
chart.
"Colours" was also released in the US, but it charted poorly, reaching 40 on the Cash
Box charts but only 61 on the Billboard chart. At this stage
Donovan had greater success in sales than in radio airplay, since American Top 40 radio tended to avoid folk recordings,
preferring more highly arranged pop records. The Catch the Wind LP set the pattern
for most of his American releases, which tended to chart better in Cash Box than Billboard, reflecting the fact that Billboard's
charts factored in radio airplay, whilst Cash Box did not.
A single version of "Universal Soldier" was issued in the US in late August 1965, and it repeated the mediocre chart
performance of "Colours", reaching only 45 in Cash Box and 53 in Billboard. Pye released Donovan's second UK album,
Fairytale, in October 1965, along with his next single, "Turquoise". These too
were less successful than his previous releases, the album reaching 20 and the single peaking at 30. Donovan made a second US
tour in November, and Pye licensed this to the Nashville-based Hickory label, which
released the American version of Fairytale later that month. As in the UK, it
charted much lower than the first LP, reaching only 85.
Collaboration with Mickie Most
In late 1965, Donovan split with his original managers and signed with Ashley Kozak, who was
working for Brian Epstein's NEMS Enterprises. Kozak
introduced Donovan to American impresario Allen Klein (who would later take over management
of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles). Klein in
turn introduced Donovan to producer Mickie Most, who was then riding high on the success of
his chart-topping productions with The Animals, Lulu,
and Herman's Hermits.
Mickie Most was the nominal producer of almost all Donovan's best recordings, although Donovan asserts in his autobiography
that some of his recordings in this period were self-produced, with little or no input from Most. The tracks they cut together
represent some of the finest UK pop releases of the period, and feature the cream of the London session scene, including
Big Jim Sullivan, Jack Bruce, Danny Thompson, and future Led Zeppelin members John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page. Many of these recordings
were backed by jazz musicians, the most regular players being Danny Thompson (from
Pentangle), Spike Heatley on upright bass, Tony Carr
on drums and congas, John Cameron on piano and
Harold McNair on saxophone and flute. Carr's conga style and McNair's distinctive flute
playing are an intrinsic feature of many Donovan recordings, and both players toured the US with Donovan.
Sunshine Superman
By 1966, Donovan had shed the overt Dylan/Guthrie influences and become one of the first British pop musicians to adopt a
"flower power" image. More importantly, his music was developing and changing rapidly as he
immersed himself in jazz, blues, Eastern music, and the new
generation of US West Coast bands such as Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead. He was now entering
his most creative and original phase as a songwriter and recording artist, working in close collaboration with Mickie Most and
especially with arranger, musician, and jazz fan John Cameron.
Their first collaboration was "Sunshine Superman". One of the first overtly
psychedelic pop records, it was an innovative and eclectic blend of folk, rock, pop and
jazz. The arrangement was augmented by prominent harpsichord, and set against a funky
conga-driven backbeat. It also contained subtle but unmistakable references to LSD — notably, the line, "I could've tripped out easy, but I've changed my ways".
Donovan's rapid rise stalled temporarily in December 1965, when Billboard
broke news of the impending production deal between Klein, Most, and Donovan, and then reported that Donovan was about to sign
with Epic Records in the U.S. Despite Kozak's strenuous denials, Pye Records dropped the new single from their release schedule, and a contractual dispute ensued. As a
result of this dispute, Donovan's UK and US record releases differed markedly, with most of his LPs being released in different
forms on either side of the Atlantic; several significant album tracks from the late sixties were simply not available in the UK
for many years.
The legal dispute continued into early 1966. During the hiatus, Donovan holidayed in Greece,
where he wrote the wistful song, "Writer in the Sun", which was inspired by rumours that his
recording career was over. He also toured the USA, playing some lightly attended gigs. He returned to London, collaborating with
The Beatles and contributing lyrics (and uncredited backing vocals) to the song
"Yellow Submarine", recorded at Abbey Road
Studios on 26 May, 1966.[citation needed]
By late 1966, the American contractual problems had been resolved, and Donovan signed a $100,000 deal with Epic Records.
Donovan and Most went to CBS Studios in Los Angeles, where they recorded tracks for a new LP, much
of which had been formulated and composed during the preceding year. Although folk elements were still prominent, the album
showed the increasing influence of jazz, American west coast psychedelia, and folk rock,
especially The Byrds, whose records Donovan had been listening to constantly throughout
1965.
The LP sessions were completed in May, and "Sunshine Superman" was released in the
US as a single in June. It was a success, providing Donovan with an American chart breakthrough, selling 800,000 copies in six
weeks and reaching #1. The LP followed in August, preceded by advance orders of 250,000 copies, and reached 11 on the US album
charts.
The US version of the Sunshine Superman LP is probably the best,
most consistent, and durable of Donovan's albums; it remains one of the keynote records of the psychedelic era. It features some
of Donovan's strongest material in restrained but imaginative chamber-style folk-jazz
arrangements. It also features an eclectic range of instruments including acoustic bass, sitar,
saxophone, tablas and congas, harpsichord, strings and oboe. Highlights include the swinging "The Fat Angel", which (Donovan's book confirms) was written for "Mama" Cass Elliott of The Mamas and the Papas. The song
is also notable for name checking the cult San
Francisco acid rock band Jefferson
Airplane, well before they became known internationally. Other notable tracks include "Bert's Blues" (a tribute to guitar hero Bert Jansch), the
stately "Gueneviere", and "Legend of a Girl Child Linda", an
innovative track featuring voice, acoustic guitar and a small orchestra, and which runs for over six minutes.
The album is also probably the first pop recording to feature extensive use of the sitar, which
was played by American folk singer Shawn Phillips. Donovan had met Phillips in London in
1965, and Phillips became a close friend and an important early collaborator, playing acoustic guitar and sitar on several major
recordings including the Sunshine Superman album, as well as accompanying Donovan at numerous concerts.
In contrast to the pastoral tone of the rest of the album, several songs, including the title track, had a harder edge. The
driving, jazzy "The Trip" was titled after the L.A. club of the same name; chronicling an LSD trip he took during his time in L.A., it was loaded with references to Donovan's sojourn
on the West Coast, and name-checked both Dylan and Baez. The third "heavy" song, destined to become one of his most enduring
recordings, was a brooding and portentous number called "Season of the Witch".
Recorded with American and British session players, it features Donovan's first recorded performance on electric guitar. The song
was covered by Brian Auger on his first LP in 1967, and Al
Kooper and Stephen Stills recorded an 11-minute version on the 1968 album,
Super Session. Donovan's version is also heard in the closing sequence of the
Gus Van Sant film, To Die For.
Because of contractual problems, the album was not released in the UK for nine months, and then in an altered form — it had a
different track order and omitted "The Fat Angel", "The Trip", and "Ferris Wheel", replacing them with "Hampstead Incident",
"Young Girl Blues", "Writer in the Sun", and "Sand and Foam".
On 24 October, 1966, Epic released the rollicking, brass-laden single "Mellow Yellow", arranged by John Paul Jones and
purportedly featuring Paul McCartney on uncredited backing vocals. It was rumoured that
the phrase "electrical banana" referred to smoking banana peels to get high, (see Berkeley
Barb, perhaps because of this song). The phrase has also been considered to be a coded reference to a vibrator. Another
line in that caused speculation is "I'm just mad about Fourteen", and in the version heard on the 1968 In Concert album, he sings, "I'm just mad
about fourteen-year-old girls; they're mad about me."[1]
The song became Donovan's signature tune and was a commercial success — it reached #2 in Billboard, 3 in Cash Box and earned a
gold record award for sales of more than one million in the US.
During the first half of 1967, Donovan worked on an ambitious double-album studio project, which he produced himself. In
January he gave a concert at the Royal Albert Hall accompanied by a ballerina who
danced during a 12-minute performance of "Golden Apples". On 14 January, New Musical Express reported he was to write incidental music for a National Theatre production of
As You Like It, but this did not come to fruition. His version of
"Under the Greenwood Tree" did appear on "A Gift from a Flower to a Garden".
Later that month Epic released an LP, Mellow Yellow, which reached 14 in the album charts, and a new non-album single,
"Epistle to Dippy", a Top 20 hit in the US. Written in the form of an open letter to an
old school friend, the song had a strong pacifist sub-text, in spite of its florid psychedelic imagery. The real "Dippy" was at
the time serving in the British Army in Malaysia.
According to Brian Hogg, who wrote the liner notes for the Donovan boxed set, Troubadour, Dippy heard the song, contacted
Donovan and left the army as a result.
On 9 February, 1967, Donovan was one of the guests invited by The Beatles to join them at
Abbey Road Studios for the final orchestral overdub session for the Lennon-McCartney collaboration "A Day in the Life", the grand finale to their new opus Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Drug Bust
In mid-1966, Donovan became the first high-profile British pop star to be arrested for possession of marijuana. Donovan's drug use appears to have been moderate, and was mostly restricted to pot smoking —
with occasional use of LSD and mescaline.
Although he was not indulging on the scale of friends like John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and Brian Jones, his use of LSD is referred to in many
of his lyrics, including "The Trip", "Sunshine Superman", "Wear Your Love Like Heaven", "Epistle To Dippy", and "Hurdy-Gurdy
Man".
Public attention was drawn to his marijuana use by the TV documentary, A Boy Called Donovan, broadcast in early 1966,
which showed the singer and friends smoking cannabis at a party thrown by the film crew.
However, it now appears that the Drug Squad were already planning to target many British pop stars, and Donovan's arrest proved
to be the first in a long series, including members of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Donovan's arrest garnered a great deal of publicity, and in early 1967, Donovan
was the subject of an exposé by the British newspaper, the News of the
World.
According to Donovan's autobiography, the article was based on an unauthorised interview given by an ex-girlfriend of his
closest friend, Gypsy Davy. It was the first installment of a three-part series, "Drugs & Pop Stars - Facts That Will Shock
You". Although some claims were probably true, others were false. The most notorious instance was that of the News Of The
World reporter's claiming to have spent an evening with Mick Jagger, who (he alleged)
discussed his drug use and offered drugs to companions. Only after publication was it discovered that the reporter had mistaken
Brian Jones for Jagger, who sued the paper.
Among other supposed revelations were claims that Donovan and other stars including members of The
Who, Cream, The Rolling Stones, and
The Moody Blues regularly smoked marijuana, used other illicit drugs, and held parties
where the
