Donovan (1946—)

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Donovan (1946—)

The rise and fall of British singer Donovan's career and popularity paralleled that of the 1960s counterculture. In the dreamy world of the late 1960s, the exotic and popular performer personified the earthly flower child. Appearing simultaneously wide-eyed and cynical, a little silly yet nobody's fool, and an intensely commercial hippie, he seemed to embrace antithetical categories in popular

culture. For five years between 1965 and 1970, he lived so close to the cutting edge of each new trend that it almost seemed as if he had initiated them. Then, with shocking rapidity, he became irrelevant, discarded—like the counterculture—by critics and audiences alike as passé and/or uncool. Yet, for a singer so identified with that specific time and world view, his best songs never lost either their catchiness or their ability to charm.

Donovan Leitch was born in an old section of Glasgow, Scotland, but his family moved to the outskirts of London in 1955. He learned the rudiments of music at folk enclaves in St. Albans, north of London and in the coastal artists'colony of St. Ives in Cornwall. At age 18 he began recording demo discs which were heard by talent scouts from the British rock television show Ready Steady Go, and he began appearing regularly on the program in 1965. Initially, Donovan's music was entirely acoustic and, while noting his English accent and more romantic attitude, critics labeled him "Britain's answer to Bob Dylan." In 1965, thousands of youngsters learned to play the guitar using the chords to his first hit, "Catch the Wind." Follow-up singles included the folksy "Colours," Buffy St. Marie's "Universal Soldier" (a standard of the anti-war movement), and a jazzy drug-tour of "Sunny Goodge Street," with one of the first explicit references to hashish in rock music. Donovan made his American debut at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, the same year the crowd booed Bob Dylan for performing with electric accompaniment.

By 1966, the 20-year-old Donovan had shed his anti-bomb rhetoric and completely reinvented himself as a psychedelic troubadour of "flower power," the epitome of 1960s mysticism. With Mickie Most, his new producer at Epic Records (with whom he worked until 1969), Donovan kept the folk-like refrains of his songs, but added quirky pop instrumentation (sitars, flutes, cellos, and harps). His work in this period often exhibited wonderful musical inventiveness and a fine ear for a lyrical phrase, although he occasionally crossed the line into pomposity and pretension. His biggest hit, "Sunshine Superman," reached number one in July 1966 in both Britain and the United States, and remains one of the most engaging and innovative singles of the 1960s. The album of the same name also included drug favorites, "The Trip," and the ominous "Season of the Witch." Later that year, Donovan released "Mellow Yellow" (which reached the number two spot with lines whispered by Paul McCartney). Baby boomers everywhere debated whether the lyrics advocated smoking banana peels, although Donovan later claimed the song concerned an electric dildo. His subtle drug references endeared him to the hippie movement, though some complained that his songs were mawkish, the lyrics overloaded with images of trees, sunny days, and laughing children.

Donovan seemed omnipresent in the late 1960s, hanging out with the Byrds, the Rolling Stones, and Dylan, and parodied in Peter, Paul and Mary's "I Dig Rock 'n' Roll Music." The hits kept coming, including the druggie "Epistle to Dippy," and "Young Girl Blues," with its perfectly captured sense of rock ennui set off by the shocking-for-the-times sexual imagery. He was a "must" to headline the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, but his visa was revoked due to a drug charge. He then traveled to India at the same time as the Beatles to study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Shortly thereafter, he publicly renounced drug use and requested that his followers substitute meditation for getting stoned. Donovan now appeared on stage in flowing robes with love beads; one album cover depicted him, scepter in hand, in a ceremonial barge at England's romantic Bodiam Castle, a leaf-strewn lake in the foreground.

Nowhere was Donovan's versatility better displayed than in the hit singles he penned in rapid succession in 1968. His acoustic skill was featured in the sweet hymn to childhood, "Jennifer Juniper"; in "Wear Your Love Like Heaven," the soft, layered harmonies consisted of little more than the names of exotic colors, and the song later gained wide circulation as the ubiquitous advertising jingle for Love cosmetics. At the other end of the popular music spectrum, the drug/fairy tale imagery of the Top Ten hit "Hurdy Gurdy Man," featured Donovan's distinctive, tremulous intonation against layers of Jimmy Page's wailing guitars. Three-quarters of the future Led Zeppelin group played on the single, and they later used the same contrast between acoustic and electric sound to great effect.

Donovan's work continually displayed an original bent and a desire to move beyond traditional popular forms while retaining commercial appeal. "There is a Mountain," a hypnotic calypso-based song with lyrics inspired by Japanese haiku, reached the top fifteen in 1967, and he also borrowed successfully from West Indian traditions in "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" (1970). In 1969, the unique, albeit bizarre story-song "Atlantis" was the last of his efforts to make the top ten. He also experimented with jazz-based sound, most noticeably in "Goo Goo Barabajagal (Love is Hot)," a searing collaboration with the Jeff Beck Group that marked the end of his string of popular hits.

Ironically, just as the singer-songwriter movement seemed to peak in the early 1970s, Donovan completely fell from commercial grace. A critical backlash intensified after he released a double album of children's songs, and the underrated album Open Road in 1970 failed to stem the decline. After his sparsely attended 1971 American tour, he became involved with movies, and wrote scores for, among others, Franco Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973). His early 1970s albums met with mixed critical acclaim and declining sales. Among these was 7-Tease (1974), a conceptual album about a young hippie and his search for inner peace, which also toured as a stage revue with some collaboration from David Bowie. By 1980 Donovan had ceased to be a concert attraction and lacked any major record company affiliation. He recorded only sporadically in the next decade.

After several inactive years, the musician enjoyed a minor renaissance in the 1990s. The spacey British dance band Happy Mondays brought Donovan back into favor by praising his work and touring with him. In 1991, they included an irreverent tribute to Donovan on Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches ; the hit album precipitated a flood of Donovan reissues. There was considerable interest in Sutras, Donovan's "comeback" effort in 1996, but the purely acoustic work, filled with cosmically sincere and occasionally cloying material, found no audience.

Donovan will undoubtedly be forever associated with naive psychedelia. This is unfortunate, because he was a consistently imaginative lyricist who pioneered novel sounds such as Caribbean forms long before such work became fashionable. His popular music career may have fit the typical rock star paradigm, but the best of his work remains uniquely original.

—Jon Sterngass