Donovan bio (quite long)

[Dippy the Hippie]

GOLDMINE #321; November 13, 1992; pp. 10-22.
Krause Publications, Inc.; Iola, Wisconsin.
http://www.krause.com/records/gm/

To pop music fans of a certain age, mention of the name Donovan
conjures up not only a body of music represented by songs such as
“Mellow Yellow,” “Sunshine Superman,” “Hurdy Gurdy Man” and
“Atlantis,” but also an entire era, the second half of the 1960s,
with its experimentation, its political awareness and its idealism.
Donovan's persona embodied all those characteristics, and his music
expressed them. “I wanted to show my generation's hopes and wishes
for a future, for a change,” he says more than two decades later. “I
wanted to shed light on the subjects and on the ideas that I'd
learned in bohemia. I wanted to spread them around the world because
of their positiveness.”
And spread them around the world is exactly what he did. From
1965 to 1969, Donovan was a major commercial success, and in the
'70s, though slightly less active, he continued to record frequently
while branching out into film scoring and acting and theatrical
presentations. Into the '80s, he still toured periodically, and by
the start of the '90s, his work had begun to influence a whole new
generation of musicians, leading to the release of the tribute album
Island Of Circles.
Donovan himself put out his first new album in eight years in
1991, a recording of vintage live performances called Donovan Rising
in the U.K. and The Classics Live in the U.S. In 1992, he was given
the boxed set treatment, with Sony Music's Legacy division issuing
the two-CD/cassette retrospective Troubadour: The Definite
Collection/1964-1976. And, though he became a grandfather not long
ago and began work on his autobiography, Donovan is still only 46,
with many plans for the future. This, then, must be considered only
the story so far.
Donovan was born into a working class family in Maryhill, a
small town near Glasgow, Scotland. The date was May 10, 1946, though
it has been given as February 10 in many published accounts and even
on the back of his debut album. He was named Donovan Philips Leitch.
“Donovan is a last name in Ireland, but I have it as a first name,”
he notes. “Middle names are usually Christian names, but my middle
name is my mother's maiden name. My father is quite literary, so
maybe he had a bit of a laugh when he gave me my name.”
Donovan spent his early childhood in the Gorbals section of
Glasgow. At three, he contracted a mild case of polio, though it
left no permanent damage.
When Donovan was 10, in 1956, his family moved to Hatfield, a
town near London. There he attended St. Audrey's Secondary School.
He displayed an interest in art, and at 15 began to study it at
college (The Campus, Welwyn Garden City), but limited family
finances forced him to leave after a year.
Donovan had also taken up playing the guitar, and he spent a
couple of years in the early '60s roaming the countryside, working
odd jobs and developing his musical ability, frequently in the
company of a friend named “Gypsy Dave” who would prove to be a
long-time companion.
By 1964, Donovan has settled down in St. Albans. “Around
London, there were various towns, and these towns were 20 miles,
roughly, from London,” he explains. “One was St. Albans. Maddy
Prior, who became a singer in Steeleye Span, and I used to sing in
this pub called the Cock. There were a big crowd of us there, folk
singers, pickers and one electric blues band.
“[In] every town around London, and every town around Britain,
I think, in the late '50s and early '60s, there was one experimental
group trying [to be] the Yardbirdsy, bluesy kind of ensemble, and
St. Albans was no exception. They called themselves the Cops and
Robbers. And we followed the Cops and Robbers down to one of their
gigs once to support them in Southend [a seaport town in Sussex].
They had some managers at the time, Geoff Stephens and Peter Eden.
Geoff Stephens was a songwriter, Peter Eden, the manager type. Both
of them were manager types. Geoff lived down in Southend, so had
probably got the band a gig in a club.
“We all went down there that weekend. Although I'd had no
professional gigs to speak of, I'd played around people's flats and
pubs and busked on the street in the summers. I got up and played in
the interval, and then they [Eden and Stephens] came up to me
afterwards and said, `Would you like to go up to Tin Pan Alley?' So,
they took me up to the publishing house — Southern Music it was
called then; now it's called Peer Music.”
The Tin Pan Alley of England was Denmark Street in London, and
Stephens was affiliated with Southern Music, which was a part of
Peer International, the giant song publishing company founded by
Ralph Peer, the man who had discovered the Carter Family and Jimmie
Rodgers. Southern Music had a basement studio for recording
publishing demos, and it was there, under the eye of the producer
Terry Kennedy, that Donovan made a 10-song demonstration tape
featuring such songs as Tim Hardin's “London Town” and Buffy
Sainte-Marie's “Codine” (both of which were released for the first
time on Troubadour), as well as his own original compositions, such
as “Catch The Wind.”
The songs revealed a young man — still only 18 — who had the
time to develop his writing and playing talent, yet remained
unpolished. “At the stage of late '64, I had everything intact,”
Donovan says. “I'd already had a year and a half of songwriting. So,
everything that was to happen in '65 was already formed and shaped
in my mind in '64.”
If the tape revelead his talent, it also revealed distinct
commercial prospects, if only because of its relative similarity, on
first hearing, to another folk singer. Geoff Stephens sent the tape
to Elkan Allen, producer of the weekly TV show Ready, Steady, Go!
“Elkan Allen knew immediately that I would be to the European youth
what Bob Dylan was to America, the European Bob Dylan, and that may
have started off the tag,” Donovan says.
Though Dylan had begun his recording career in 1962, he hadn't
begun to achieve national recognition in the U.S. until 1963, and it
wasn't until 1964 that his albums began to chart in the U.K. When
they did, they took off, with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan hitting #1.

Though Donovan was steeped in the same folk tradition as Dylan,
and, with his cap and curly hair, had a similar appearance, a more
careful listen to his music belied the comparisions. “Blowin' In The
Wind” and “Catch The Wind” had similar titles, but one was a
philosophical inquiry and the other was a light, hopeful love song.
And Donovan's singing was also very different. As Donovan himself
later pointed out in SongTalk magazine, in an interview reproduced
in Paul Zollo's 1991 book Songwriters On Songwriting (Writer's
Digest Books), his voice has a “comforting sound.”
“Dylan may be the very opposite,” Donovan said, “in the sense
that he isn't comforting, but it [his voice] is arresting and it is
totally absorbing.”
“For marketing purposes, of course, that Donovan didn't
actually sound like Dylan was a minor distinction. He was a scruffy
young man with an acoustic guitar, and scruffy young men with
acoustic guitars seemed to be the coming thing. Elkan Allen booked
Donovan on Ready, Steady, Go!, and his appearance was even touted in
the music papers, a remarkable publicity coup for an unknown.
Donovan's February 6, 1965, appearance on the show lived up to
the hype. For one thing, he sang live on a program that otherwise
had its singers lip-sync. He had to sing live, he had no record! So
he sang in the studio, playing a guitar whose body bore the written
message, “This machine kills,” a curious abbreviation of a similar
sign printed on Woody Guthrie's guitar, “This machine kills
fascists.” Then he was interviewed by the show's host, Cathy
McGowan.
“I [sat] and [talked] about my life on the road, which I was
only really weeks from leaving,” Donovan recalls. “I suppose a lot
of people thought, `This can't be real, this
just-walked-off-the-street-onto-television.' But it was real. And I
took to the camera very well. My father had been a photographer all
his life, an amateur, and I never really felt shy in front of a
camera, and therefore I could relate.”
Donovan was invited back for a second week, and then a third.
In its February 12 issue, New Musical Express reported that he had
been signed to Pye Records. Actually, the deal doesn't seem to have
been quite that simple. “Publishing is the center of the business,”
Donovan explains, “and it goes back through the years; it's an old
business. Some old companies would be attached to a label, and
Southern Music had an affiliation with Iver Records. Whether it was
their own independent label, I'm not sure. So, in the act of
recording in the basement studio of Peer Music, I must have been
signed to Iver Recordings, who leased or sold the tapes to Pye for
release.”
At the same time, Southern Music's affiliations in Nashville
led to the licensing of Donovan's music for American release to the
small Hickory label, a record company that had been formed in 1957
by Roy Acuff and Wesley Rose, who also ran the powerful Acuff-Rose
song publishing company. Other than Donovan, Hickory was known for
country music, not folk or pop. These deals would have important
implications for Donovan's recording career later on.
Donovan went on recording in the basement of Southern music
after signing his record contracts. The first result of this was a
single version of “Catch The Wind” (not the original demo recording)
released by Pye just after the end of Donovan's three-week residency
on Ready, Steady, Go! The song became a #4 hit in the U.K., selling
200,000 copies. By April 11, Donovan was performing with the British
music industry's top names at the New Musical Express poll winners'
contest at London's Wembley Empire Pool.
His connection in many people's minds to Bob Dylan, however,
was making Donovan a controversial figure. For some, his sound and
image were a deliberately contrived act concocted for commercial
purposes, a sentiment later expressed by Charlie Gillett in his book
The Sound Of The City (Pantheon Books, 1983). “Folk singer Donovan
craftily reconstructed Dylan's persona for local consumption,”
Gillett wrote, “and hit the charts with his own song, `Catch The
Wind,' a fair approximation of Dylan's style but altogether more
wistful than Dylan would ever allow himself to sound.”
The controversy was still raging when Dylan himself turned up
in England for a tour at the end of April. Dylan was accompanied by
documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker and a film crew, and the
resulting movie, Don't Look Back, features Donovan as an amusing
leitmotif. Dylan may never have heard of his rival when he touched
down in London, but before long, he's musing, “Who is this Donovan?”
Dylan and his entourage are glimpsed reading newspapers with
headlines reading “Is Donovan Deserting His Fans?” (“He's only been
around three months,” notes former Animals keyboard player Alan
Price) and “Dylan Digs Donovan!”
Only later in the film does Donovan actually turn up, but, sure
enough, Dylan does dig him, listening to him sing “To Sing For You”
and exclaiming, “Hey! That's a good song, man!” The film wasn't
released until 1967, but the meeting between the two and Dylan's
apparent blessing did much to dampen criticism of Donovan.
Meanwhile, “Catch The Wind” had been released in the U.S.,
where it made the Top 30. Pye released Donovan's second single,
“Colours,” in May, and like its predecessor, it reached #4. At the
same time came the debut album, What's Bin Did And What's Bin Hid,
which reached #3.
Hickory issued its version of the album, which it titled Catch
The Wind, in June. Among the LP's 12 tracks were both Donovan
originals such as “Josie” and “To Sing For You,” plus his versions
of his friend Mick Softley's “Goldwatch Blues” and Woody Guthrie's
children's song “Car, Car.” The album hit the U.S. charts in July
and reached #30.
Donovan made his first trip to the U.S. to promote the album.
“I came over, and Pete Seeger had me on his show in New York with
Blind Gary Davis,” Donovan recalls. “Pete Seeger introduced me, in a
way, and there, I'd arrived.”
But it wasn't only folkies Donovan had come to convert. “I was
going around mostly pop TV shows in America,” he says, “which was a
continuation of my television image in Britain, which suited me
fine, because television I knew was going to promote this music, and
it should, 'cause folk music has traditionally been kept off the
airwaves. So, I promoted myself on television. I liked it. But they
were all pop-y shows, Hullabaloo, Shindig, Hollywood Palace.”
He also, however, found time to appear at the prestigious
Newport Folk Festival in late July, where he was introduced by Joan
Baez. “Joan Baez and Pete Seeger had told America that here is an
important figure in our folk world arriving, which was marvelous,”
Donovan says. Newport itself “was my first big festival, and to be
doing the Newport Folk Festival was much more comfortable,
obviously,” he adds. “It was just great.”
Newport '65, of course, was the festival at which Dylan went
electric, playing rock music to an audience of folk fans. “I can
understand now what the shock must have been, for any change,”
Donovan says, “because the audience were in Bermuda shorts and
bobbysocks and short hair. I mean, it hadn't happened yet. This was
a middle class folk — what I would call `folk purists' — who came to
hear what they wanted to hear and that's all they wanted to hear.”
It was at Newport that Donovan was first approached about
joining CBS Records, according to Clive Davis, whose account appears
in his autobiography, Clive, Inside The Record Business (William
Morrow & Company, 1974), which was written with James Willwerth.
Once again, it was the Dylan connection that influenced a
significant development in Donovan's career.
“I was deeply taken with Dylan at the time,” Davis writes, “and
I think it was Donovan's lyrics which caught me...I never objected
to signing artists of similar talents who had genuine ability.”
Davis asked legendary A&R man John Hammond to approach Donovan at
Newport. The subsequent negotiations would be long and involved.
Meanwhile, Hickory released “Colours” in the U.S. It reached
#40 in Cash Box, but only #61 in Billboard (“Catch The Wind” had
done a little better in Billboard than it had in Cash Box),
indicating that the song's success was more sales-orientated than
radio orientated. (Billboard factors radio play into its singles
chart; Cash Box does not.) This isn't surprising, given that
American Top 40 radio was not receptive to songs with a simple folk
instrumentation; even Dylan hadn't hit the singles chart till he
went electric. Later, a similar dichotomy between Donovan's singles
sales and radio play would occur, though with a different probable
cause, as we shall see.
In the U.K., Pye released a four-song EP, all of whose songs
expressed anti-war sentiments. (Donovan's detractors, who accuse him
of being a softer version of Bob Dylan, never seem to remember that
Donovan sang songs in opposition to the Vietnam War from 1965 — when
the was was still popular — on, while Dylan never opposed the war in
song while it was going on.) The lead song on the EP was Buffy
Sainte-Marie's “Universal Soldier.” The EP topped the U.K.'s EP
chart for eight weeks and even got into the singles chart, where it
reached #14.
Hickory released a standard 45 of “Universal Soldier” in the
U.S. at the end of August. It reached #45 in Cash Box, but only #53
in Billboard. Donovan appeared on Shindig on September 30 to promote
it.
In October, Pye released Donovan's second album, Fairy Tale,
and his next single, “Turquoise,” in the U.K. Neither was as much of
a success as Donovan had become used to, with the album only
reaching #20 and the single #30.
Donovan toured the U.S. in November, and Hickory's version of
Fairy Tale was issued at the end of the month. As it had in England,
the album was less successful than Donovan's debut, reaching #85.
(Dating the release of subsequent Hickory singles from this point on
is difficult, but the label released two 45s from the album, “The
Little Tin Soldier,” probably in November 1965, and “To Try For The
Sun,” either in late 1965 or early 1966.)
Toward the end of 1965, Pye announced that Donovan's next
single would be called “Sunshine Superman.” Then something happened,
or rather, a few things.
Donovan had indeed written a song called “Sunshine Superman”
(which he originally called “For John And Paul”), inspired by a
separation from his girlfriend, Linda Lawrence. “`Sunshine Superman'
was the first split with Linda when she needed some space and went
to America,” he says, “I knew in the song that we'd meet again.
There's a prophecy 'cause that happened.”
Another thing that happened was that Donovan split with Geoff
Stephens and Peter Eden. “Geoff Stephens and Peter Eden were
succeeded by Ashley Kozak, who began to manage me,” Donovan says. “I
met Ashley through [musician and songwriter] Shawn Phillips. He was
working at NEMS Enterprises [run by Beatles manager Brian Epstein].
That was my concert [booking] agency. Ashley then somehow was
introduced to [New York accountant and manager] Allen Klein, who
introduced me to Mickie Most. Therefore, Ashley continued to manage
me, Allen Klein made the deals. When Mickie and I met, then we
started making records.”
Most, whose real name is Michael Hayes, was a top British pop
producer who had made hits with the Animals and Herman's Hermits. He
had originally been a performer, forming the Most Brothers in the
late '50s with Alex Murray, whose backup band was stolen by Cliff
Richard and turned into the Shadows. He had had extraordinary
success in Africa in the early '60s copying unavailable U.S. rock
'n' roll music, then returned to Britain in 1962 in time for the
Beat trend. Most was extremely commercially-orientated, which
wouldn't have seemed to make him a likely fit with Donovan.
He acknowledged this in an interview printed in the book The
Record Producers, by John Tobler and Stuart Grundy (St. Martin's
Press, 1983). “[Donovan had] had a couple of very big records and
then he had a problem with two or three stiffs, and he was also
getting labeled as a bit of a Bob Dylan copy, and he came to see
me,” Most told Tobler and Grundy.
“Although we were very unlike, two unlikely people to get
together, we did get on very well from the start. He played me this
song, `Sunshine Superman,' and it had a very different color to it
from the way it is on record, and he'd got together with a guy
called John Cameron. So John Cameron and Spike Heatley, I think it
was, worked hard on an arrangement, we went into the studio at two
o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, and by five o'clock it was finished.
“I was happy with it because it sounded different, and it
sounded as though Donovan had got his own sound, which I was pleased
about, because it was away from his acoustic folk guitar sound — a
mysterious electronic sound, which wasn't just electronic rock 'n'
roll, and `Sunshine Superman' was the start of that mysterious
sound.”
That mysterious sound was exactly what Donovan was after, on
this and the other song he was writing at the time. “It was late '65
when I was forming the Sunshine Superman songs and moving briskly
away from the folk scene and into jazz and blues fully,” he says.
“I'd already experimented with the jazz element on `Sunny Goodge
Street' on Fairy Tale and I wanted to develop that.”
Though Donovan says that it was Most who introduced him to John
Cameron, not he who introduced Cameron to Most, he concurs on
Cameron's significance, noting, “John Cameron was the third member
of this hit trio — Mickie Most, Donovan and John Cameron — and we
were a powerful trio because, drawing on the classical and the jazz
elements I loved so much, John Cameron was perfect. He was a trained
arranger/mucisian himself who loved jazz, had just come down from
Cambridge.”
A new team and a new sound. All well and good, but, as is usual
when artists end mangerial and production relationships, there were
considerable legal complications. The confusion was reflected in
Billboard magazine, which reported on December 4 that Allen Klein,
acting as Donovan's business manager, was negotiating a deal between
Donovan and Most, and then on December 18 reported that Donovan's
business manager denied this. In January, Pye deleted “Sunshine
Superman” from its release schedule.
Kozak and Klein were negotiating with CBS, which had recently
signed Most to an exclusive production contract, but this brought
them into conflict with Pye Records, which wanted to keep Donovan.
The battle dragged on for months.
“They said my career was over,” Donovan recalls. “`That's it,
your record will not be released.' I went away to Greece and wrote
`Writer In The Sun.' [The song, which later appeared on the Mellow
Yellow album, has a chorus that goes, “Here I sit, the retired
writer in the sun, and I'm blue.”] That's why I wrote `Writer In The
Sun': I'm retired now, and the career is over. We had some fun in
the interim period, but I also worked, I didn't just sit there for
six months. I just kept touring, doing lots of gigs, and my career
had just started.”
Nevertheless, the loss in momentum caused by the absence of
record company promotional support and a new single was felt. New
York rock critic Lillian Roxon caught a Donovan show of the time. “I
was very sad when Scotsman Donovan came to America for the first
time [sic] in February 1966 to play to a two-thirds empty Carnegie
Hall and to be put down for presuming to do a Dylan on Dylan's own
home ground,” she wrote in Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia (Tempo,
1971).
Donovan also found time to work with friends. Along with John
Lennon, he contributed lyrics to a new Paul McCartney tune, “Yellow
Submarine,” the backing track for which was recorded May 26, 1966,
at Abbey Road studios in London, and he may be part of the chorus of
singers and party-goers heard on the record. Not only was this the
first of many interactions between Donovan and the Beatles, but his
participation suggests a close relationship between “Yellow
Submarine” and his later hit, “Mellow Yellow,” which shared not only
a color but a celebratory tone (and a certain backup singer) with
the Beatles song.
By this time, Donovan's managers seem to have worked things out
at least on the Amnerican end of his record company affairs. Donovan
left Hickory Records acrimoniously; the label retained the rights to
his 1965 material and, as will be shown, it periodically release
competing reissues when Donovan releases new albums.
The new American deal was with CBS's Epic Records subsidiary,
and it was a modest one. “Our risk exposure to Donovan was
relatively small,” Clive Davis writes, “signing him for $100,000 and
giving him a guaranty of roughly $20,000 a year for five years.”
Davis does not specify how many albums Donovan was contracted to
deliver, but a standard contract for the time would have called for
two per year, for a total of 10.
Donovan was now free to return to recording, which he did at
CBS studios in Hollywood with Most in the producer's chair. “In late
'65, I'd been forming the ideas that would become this album,”
Donovan says of the resulting Sunshine Superman LP, “and when you
look through it, the folk element is definitely still there with
`Guinevere,' very strongly, but then I'm listening to the Byrds all
the way through '65, and I was very influenced by using the drums.
“But the subject matter of the Sunshine Superman album, it
seems to be all happening by late '65. `The Trip' would have to just
have been written — I mean, I'm performing in the club called the
Trip on the Strip [Sunset Strip in Hollywood]...A lot of these
elements on this album have been titled `psychedelic,' and of course
there are definitely trippy songs on there.”
One of those trippy songs was an ominous number called “The
Season Of The Witch,” a song that has lived on in cover versions by
Julie Driscoll with Brian Auger and the Trinity in England and by
the Vanilla Fudge and Al Kooper and Stephen Stills in the U.S.,
among others. Its threatening feel is not characteristic of Donovan,
but it has proved to be one of his best-remembered songs.
He himself remembers it for slightly different reasons than the
rest of us. “In a way, I'm proud of having written a blues-style
song which has actually got a lot of that Goth element — this
wailing, strange, dark, gothic imagery, Edgar Allen Poe-ish, all
those elements,” Donovan says, noting the song's influence on such
bands as the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
“And the song was sort of prophetic of a time which I would go
through,” he adds. “I was the first rock 'n' roll bust, and I didn't
know I'd written about it before it happened, but in my mind I put
it together because the witch seemed to turn out to be — Gypsy Dave,
my road buddy, had a girlfriend. Her name was Maggie, and she busted
us in England, and I have to say, this is only for a smoke, the soft
drug. I don't advocate, or ever did use hard drugs in any way, and
the drug culture now is extremely organized and very dangerous and I
wouldn't encourage anybody to go anywhere near it. But in those
naive days, we all had a smoke.
“`Season Of The Witch' was a strange song for me to write at
the time because my songs were full of light and hope and optimism,
and this dark A-minor, D, E, D-9th came out, and it chunking away
there. `The Season Of The Witch' was recorded in Los Angeles with a
pickup band out of a club, and it had all the elements of very
hard-edged rock 'n' roll that would come. It had that punk element
to it, as well. I'd just picked up the electric guitar, so I was
just getting used to it, and so it was very raw.”
The album sessions were completed in May, and “Sunshine
Superman” was released as a single in early June. It sold 800,000
copies in six weeks, hitting #1. In only a few months, Donovan had
gone from having a career that was over to the top of the heap.
“To be accepted in America was the big thing for a British
artist,” he says. “I'd already been in the charts here, but to go to
#1 was amazing, was wonderful, followed up by the set of tours and
other records...”
Record stores registered advance orders of 250,000 copies for
the Sunshine Superman album, which was released in August. It
entered the charts in September and went to #11.
Donovan cites the album as a favorite, proud that it was
something of a precursor to psychedelic music. (“The Fat Angel,” a
song for Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas — and a humorous
parody of their version of the Beatles' “I Call My Name” — even
mentions Jefferson Airplane, long before the group became
successful. “Fly Jefferson Airplane,” Donovan sings, “gets you there
on time.”)
Critics have tended to agree. Phil Hardy and Dave Laing's The
Encyclopedia Of Rock, Volume 2 (Panther [U.K.], 1976), notes,
“Sunshine Superman...saw Donovan at his observational best and was a
deserved classic.” French critic Jacques Vassal, in his book
Electric Children (Taplinger, 1976), agrees. “The influence of
Sunshine Superman since its release can not be overstated,” he
writes. “...It has become one of those albums that practically
everyone interested in pop music owns. Certainly it has now become
recognized as the absolute acme of Donovan's writing career...”
In September, Hickory released its first competing album,
notably entitled The Real Donovan. The album's 12 tracks contained
four songs lifted from Catch The Wind, four from Fairy Tale, one
song only previously released in the U.S. on a single (“Turquoise”)
and three songs previously unreleased in the U.S. (“Oh Deed I Do,”
“Hey Gyp” and “The War Drags On.”) It reached #96 in the charts.
On October 24, Epic released Donovan's next single, “Mellow
Yellow,” a rollicking number with an arrangement by London studio
musician John Paul Jones and uncredited backup vocals by Paul
McCartney. (No, that's not him saying “Quite rightly” on the chorus,
but he is in there.) Perhaps Donovan's most popular single ever,
“Mellow Yellow” went to #2 in Billboard and #3 in Cash Box. It was
awarded a gold record by the Record Industry Association of America
for sales of one million copies on January 19, 1967.
Despite the twin successes of “Sunshine Superman” and “Mellow
Yellow,” Donovan, like many other recording artists of the time, was
beginning to run afoul not only of the law (that bust he spoke of
occurred during this period), but also of radio programmers and
other guardians of the media due to what people thought he was
singing about. “Sunshine Superman” noted that its narrator “could
have tripped out easy, but I've changed my way” and vowed to “blow
your little mind.” “Mellow Yellow,” of course, had that “electrical
banana.”
It was part of a trend. “During 1966 and 1967, numerous
records...[described] experiences which could be regarded as
drug-induced but which did not have to be explained in this way: for
instance, Donovan's `Mellow Yellow' and `Sunshine Superman,' writes
Carl Belz in his book The Story Of Rock (Harper & Row, 1972). “They
thought people were actually burning the skins of bananas, scraping
them and smoking them,” Mickie Most told John Tobler and Stuart
Grundy, “when in fact an electrical banana is a vibrating machine
[i.e., a vibrator]...”
But if the specific references were innocent (of drug
allusions, anyway), Donovan admitted to Paul Zollo that the tone
was, in fact, guilty. “As far as the lyrics are concerned, it was
interpreted by many people as many different things,” he said of
“Mellow Yellow.”
“But essentially, over it all, was the sense of being mellow
and laid-back, which had something to do with smoking the pot or
being cool.”
Donovan was branded in uncool circles as a doper, which would
have an impact on his career. It's notable that, after “Mellow
Yellow,” his singles nearly always did better in Cash Box than they
did in Billboard (as was also true of such controversial
contemporaries as Jefferson Airplane and the Doors), indicating a
resistance from radio to play his songs despite their sales. (And
the resulting lessened exposure, in turn, of course, held sales back
from what they otherwise might have been.)
In the U.K., Donovan's contractual problems were settled in the
opposite manner to the way they had been in the U.S. He was signed
directly to Pye Records, which issued “Sunshine Superman” in
November, a year after it was first announced. The single went to
#3, selling over 250,000 copies. Pye followed rapidly with “Mellow
Yellow,” which went to #8.
In January 1967, Donovan played at the Royal Albert Hall in
London, where he was accompanied by a ballerina, who danced during a
12-minute rendition of “Golden Apples.” New Musical Express reported
on January 14 that Donovan would write incidental music for a
National Theatre production of Shakespeare's As You Like It, which
would star Laurence Olivier. This plan apparently was scuttled,
since nothing more was heard about it.
The same month, Epic (but not Pye) released a new, non-LP
single, “Epistle To Dippy,” and, on the 30th, a new album, Mellow
Yellow.
One of Donovan's more effervescent tracks, “Epistle To Dippy”
was full of psychedelic imagery — “meditating rhododendron forest,”
“elevator in the brain hotel,” etc. — and one with a particularly
personal message. Who exactly was Dippy?
“He was a school friend,” Donovan told Paul Zollo. “He was
actually one of three school friends, and we all had nicknames and
he liked a Zen monk named Diplodocus or something like that, and we
called him Dippy for short. The song was about him and me and
friends in school; it was a memory of school days.”
But there was more to it than that, according to Brian Hogg,
who wrote the liner notes for Troubadour. The song was “an open
letter to a school friend who had become a soldier and was spending
part of a seven-year post in Malaysia,” Hogg writes. “`Dippy' heard
the song and made contact with Don, who then bought him out of the
army.” A number of record buyers must have thought that the song
spoke to them, too: “Epistle To Dippy” hit the Top 10 in Cash Box,
though it only made #19 in Billboard. (The Mellow Yellow album,
meanwhile, went to #14 in the LP listngs.)
Donovan continued to find himself in the same studio with the
Beatles. On February 9, he was one of the invited guests who
attended the Abbey Road studio session at which the orchestral parts
of “A Day In The Live” were laid down.
Like the Beatles, Donovan was spending more time in the studio
on what would turn out to be an ambitious project. And like them, he
was expected to turn out regular singles to keep the public satiated
while it waited for the album's completion. In July, Epic issued
“There Is A Mountain,” a catchy song with the simplicity and
inexplicability of a haiku or zen koan: “First there is a mountain,
then there is no mountain, then there is.”
The song was another hit (it got to #11 in Billboard); while in
Cash Box it was Donovan's fourth straight Top 10 single), but, like
“The Season Of The Witch,” it's also turned into a perennial cover
song, notably in the elaborate variations enacted by Duane Allman
and the Allman Brothers Band on their “Mountain Jam” four years
after it came out.
“What I like about that is, there are certain songs, and I've
written a handful that other people have covered in a big way and
they've made it their own song,” Donovan says. “It's wonder to have
written a song that can be interpreted, and the `Mountain' is one of
those songs, which allows guitar players, flute players, drummers,
bass players — you can jam on it, and I think that is the essence of
the `Mountain' cover and `Season Of The Witch' cover. Especially
`Season Of The Witch' with Brian Auger on the keyboard.
“Any keyboard player would like `Season Of The Witch' because
it was suggested that in the bridge, you could jam or improvise
wherever you want. And the two chord structures, I didn't invent the
chord structures, but I invented the form that they sat in, and so
I've invented two jazz, blues-based songs that a lot of people can
interpret. It's nice.”
In the fall of 1967, Donovan launched a U.S. tour. In New York,
he played a packed Philharmonic (now Avery Fisher) Hall at Lincoln
Center, where Lillian Roxon returned to find a very different story
from what she had seen in February 1966. “In a piece of showmanship
worthy of the Maharishi, Donovan stepped out on stage into a sea of
massed flowers, feathered boas and burning incense, looking, in his
floor-length white robe, like an escapee from the Last Supper,” she
wrote. Reportedly, Donovan ended the concert by telling the crowd,
“I love you, and you love me,” a remark at least one critic thought
insipid, but Donovan's demonstrated rapport with his audience made
it hard to doubt.
The singer went on to a similarly ecstatic response at the
Hollywood Bowl, where he was seen by writer John Carpenter, who
wangled an interview that later appeared in the first issue of
Rolling Stone magazine on November 9, 1967. The first subject of a
Rolling Stone Interview summed up his views for Carpenter by saying,
“There's only one thing in the end, and that's singing truth in a
pleasant way.”
The same month that the interview appeared, Epic released A
Gift From A Flower To A Garden, a two-record boxed set with a cover
picture of Donovan wearing a robe and holding flowers, the colors
altered into a psychedelic scene. On the back, “the author” was
shown holding hands with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Album packages were becoming increasing elaborate, of course.
The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with its
unforgettable cover had been released the previous June, and the
Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request, with its 3-D cover,
came out the same month as Donovan's Gift. But two-record boxed sets
were something new to pop music.
“Classical musicians had them,” notes Donovan. “Jazz had them.
But pop music wasn't allowed to have them. Sid Maurer, the art
designer, fought for me with Clive Davis...All they particularly
wanted was a convenient photograph, it's true. I was very ambitious
on this, wanted a children's album, and a parents' album, as it
were, 'cause we were beginning to make children, our generation.
“It was an ambitious project with what they call `multi-color
separation.' In the business of art covers and art in general, one
color is cheap, two colors is more expensive, three colors, a little
more expensive, but multi-colors is impossible. `No,' is the word.
Unless you pay for some of it.” So, an artist who wants a real fine
cover can pay for it. And I did.
“...Clive Davis insisted that it [also] be split into two
albums and sold separately. The boxed set then went on to be a gold
record over a period of two years, but he was probably right in
saying that it won't happen immediately. They wanted records to
happen in the first six, seven months.”
Gift gave Donovan the appearance of having several records
released at once. The album's single, “Wear Your Love Like Heaven,”
was a Top 30 hit. The “parents'” album, also called Wear Your Love
Like Heaven, went to #60, while the children's album, For Little
Ones, only grazed the charts at #185. The big winner was the box,
however, which reached #19 and would be certified as a gold record
on April 1, 1970.
Beyond its music and its commercial impact, however, A Gift
From A Flower To A Garden had a curious message in its liner notes.
“Yes, I call upon every youth to stop the use of all Drugs and heed
the Quest to seek the Sun.” The note was signed, “they humble
minstrel, Donovan.”
It was a message that made Donovan as controversial with the
left wing as he had been a year before with the right wing. in that
time, of course, Donovan had been busted, he had seen the effects of
that bust when he was denied a visa to attend the Monterey Pop
Festival in June 1967 and he had taken up Transcendental Meditation
with the Maharishi. But in the polarized days of the late '60s,
Donovan's anti-drug stance definitely raised hackles in some
quarters.
At the end of 1967, Donovan realized one of his long-term
ambitions by contributing songs to Kenneth Loach's British film Poor
Cow. Donovan's theme song for the movie would be the B-side of his
next single. That single, released in February 1968, was the playful
“Jennifer Juniper.” “Jennifer,” Donovan told Paul Zollo, “was Patti
Boyd's sister.” (Patti Boyd was George Harrison's wife at this
time.) But, he added, “A love song for a woman is for all women.
It's for womanhood.”
Both Donovan's male and female fans responded to the tribute,
with “Jennifer Juniper” hitting #18 in Cash Box, #26 in Billboard.
As the single went into the charts, Donovan flew to India,
where he spent the late winter and early spring with the Maharishi
and, as he later put it, “four Beatles, one Beach Boy [Mike Love]
and Mia Farrow.”
In March, Hickory Records struck again, working up a
psychedelic cover for an album called Like It Is, Was And Evermore
Shall Be. Not only did the album acknowledge on its back cover that
all the tracks had been released previously, it also listed the
previous three Donovan albums on Hickory and noted which tracks came
from which albums! The repackaging went to #177 in April.
When Donovan returned to England, he had in hand a new song
called “Hurdy Gurdy Man.” He seems to have begun the song on a
Jamican vacation and finished it in India. Asked if he considered
himself to be a hurdy gurdy man, Donovan told Paul Zollo, “Yeah. Oh
yeah, I am the hurdy gurdy man. But also the hurdy gurdy man is all
singers who sing songs of love. The hurdy gurdy is an instrument
from the 16th century. The hurdy gurdy man is a chronicler, the
hurdy gurdy man is like a bard, and the hurdy gurdy man is any
singer-songwriter in any age...Any singer for peace is a hurdy gurdy
man.”
Donovan had met and befriended Jimi Hendrix in 1966 when he was
brought over to England. Now, having written “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” he
decided it was a good song for Hendrix to record. “So, I told Mickie
Most, `I've written this song,'” he recalls. “He said, `What is it?'
And I could never figure out what singles were and what they
weren't, so I thought it was just another song I wrote. I played it
through for Mickie Most, and I said, `I want to give it to Hendrix.'
Mickie said, `No, it's for you. It's a single.' I said, `Oh? Well,
alright. Well, let's get Hendrix to play on it.' So, we phoned him
up and he was touring, and he was not available on the time we were
gonna record the song.”
Most, however, agreed that “Hurdy Gurdy Man” should have a
Hendrix-like or at least a “heavy” approach. Donovan's singles had
been dipping somewhat in the charts, and the always
commercially-conscious Most thought a change was in order.
“I felt that Donovan needed something a bit heavier,” he told
John Tobler and Stuart Grundy, “...and out of that came `Hurdy Gurdy
Man,' which was a bit more weighty, and was what he needed to widen
his audience, because America had become a bit heavier...you could
see Cream happening and the things which we now know as heavy rock
'n' roll.”
In place of Hendrix, Donovan and Most enlisted Allan Holdsworth
of the group Blue Mink. “So, Allan came up,” Donovan says, picking
up the story, “and it's debatable whether [John] Bonham played drums
or whether John Paul [Jones] played bass, but it's definite,
according to Jimmy Page, he was on the session, and my memory is, he
was. But it wasn't the basic session, because we layered the guitars
on afterwards. Allan Holdsworth went on, then Jimmy Page went on, I
believe there was a third guitar player. So, it was built up, like a
collage or a montage of sound.
“I like to think that [Led] Zeppelin was in the minds of John
Paul, Bonham and Page when they were sessioning still, but I also
like to think that `Hurdy Gurdy Man' encouraged them, pushed them
over the edge to actually create a band that Jimmy would be able to
play his acoustic styles like on `Stairway To Heaven,' which he
loves, and play his power guitar, which he's great at, and
completely exciting ethnic drums and then these poetic, interesting
lyrics, which was what `Hurdy Gurdy Man' ended up being.” (While the
exact personnel on the session remains unknown, it's worth noting
that Page's previous group the Yardbirds did not officially break up
until July 1968, at least a couple of months after the session, and
no account of the formation of Zeppelin suggests that Page had met
Bonham — who was drumming for the northern band Hobstweedle — before
his bandmate, Robert Plant, suggested he be approached. That, of
course, doesn't mean that Bonham couldn't have gone down to London,
done a tracking session for “Hurdy Gurdy Man” and left without
meeting John Paul Jones or Jimmy Page, but it doesn't seem likely.)
“Hurdy Gurdy Man” was released in May 1968 and became one of
Donovan's biggest hits — #3 in Cash Box, #4 in the U.K., #5 in
Billboard. It has also proven one of Donovan's most durable hits,
even inspiring a cover version by the Butthole Surfers that Donovan
says he loves, though “they tore it to bits.”
Donovan was in Olympic studios in London in May, following the
“heavy” “Hurdy Gurdy Man” session with another one, this time
working with the Jeff Beck Group. The song was called “Goo Goo
Barabajagal (Love Is Hot).” Asked by Paul Zollo if “barabajagal” was
an invented word like the kind Lewis Carroll would use in one of his
children's stories, Donovan agreed. “Yeah, like `Jabberwocky,'” he
said. “He would make up words. Also, it was influenced by `Goo goo
ga joob,' from `I Am The Walrus.' Lyrically, it was about a young
girl who goes to an herbalist for a cure.”
Mickie Most suggested using the Jeff Beck Group on the track.
“One of Donovan's problems was that he never really had a band,”
Most told John Tobler and Stuart Grundy, “He never had anybody he
could bring into the studio, there was never that sort of working
relationship, so I always used to use the people who I'd used on the
Herman's Hermits records, the session guys. But when Jeff Beck had
his group buzzing away, I thought it might be an idea to put the two
things together after Donovan sang me this song called
`Barabajagal.' It was partly alright, and partly a mess. I don't
really know, but if somebody played it to me now, I'd probably feel
it was a mess — at the time, it was a real attempt to get other
influences into both their musics, because I wanted Donovan to get a
little more heavyweight, and Jeff a little more lyrical.”
Donovan recalls the session: “Beck was invited, and at the
time, Ronnie Wood, I believe, was playing bass, Nicky Hopkins on
piano.” [Donovan is unsure of the drummer. The notes to Troubadour
list Tony Newman, but a more likely candidate is Mickey Waller.] We
arrived at the session, and Jeff arrived a bit late, and the drummer
was tuning the kit, and as he was tuning the kit he was playing a
pattern. [Donovan scats the drum pattern for “Barabajagal.”] I said,
`So, you've heard the song,' and he said, `What song?' I said, `The
song we're gonna do.' He said, `No, I haven't.' I said, `That's the
pattern.' He said, `Fine, that's great.'
“So, Nicky Hopkins came in...I said, `Do you want to hear the
chords?' He said, `No, just play it.' And he opened up on the music
stand in front of his piano a Superman comic. So, he started reading
comics while he waited. And then Jeff came in...and he'd left [his
guitar] at the last hotel. He said, `Just get me any old Fender.' So
they got him any old Fender. And it doesn't sound like any old
Fender. It sounds incredible.”
It does indeed, but it wasn't released at the time. Instead,
“Barabajagal,” its eventual B-side, “Trudi” (which also featured the
Beck Group), and the tracks “Superlungs My Supergirl,” “Where Is
She” and “Happiness Runs” were all shelved.
In July, Epic released Donovan In Concert, a live album culled
from a fall 1967 concert at the Anaheim Convention Center that was
notable for the absence in its selections of any of Donovan's hit
singles except “There is A Mountain” and a show closing “Mellow
Yellow.” The album reached #18.
The artist himself, meanwhile, was spending the summer working
on a new album. The Beatles were nearby working on their double
album, The Beatles, and a bootleg has since appeared featuring
Donovan trading songs with Paul McCartney. The bootleg includes
songs that were later to turn up on Donovan's second children's
album, H.M.S. Donovan. It also features what would be his next
single, “Lalena.”
“Lalena” was released as a single in September. An acoustic
ballad whose title character's name was inspired by singer Lotte
Lenya, according to Donovan, “Lalena” seemed to fly in the face of
Mickie Most's encouragement of a “heavier” Donovan. And Most's
commercial instincts seemed confirmed when the single only got into
the low 30s in the charts. It was followed by the new LP, The Hurdy
Gurdy Man, whose commercial prospects probably were dimmed by its
containing earlier hits such as the title track and “Jennifer
Juniper,” but not “Lalena.” The album nevertheless reached #20.
After a fall tour of the U.S., Donovan was back in the studio.
He again did sessions with Paul McCartney. McCartney was producing
an album for Mary Hopkin, who had scored a hit with “Those Were The
Days.” Her debut album, Post Card, led off with two Donovan songs,
“Lord Of The Reedy River” and “I Love My Shirt,” on which Donovan
played.
McCartney returned the favor at Donovan's sessions, playing
tambourine and joining the chorus for “Atlantis,” which was released
as a single in the U.K. on November 22 and reached #23 in the charts
there.
The start of 1969 brought the release of a second film for
which Donovan had provided the music. This time it was the comedy If
It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium.
On January 20, “Atlantis” was released in the U.S. on the
B-side of a gentle anti Vietnam War song called “To Susan On The
West Coast Waiting.” “Susan” became a moderate hit, reaching the Top
40, but when DJs flipped it over and played the seemingly unlikely
“Atlantis,” with its recitation, arcane subject matter and extended
(over four minutes!) length, the song took off, soaring into the Top
10.
January had also seen the release of the 11-track Donovan's
Greatest Hits, which was notable for featuring the first LP
appearances of “Epistle To Dippy,” the single version of “There Is A
Mountain” and “Lalena,” and re-recordings of the contractually
unavailable “Colours” and “Catch The Wind.” The album quickly became
Donovan's biggest seller, going gold by April 22 and reaching #4,
Donovan's only Top 10 LP. It stayed in the charts more than a year.
Though Donovan was spending less time on the road, he did turn
up as one of the opening acts at the Rolling Stones' free concert in
Hyde Park, London, at which the group introduced its new guitarist,
Mick Taylor, replacing the dismissed Brian Jones, who had died two
days before. It was an event that must have had a special poignance
for a man whose companion, Linda Lawrence, was the mother of Jones's
son Julian, who the couple was raising.
The same month, “Barabajagal” finally was released as a single
in the U.K. and the U.S. In England, it got to #12, but in America
it didn't do as well, getting to #28 in Cash Box and #36 in
Billboard. Nevertheless, a Barabajagal album, matching songs from
the May 1968 sessions with some from the fall, was released in
August 1969. The album reached #23 in the U.S.
Hickory, meanwhile, perhaps stimulated by the sales of
Donovan's Greatest Hits, weighed in with another repackaging of the
1965 material, using a current photo drenched in green and titled
The Best Of Donovan. Released in October, the album hit #144.
One of the rarities included in Troubadour is an early version
of the song “Riki Tiki Ravi,” recorded, according to the notes, on
October 14, 1969. Just above that notation are the words “Produced
by Donovan,” an interesting credit for anyone trying to date the
singer's breakup with Mickie Most. In fact, the last Donovan
sessions for which Most is credited in this period are from November
1968, but it appears the two did try to work together after that.
Clive Davis writes that he began getting calls from both
Donovan and Most that revealed to him “a conflict between Most's
commercial instincts and Donovan's experimental impulses.”
Most described the split in more specific terms. “I had an
argument with [Donovan] over in Los Angeles about how a session
should be controlled, ”he told John Tobler and Stuart Grundy, “and I
felt that a lot of hangers-on shouldn't be there, apart from a lot
of goings-on that I didn't like anyway. I said that as I was paying
for the sessions, he could either do it my way or...and he said he
wanted to do that record with someone else, so that was goodbye. So
we parted for a couple of years.”
According to Davis, Donovan “disappeared. I heard he'd gone to
live in Greece; for some time he was completely out of touch...More
than six months later, I got word that Donovan was finally working
on an album by himself.”
Of the album that eventually emerged under the title Open Road,
Donovan says, “I made it after the disillusionment of all the '60s
things that were going on, and at one point I said, `I've had
enough. I'm going into the studio with a three-piece, back to the
roots.' But I created the term `Celtic rock' on there, and I'd
finally found the phrase that I was looking for, to try and fuse
this traditional music with this power guitar and power ethnic
drums. So, on the album, I was almost like turning my back on the
record industry, the management, managers, the record producers,
even Mickie Most. I said, `I'm goin' in myself.' I kind of liked the
way the three-piece sounded, it was so raw and emotional and in a
way rather punky...”
Ironically, after breaking away from Most, Donovan was doing
two things Most favored: His sound had turned more toward rock, and
he had formed a band with drummer John Carr and bassist Mike Thomson
(plus pianist Mike O'Neill), also called Open Road. The songs were
energetic and infused with Donovan's usual poetic gift: comic,
mystical and political. If it was not the best overall album Donovan
ever made, it was a close second.
This view is well-expressed by Jacques Vassal. “The year 1970
marked for Donovan a musical advance that even his most ardent
admirers had hardly hoped for any longer,” Vassal writes. “The album
Open Road...seemed to show that he was progressing toward regaining
his second wind, the second wind which had been so long awaited,
through his new experiences working with other musicians.”
The band was intended to undertake a tour to promote the album,
and Donovan and Open Road appeared at a CBS Records Convention in
the Bahamas, at the Bath Festival of Progressive Music on June 28,
around the time of the release of the album, and at the Isle of
Wight Pop Festival during the last week of August. But the tour
never materialized.
“I think Open Road came out and it limped out, it didn't sort
of run out,” Donovan says, “and I don't think CBS knew what to do
with it.” (In fact, Open Road went to #16 in the charts and was
listed for 19 weeks, an average performance for a Donovan album.
“Riki Tiki Tavi,” the single, went to #40 in Cash Box, #55 in
Billboard.
It seems that Donovan didn't know what to do, either. “In the
early '70s, I just didn't feel like it anymore,” he says. “I think
I'd done enough...I'd achieved more than any young musician could
possibly want. Apart from 14 hit records that charted [not including
“Riki Tiki Tavi”], I was one of the first what they called `album
artists.' The album is the life. The single is the bright light that
shines on the album, for me. That was how I saw it. But then single
succeeded single, and the 14 singles were amazingly received, but
the albums were the important things.
“Basically, I think I was in what you would call retirement
mode. I'd gone backwards and forwards, and I'd really had enough of
various things. A lot of us were worn down by the end of the '60s.
So I went in and had emotionally done this album. The three-piece
was to go on the road and promote it all over America, and I think I
just didn't have the energy or I was bored, and I was happy with the
album, anyway. It came out, and it was received quite well, but I
don't believe there was any serious promotion from the label.”
Davis's version of the story is that Donovan “disappeared
again,” which made the album difficult to promote. “He'd gone long
enough to need a tour; he also needed a hit single,” Davis writes.
“We got neither; the album sold about 350,000 copies, a good sale
but not great.”
One can't help noting in contrast to what Donovan says and what
Davis implies that Donovan wasn't really an “albums artist,” at
least in commercial terms, though his albums were modestly
successful. In fact, he was a singles artist for the most part. His
only really big album sale was for his greatest hits album. A Gift
From A Flower To A Garden did go gold after more than two years, but
this was at a time when the standard for gold status was earning $1
million in sales at wholesale prices, which would have been higher
for a two-record set, thus setting a lower unit threshold.
Given that all of Donovan's Epic albums had roughly similar
chart peaks and lengths-of-stay in the chart — the peaks range
between #11 and #23 and the weeks-charted range from 19 to 31 — if
we assume that overall record sales increased steadily over the
period, thus making chart position more difficult to maintain, the
sales of Open Road would be on a par with what CBS had come to
expect of Donovan, or even a little better — tour or no tour, single
or no single. And CBS had made a handsome profit on its $100,000
investment so far.
But there's the rub. Donovan's five-year contract of 1966 was
due to expire at the end of 1970, though, by the label's reckoning,
he had failed to deliver all the albums called for by the contract.
All told, Epic had released 10 Donovan albums in five years, but
that was only by counting a greatest hits album, a live album and
adding the different versions of A Gift From A Flower To A Garden
together. Count another way, and you'd say he'd only delivered six
or seven.
That's how CBS counted. “Donovan had already earned the
original guaranty many times over,” Davis admits, but “we felt he
still owed us three or four albums under the contract.” Davis says
negotiations for a new contract “bogged down quickly,” but that he
finally settled on an offer of a $2 million, five-year contract
requiring 10 albums. After Donovan “disappeared again” and Open Road
registered its “good, but not great” sales, Davis says he heard that
Donovan had signed to Warner Bros. Records.
Davis says he was stunned, and that he reacted by suspending
Donovan's contact — that is, extending it indefinitely until he
fulfilled the album commitment — and suing. He says that, during the
legal battles, Donovan realized his managers had treated CBS
unfairly, and he then returned to CBS, re-signed for $2.5 million.
All of this occured between mid-1970 and September 1972, a
period during which Donovan was more active than is suggested in
Davis' account. On October 2, 1970, Donovan finally married his
lover of nearly six years' standing, Linda Lawrence. The same month,
Janus Records, taking over from Hickory, issued yet another
compilation, a two-record set called Donovan P. Leitch. Remarkably,
it sold well enough to chart, getting to #128. (The label also
issued three singles from the LP as part of an “antiquity series.”)
It was followed shortly by a single-disc set, Hear Me Now, that did
not chart.
By December 1970, Open Road had officially broken up, and
Donovan was on to new projects. In February 1971, Epic released a
new single, “Celia Of The Seals,” its picture sleeve crediting it to
Donovan “with Danny Thompson.” The B-side was “Song Of The Wandering
Aengus,” Donovan's musical setting for a poem by William Butler
Yeats. (According to the Troubadour notes, “Celia Of The Seals” was
recorded in 1969, but many of the recording dates in the package are
suspect.) The single grazed the bottom of the charts, peaking at #84
in Billboard.
Meanwhile, Donovan was working on a new film, scoring and
playing the title role in Jacques Demy's The Pied Piper. He was also
recording a certain album Clive Davis never mentions in his account
of the contract dealings, an album called H.M.S. Donovan.
It was an album Donovan had had in mind at least since the
evening captured on the McCartney bootleg from the summer of 1968.
Now he had two albums' worth of material, all children's songs. (In
fact, he notes, this and the earlier For Littles Ones album
represented only a third of the children's material he'd composed.)
It was a project clearly close to the heart of a man who was now
married and raising a family, and who had been interested in
children's music from the beginning of his career, when he recorded
Woody Guthrie's “Car, Car.”
H.M.S. Donovan “is a wonderful album,” says its creator. “It
was rejected by Clive. I think he wasn't happy with [For Little
Ones'] sales...So, categorically, it was refused by Clive...I was
headed in the direction of making a movie. I really wanted to make
music for movies, for children, and that to me was teaching the
young, teaching the future generations.”
H.M.S. Donovan was released by Pye in the U.K., where it did
not chart and received little attention. Jacques Vassal, who had so
praised Open Road, was dismayed by this follow-up. “He dissolved his
backup group and released a double album of songs for children,
H.M.S. Donovan,” Vassal fumed. “Where his earlier attempt in this
direction, For Little Ones, had had a simplicity that ensured it
stayed well clear of syrupy self-indulgence, H.M.S. Donovan was not
so fortunate.”
Donovan also seems to have toured the U.S. in 1971, though
there are apparently conflicting accounts about the result. One says
he filled Madison Square Garden; another describes the tour as
“sparsely attended.” The dates were Donovan's last in the U.S. until
1974.
The Pied Piper, described by film critic Leonard Maltin as a
“chilling story” in which Jacques Demy “succeeds in weaving a grimy
portrait of the Middle Ages,” was released in 1972, by which time
Donovan was working with Franco Zeffirelli on Brother Sun, Sister
Moon, a film about St. Francis of Assisi. (Donovan had at one time
been slated to do songs for Zeffirelli's previous film, Romeo And
Juliet.)
In September, Donovan's dealings with CBS were settled when he
signed his new record deal and the label issued a new two-record
compilation, The World Of Donovan, though, ominously, it didn't
chart.
To complete his return to active duty, Donovan once again
hooked up with Mickie Most. “He came back to me...and said, `I've
made a couple of things, but they were nothing, so can we do
something together again,' and we did the Cosmic Wheels album,” Most
told John Tobler and Stuart Grundy. “I was credited as Michael Peter
Hayes, but there was no particular reason for that except that
Donovan said he'd always liked my real name, and asked me if he
could put it on the album, so I said I didn't care what he put on
it. There was nothing devious about that at all.”
Cosmic Wheels was released in March 1973. The first of
Donovan's quarter-million dollar Epic albums, it had all the
earmarks of a '70s superstar release, from its elaborate gatefold
sleeve (including a celestial illustration inside bearing the
legend, “Get out your cosmic crayons, kids and colour in”) to its
custom-designed record label. Money had also been spent on the
production, which found Most employing a session rock band plus a
full string section on many tracks.
Critical reactions varied, though it was notable that
journalists treated the album not as a new major statement from an
established artist, but as an attempted comeback. They reserved
special, humorless scorn for a song called “The Intergalactic
Laxative,” in which Donovan, over a sprightly folk backing,
speculated about the excretory procedures in space capsules. “The
one or two really fine performances on the record are lost
completely in the rather self-indulgent and tasteless remainder,”
wrote Jacques Vassal.
Probably the key to the album's commercial reception, however,
was not critical reaction but rather Donovan's decision not to tour
the U.S. to promote it. Nevertheless, the album reached #15 in the
U.K. and #25 in the U.S. and spawned two singles, “I Like You” (#57
Cash Box, #66 Billboard) and “Maria Magenta” (which did not chart).
Good, Clive Davis might say, but not great.
Speaking of Clive Davis, probably the most important
development in Donovan's career in 1973 was Davis's firing from the
CBS Records presidency over the Memorial Day weekend. Though the two
had had their differences, Donovan had been Davis's first artist
signing and he was closely associated with the ousted president.
With Davis, Donovan had a modicum of record company support; without
him, he was a medium-level recording artist with a superstar
contract.
Nineteen seventy-three also saw the release of Brother Sun,
Sister Moon, which turned out to be a box-office failure, though it
has attracted a cult following among film buffs since. And Donovan
released his second live album, Live In Japan, in Japan only, on
Sony/CBS Records.
On October 1, 1973, Donovan returned to his favorite recording
venue, Morgan Studios in London, with ex-Rolling Stones
manager/producer Andrew Oldham, and spent a month working on a new
album. For the sessions, Oldham employed the cream of '70s sessions
musicians, drawn from the L.A. singer-songwriter scene and from such
groups as the Dominos, Humble Pie and Wings — drummers Jim Gordon,
Russ Kunkel and Danny Seiwell, percussionist Ray Cooper, bassists
Carl Radle and Leland Sklar, guitarists Peter Frampton, Henry
McCullough, Steve Marriott and Danny Kortchmar, and keyboard players
Nicky Hopkins and Craig Doerge. Guest stars included Carole King and
Tom Scott.
The result was a smooth, professional '70s pop-rock album, a
classy work with song titles like “The Dignity Of Man” and “Life Is
A Merry-Go-Round,” and when it was released in January 1974, Essence
To Essence appeared in a glossy white sleeve, its title embossed on
its cover.
The money spent on the sessions and the sleeve, however, belied
the attention given to the album upon release. Without Davis to
bestir the troops at CBS and to guide its way through the
marketplace, and without Donovan, who was busy moving to California,
to do a promotional tour for it, Essence To Essence never found its
audience, reaching only #174 in the charts. A single of “Sailing
Homeward” did not chart at all.
Donovan's next release was a one-off single released in August
in which he covered David Bowie's song “Rock And Roll With Me,”
which had appeared earlier in the summer on the Bowie album Diamond
Dogs. Donovan's version didn't reach the charts.
During the year, Donovan was developing a new set of songs with
an overall theme treating the changeover in attitudes from the '60s
to the '70s. He put on some shows in California featuring the
material and using dancers and various visual effects. In September
and October, he spent three weeks in Quadrafonic Studios in
Nashville with producer Norbert Putnam. By November, the album,
7-Tease, was in record stores. The album “dealt with the fate of
hippy mind-searching and drugs,” notes The Encyclopedia Of Rock,
Volume 2. It also included some of Donovan's most autobiographical
writing and reflected an apparent pessimism (some said cynicism)
about the world in general.
Donovan returned to the concert stage and to interviews in the
press to promote the album, but he still seemed less than enchanted
with the business of selling his music. Speaking to Dennis Hunt of
the Los Angeles Times in December, he said, “I was disillusioned
with the 1960s. I was also disgusted with the music business. I got
so disgusted with all of the rotten aspects of it that I had to get
out.”
“Music and business just don't seem to mix. It's hard to be an
idealist and just want to make good music and not get trampled on by
all the ruthless people who just want to make money. That's why
artists freak out, run away, get sick or do anything to escape.
“Recently I came terms with this business and decided to work
with it instead of against it. I've cooled down somewhat. It may be
a mistake. I don't know yet.”
Despite this resolve, 7-Tease received relatively little
support from Epic and did only a little better than Essence To
Essence, getting to #135. It single, “Rock And Roll Souljer,” didn't
chart.
“A very underestimated album,” is Donovan's assessment today.
“I think it's becoming clear that it sort of escaped. The actual
life of certain albums with CBS...I followed my direction, I went
into each album and made the album I wanted to make without any
thought for the commercial value of it, and yet in those years
between '65 and '71, there were singles that came from albums, and
during the '70s, although they weren't successful, I don't know why
they weren't. I entered into those albums just in the same
excitement as any album. I think it's a put-down of the hundreds of
thousands of musicians that don't ever make commercial success if
one thinks that each album has got to have some commercial value,
because the true value of music is in its playing.”
Donovan toured Australia and New Zealand and in 1975, but
otherwise was not heard from for the rest of the year. In the fall,
Epic repackaged some of his '60s albums, issuing Hurdy Gurdy Man
with Barabajagal and Donovan In Concert with Sunshine Superman as
twofers. Pye Records also turned up with a U.S. Donovan release in
its The Pye History Of British Pop Music series.
From August 1975 to March 1976, Donovan worked on his next Epic
album, which he produced himself. Eschewing the more commercial
approach of his previous three albums, he returned to the folk-jazz
sound of his late '60s albums, even recording two songs by his old
friend Derroll Adams. The backup musicians included such session
aces as drummer Jim Keltner, bassist Klaus Voorman, guitarist Jesse
Ed Davis and members of the Crusaders.
The album had a distinctly melancholy tone, set by the song “A
Well Known Has Been,” in which the singer notes, “I pretend I'm
unaffected by the chains that bear me down/When only those that love
me can see behind the frown.” “Use this album before the next
century,” advised a sleeve note.
Released in May, Slow Down World failed to turn Donovan's
commercial slide, getting to only #174, with its single, “Dark-Eyed
Blue Jean Angel,” not making the charts. Donovan toured to promote
the record, though by this time he was appearing in clubs rather
than concert halls. (Pye, meanwhile, issued a second album of 1965
recordings in the U.S., marking the umpteenth time the tracks had
appeared on record.)
After three poor-selling albums, Epic decided not to continue
to pay Donovan $250,000 per LP for the next six records on his
contract and dropped him. Clive Davis, who had in the meantime taken
over Arista Records, continued to see potential in the singer,
however, and signed him. The two then brought back Mickie Most for
another go-round.
“Getting back together again with older bedfellows sometimes
doesn't work,” Donovan notes, “but I thought it worked quite well
with Mickie Most, Clive and I. We really did get on so well as a
team, and I didn't really feel bad feelings for the past. There was
a lot of mess in the past, you know, and there were a lot of things
that were done that happened in any business that is successful, but
I didn't mind. I wanted to go back and try it one more time. We made
a record, Mickie and I, it was reasonably satisfying for me and it
wasn't a super success and Clive put it out and that was okay. But
perhaps one shouldn't go back, one should move on.”
Most was less charitable in his remarks in The Record
Producers. “The Donovan record...was motivated purely by finance,”
he said. “I was owed a lot of money from previous work with Donovan,
and the only way it seemed I would be able to get it back was to
perform as his producer once again, so I think the motivation was
really the pay day. I sound like a boxer talking about his last
fight, but it was money which couldn't be sneezed at, and it
required me to produce again for it to be paid up. So I did, but it
was 10 years too late, really.”
Released in August 1977, the Arista album, titled Donovan, was
more of a rock 'n' roll record than Slow Down World. Lyrically, it
was still imbued with the artists' disillusionment, from its opening
track, “Local Boy Chops Wood (A Death In The Sixties),” about the
ups and downs of a rock star as reflected in the headlines, to
“Brave New World,” which noted, “There's a disappointment awaiting
all you fools out there/If you entertain the notion that society
cares.” Donovan retained a certain hopefulness, singing in the
chorus of “Sing My Song” that “I want the whole wide world/To sing
along,” but the verses to the same song castigated the music
industry: “The words need not be committed/Though you'll be if it
flops/So we're pickin' out your straitjacket/For the Top of the
Pops.”
Donovan went virtually ignored. It was Donovan's first new
album to miss the Billboard chart entirely, though it reached #138
in Cash Box. Its single, “Dare To Be Different,” didn't reach the
Hot 100.
The album was Donovan's final major label effort in the U.S.
and U.K. Three years later, in August 1980, he released Neutronica
on Mickie Most's Rak label in Europe only and undertook a European
tour that began at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland and continued
into France and Germany. He followed with another Rak album, Love Is
Only Feeling, in November 1981.
Donovan's next U.S. album was Lady Of The Stars, released on
the Allegiance label in 1983. The album's title track was a
re-recording of a song from the Donovan album, and the LP also
included remakes of “Boy For Every Girl” from Essence To Essence,
“Local Boy Chops Wood,” “Season Of The Witch” and “Sunshine
Superman,” plus some new songs.
“For those that are reading your magazine that wonder where
I've been,” Donovan says, “it's been an on-and-off relationship with
the record companies, me, and never a problem in concert. I've
always played concerts every two or three years. I've done tours in
Europe and America. Although it looked like I disappeared from the
face of the musical earth in 1973, in actual fact...in the '70s I
released nine albums, three of which were very well promoted, and
the other six I really wasn't interested in promoting.
“I suppose I got a little bored, and I had a family, and I
raised my family, and I wrote songs, and I did tours. But there is a
'70s Donovan and three in the '80s, which I hope in the future to
make available to fans and the general public alike.”
Meanwhile, by the start of the '90s, a Donovan revival started
taking place. “Late 1990 in England saw the re-release of 11 albums
[in England],” Donovan notes, “and following the trend of '60s and
'70s artists being rediscovered by young bands, it was my turn, and
I ran into lots of young people in my concerts and also many young
musicians in England, and so, to celebrate the 25 years, which I was
intending to do, I pulled off the shelf a set of live recording
which are on release now in America under the title The Classics,
and what it is is a collection of the finest high-quality recordings
of acoustic Donovan concerts from late '60s into the late '70s. It
was a good thing to do because there was a bootleg going around for
many years, and the fans were satisfied with it, but it was terrible
quality.”
At a concert at New York's Bottom Line in August 1991 to
promote the newly released The Classics Live, potential standees to
the sold-out show waiting in a line across the street from the
400-seat club. Inside, Donovan's performance (including his story
about the writing of “Hurdy Gurdy Man” in India and George
Harrison's extra verse that went unused on the single due to time
constraints) was received ecstatically and there was a crush of
backstage visitors to greet him. Donovan did manage to meet the crew
from Sony/Legacy, however, and to set in motion the work that would
result in the release of Troubadour in 1992.
Now, with that album out, he can concentrate on his
autobiography, on a musical by his wife (Lives Of The Wives) that is
still in the planning stages, and, when cataloguing the past is out
of the way and the world has been duly reminded of his past
accomplishments, something for the present. “I have brand new
material in the works,” Donovan confirms.

[G. M. Watson]

----------
In article <3B8C44B0...@yahoo.co.uk>, Dippy the Hippie
<dippy_th...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> GOLDMINE #321; November 13, 1992; pp. 10-22.
> Krause Publications, Inc.; Iola, Wisconsin.
> http://www.krause.com/records/gm/
>

(snip insanely long 9-year-old-&-therefore-absurdly-dated article about
long-all-but-forgotten-60s-folkie-turned-popstar-turned-utter-hasbeen)

The question is, *why* did Mr. Dippy "write" this??? Was he going through
his no doubt comprehensive collection of "Goldmine" back issues? Has Donovan
recently died? Did anyone notice or even care? Did Mr. Dippy recently awaken
with a start from a long sleep under a tree somewhere in the Catskills? Does
any of this matter? Is tonight a slow night on Usenet leaving one with
nothing better to do than idly pose questions like these? Exactly how long
has it been since I (or anyone else) last listened to "Twelve Kingfishers"?
What a (yawn) mystery. Me, I think I'll take a nap.

[Dippy the Hippie]

Dippy the Hippie wrote:

> GOLDMINE #321; November 13, 1992; pp. 10-22.
> Krause Publications, Inc.; Iola, Wisconsin.
> http://www.krause.com/records/gm/
>

> <snipped>

Jimmy Page himself (now) denies that he played on "Hurdy Gurdy
Man"...

"Rockline" - June 19, 2000: Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes
http://terrapolis.org/LedZeppelin/Articles/RocklineJune00.htm

. .

[Caller]: Got a quick question for Jimmy Page. In 1968, how did the
recording for 'Hurdy Gurdy Man' come about? The project with
Donovan.

[Jimmy Page]: Ah... well that's very interesting. I know it's
rumoured that I played on that. But I didn't. And... but the most
bizarre part about this whole story... I heard about this story
actually when I was in... Ah... it was about the time we were
talking about the deal with Led Zeppelin. We were at Atlantic,
sorry, we were at Miami with Jerry Waxler [should be "Wexler" - he
co-produced Donovan's 1983 album LADY OF THE STARS (Allegiance: AV
437)]. And I heard about the story by there and then, across from
England, and on the shores over here. And what the story was - and
it's very true. That they had Jeff Beck go in, and Jeff Beck played
on it, and the producer [Mickie Most] decided to wipe the track. And
Donovan had asked for me to do it, but of course I wasn't there. And
they had a guitarist, who was sort of, he basically filled, you
know. He went into the session where after I left - and I wouldn't
say filled my shoes - but he went in the door, and his name was Alan
Parker. I mean, none of you even know of him. It's not the film
producer. But anyway, he's the guy who played the guitar solo, so
you know, as you say, some people might have thought Beck did it, or
me, but it was neither of us. But I think it was tragic that Beck
got wiped off. That was absolutely crazy. They just decided that
they didn't like what he did. And I mean, perish the thought, you
know.

* * *

Apparently, in the January 1997 issue of GUITAR WORLD (vol. 17, no.
1), John Paul Jones states the following: "Contary to popular myth,
Donovan has nothing to do with Zeppelin's inception. Jimmy Page was
not on 'Hurdy Gurdy Man'. I was the arranger and bass player on that
session, and I also booked the musicians, who were: Alan Parker
(guitar) and Clem Cattini (drums). I also thought that the Butthole
Surfers did a particularly fine job with it, even better than the
wonderfully titled 'Hairway to Steven'." (Jones produced the
Butthole Surfers' 1993 album INDEPENDENT WORM SALOON.)

* * *

Jimmy Page:

i) "Sunshine Superman" - both '66/Epic versions (w/ "The Trip"
(Epic: 5-10045) [version I]; SUNSHINE SUPERMAN (Epic: 24217)
[version I]; DONOVAN'S GREATEST HITS (Epic: 26439) [version II]); *
ii) "Museum" - May '66 version (TROUBADOUR: THE DEFINITIVE
COLLECTION 1964-1976 (Epic/Legacy: 46986));
iii) "Epistle to Dippy" (w/ "Preachin' Love" (Epic: 5-10127);
DONOVAN'S GREATEST HITS (Epic: 26439));

all of which were recorded in London, England in 1966. (I haven't
heard/read any denials by Page that he played on these songs.)

* A third version of "Sunshine Superman" was released on LADY OF
THE STARS (Allegiance: AV 437).

. .

John Paul Jones:

i) "Mellow Yellow" (w/ "Sunny South Kensington" (Epic: 5-10098);
MELLOW YELLOW (Epic: 24239)); *
ii) "Hurdy Gurdy Man" (w/ "Teen Angel" (Pye: 7N 17537); THE HURDY
GURDY MAN (Epic: 26420)); **
iii) "Teen Angel" (B-side of "Hurdy Gurdy Man" (Pye: 7N 17537);
GREATEST HITS... AND MORE (EMI: EMS 1333)). **

* London, England - September 1966
** London, England - April 1968

* * * * * * * *

Dippy the Hippie

. .

When the truth gets buried deep
Beneath a thousand years of sleep,
Time demands a turn around,
And once again the truth is found

- from "Hurdy Gurdy Man"; THE CLASSICS LIVE (Great Northern Arts:
GNA 61007)

[Michael Ollier]

This article should of read...

"To pop music fans of a certain age, mention of the name Donovan

conjures up... a Dylan rip-off"

I thang you...

Mike

[B J Mapson]

"G. M. Watson " <gm...@pop2.intergate.ca> wrote in message
news:tootu4b...@corp.supernews.com...
> (snip insanely long 9-year-old-&-therefore-absurdly-dated article)

"Donovan is still only 46" may just reflect an apparently successful battle
against ageing rather than an article that's 9 years old and counting ...

[Kalish]

Ah...those children would be Donovan Leitch Jr. and the lovely Ione
Sky. Donovan Sr. claimed he was scammed and hijacked into marriage
by their American mother and only escaped her clutches with the help
of Linda Lawrence, erstwhile girlfriend of Brian Jones (Rolling
Stones) and mother of one of his many out-of-wedlock children.
Donovan Sr. and Linda went on to have 2 daughters of their own and an
apparently happy marriage. His two eldest children had no contact
with him growing up. Enquiring minds want to know! Kalish

On Sat, 01 Sep 2001 22:58:00 -0600, Bob Norton
<bbbob...@earthlink.net> wrote:

>Where's the part about how he abandoned his wife and children?

[Michael Ollier]

"Bob Norton" wrote

> Where's the part about how he abandoned his wife and children?

Well, if thats the criteria for judging musicians what about Dylan, James
Taylor, Paul Simon, Richard Thompson blah blah blah....

[David Rintoul]

Well, as I understand it, the promoters kinda hung that "Britain's answer to
Bob Dylan" sign on him without asking. He wasn't any more comfortable with it
than we were. He was just as much into jazz as folk as you can hear in his
later stuff.

My own opinion, not that anyone asked, is that his Catch the Wind and Hurdy
Gurdy Man are classic songs that have not been, and will not be, forgotten..

I don't know if it's altogether fair to call him an "utter has-been". He
played the Mariposa Festival here in Canada a few years back and he put on a
fun and energetic show. If I remember right, he had to borrow Arlo Guthrie's
guitar, because his got held up in transit from London. It was one of those
festivals where that attitude of sharing really caught on all around.

It's true, he hasn't put anything new out since his "Sutras" album, but I don't
suppose he needs the work. He's already put out about thirty albums, not
counting the compilations.

I think the confusion about his age comes from the fact that he was born in
'46, not that he is 46. For the record, he turned 55 last May.

As far as some of the personal decisions he made more than twenty years ago, a
very wise teacher once said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone".
And when it comes to having "a criterion for judging people", I'm kinda partial
to "Judge not, and be not judged."

I'd rather just enjoy his work.

Peace....
--
David Rintoul
david....@sympatico.ca
http://www3.sympatico.ca/david.rintoul
"In prosperity, our friends know us. In adversity, we know our friends."
J. Churton Collins

[Daniel R. Reitman]

On Sun, 02 Sep 2001 13:34:19 -0600, Bob Norton
<bbbob...@earthlink.net> wrote:

>. . . .

>Richard Thompson hardly abandoned Teddy, with whom he has lately been
>touring. Though I imagine getting close to his nut-case ex, Linda, to visit
>him must have been a risky thing.

>Anyone who breaks a champagne bottle over your head during the intermission
>at a gig is pretty much asking to be abandoned. Or shot.

>. . . .

Considering that Thompson (who, IMHO, is still an amazing musician and
songwriter) happens to be the father of a child who was conceived
during the Shoot Out the Lights sessions -- and Linda isn't the mother
-- I think that this has to be considered hardly the fault of only one
of them.

Dan, ad nauseam

[Michael Ollier]

"David Rintoul" <david....@sympatico.ca> wrote in message >

> I don't know if it's altogether fair to call him an "utter has-been". He
> played the Mariposa Festival here in Canada a few years back

He was never a 'been' to become a 'has-been'

[David Rintoul]

Michael Ollier wrote:..

He was never a 'been' to become a 'has-been'

Well, now, that kinda thing is always just a matter of opinion.

Sunshine Superman was number one on the charts, Mellow Yellow was number two
and Hurdy Gurdy Man was number five. Not that I think that charting is the
measure of a musician. But then, like I said before, he had about thirty
record deals, not to mention compilations. And when I think about it, I can't
count the number of times I've heard people cover Catch the Wind. I went for a
quick Donovan surf on the web and he still has at least three active fan clubs.

Now, whether or not you like his work is entirely up to you. But, personally,
I think, based on results, he musta done one or two things right.

Just what does a person have to "be" to end up counted as a "been" anyway?

[G. M. Watson]

----------
In article <Xns91108A0FEBE...@207.126.101.100>, Bob Norton
<bbbob...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> It's a criterion for judging people, not just musicians.

>
> Richard Thompson hardly abandoned Teddy, with whom he has lately been
> touring. Though I imagine getting close to his nut-case ex, Linda, to visit
> him must have been a risky thing.
>
> Anyone who breaks a champagne bottle over your head during the intermission
> at a gig is pretty much asking to be abandoned. Or shot.
>

> You don't want to hear my opinion of Dylan's and Simon's personal lives.

Just as you don't want hear my opinion of anyone who advocates murdering a
woman who happened to express some anger (justifiably, from everything I've
heard) toward a philandering husband in a physical but non-lethal manner.
Conmsidering the number of women who every year are shot, beaten to death,
stabbed, or otherwise murdered or violently assaulted by their husbands or
partners, I find your comments repugnant in the extreme, and I pity any
woman you may happen to be involved with.

[Michael Ollier]

> Richard Thompson hardly abandoned Teddy, with whom he has lately been
> touring. Though I imagine getting close to his nut-case ex, Linda, to
visit
> him must have been a risky thing.

Dunno who replied with this, it's mysteriously vanished at my end.
However...

I think you'll find that RT did abandon Teddy for quite a few years. And
calling Linda a 'Nut-case' is downright fucking stupid. RT was knocking
someone else off behind her back. Now, I'm not here to pass judgement (and
nor do I care) but this in no way makes her a nut-case. Welcome back to the
music scene Linda, and long may Richard rule.

Michael

[G. M. Watson]

----------
In article <Xns9111CC7A659...@207.126.101.100>, Bob Norton
<bbbob...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> "G. M. Watson " <gm...@pop2.intergate.ca> wrote:
>
>>
>> Just as you don't want hear my opinion of anyone who advocates
>> murdering a woman who happened to express some anger (justifiably, from
>> everything I've heard) toward a philandering husband in a physical but
>> non-lethal manner. Conmsidering the number of women who every year are
>> shot, beaten to death, stabbed, or otherwise murdered or violently
>> assaulted by their husbands or partners, I find your comments repugnant
>> in the extreme, and I pity any woman you may happen to be involved
>> with.
>>
>

> Hey, I didn't say shot DEAD, I just said "shot". There are many degrees of
> "shot", most of them less potentially lethal than being hit over the head
> with a champagne bottle. Do you understand how solid champagne bottles are?
> Being hit with one is equivalent to being brained with an iron pipe. That
> was clearly a case of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to maim or
> kill. That's a 1st degree felony down here, I don't know what it is in the
> Great White North.
>
> ANYONE who tries to brain me or any of my family with a champagne bottle
> or any other deadly bludgeon gets shot before they get a second try. Male,
> female, wife, burglar or whatever. It's called self defense or, in the
> extreme, justifiable homicide. You, Sir or Madam, are free to let anyone
> attack you with anything they please but don't tell me what my options are
> or should be. Deadly force is countered with deadly force.
>
> Save your pity for yourself. Being a disarmed Canadian all you'd be able to
> do in that circumstance is fall down and die while screaming for a Mountie.

It might surprise you that over three million Canadians are gun owners;
that's roughly a tenth or so of the population. I'm sure that among their
number there are, unfortunately, a violent and dangerous few who would agree
with your apparent premise that the best way to "deal with" a woman who
physically attacks a man, regardless of their relative physical size and/or
strength and regardless of her possible motivations for launching an attack
of highly dubious lethality, is to meet that attack with lethal force, i.e.
with a firearm. (A pencil can be a lethal weapon in skilled hands.) There
are many easily-learned, non-lethal techniques with which one can defend
oneself against an attack with a champagne botttle, especially if your
attacker is smaller and weaker than you (do you really fear women so
much??). There are NOT "many degrees of shot", no matter what a gun-happy
fool such as yourself may believe. The fact that you could make such a claim
only serves to indicate how little you know about firearms and the great
responsibility that goes along with their use. Yes, I've done some target
shooting myself from time to time, and no gun club I ever used to belong to
would have allowed anyone expressing sentiments such as yours to remain a
member. More likely your name would be passed on to the police as a possible
dangerous offender.

I am not denying you your right to self-defence. What scares me, however, is
how ready you seem to be to bring lethal force against a woman who has
offended you in some way, even if she is not your physical equal and even
though you might be far better armed than she. There is an undercurrent in
your words which speaks of a desire for vengeance against women. We know
about this sort of thing in Canada. If you're ever in Canada, ask around
about the shooting murders of 14 women-- referred to repeatedly as
"feminists" by their killer, Marc Lepine-- at the Ecole Polytechnique in
Montreal on one horrible night in 1989. The incident completely transformed
not only the politics of women and of violence against women in Canada, it
also changed the politics of gun ownership and use in this country, most
likely forever.

Fact: If you intentionally point a firearm-- loaded or unloaded-- at another
human being, you are threatening them with lethal force. If you pull the
triger, you have committed an act of attempted homicide, and if your aim is
good, possibly homicide. You will, ultimately, have to answer for that in a
court of law. Fair warning: The courts tend to take a dim view of violent,
macho braggarts such as yourself, especially if your victim is female, no
matter what you claim she threatened you with. I suggest you seek
professional help before you carry out these tendencies you exhibit to their
ultimate ugly extreme and destroy someone else's life as well as your own.
Until then, you might try strutting and posturing less about what a tough
guy you are and instead put a similar amount of effort into understanding
why this alleged female-male assault took place.

I mean it. You need help, and so do those around you.It's available. Seek it
out, or one day soon you may find yourself in serious trouble.

[David Rintoul]

> > It might surprise you that over three million Canadians are gun owners;
> > that's roughly a tenth or so of the population.
>

> I'm sure that that 10% figure is a source of joy to all murderers, rapists
> and muggers up there..--

Well, no, you see, we're very fortunate. There aren't very many murderers,
rapists or muggers up here, either. The crime rate in Canada is much lower
than it is in the United States, and it's been going down steadily for more
than twenty years.

Bob, I'd rather you didn't pick on Canada. I'm kinda proud of my country, and
it's not disarmed or undemocratic or overrun with crooks or anything like
that. You don't see me picking on the way things are done in the United
States.

But, before I get so far off topic I can't find my way back, as far as
feminists go, my favourite feminist folkie is Ani DiFranco. She's from
Buffalo, New York, which is just across the border. She comes across to our
festivals and things all the time, so she has an idea of what Canada is like.
Here's a verse from the title track of her "To the Teeth" album on Righteous
Babe Records:

"And if I hear one more time,
About a fool's right to his tools of rage.
I'm gonna take all my friends,
And we're gonna move to Canada.
And we're gonna die of old age."

[G. M. Watson]

----------
In article <Xns911368B6CCEF4di...@216.65.3.131>, Bob Norton
<bobn...@mindspring.net> wrote:

> David Rintoul <david....@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>
>> But, before I get so far off topic I can't find my way back, as far as
>> feminists go, my favourite feminist folkie is Ani DiFranco. She's from
>> Buffalo, New York, which is just across the border. She comes across
>> to our festivals and things all the time, so she has an idea of what
>> Canada is like. Here's a verse from the title track of her "To the
>> Teeth" album on Righteous Babe Records:
>>
>> "And if I hear one more time,
>> About a fool's right to his tools of rage.
>> I'm gonna take all my friends,
>> And we're gonna move to Canada.
>> And we're gonna die of old age."
>

> I wish she would. You're welcome to her. What's the holdup?

Gee, and here I thought you said "all your female friends are feminists"- do
they know how you feel about Ani? Tell me, since I assume that a guy who
lives in fear as much as you apparently do never goes out of his house
unarmed: Do you carry your guns when you go to folk music events, loaded and
ready to shoot, in case some ferocious 98-pound woman comes at you armed
with a deadly styrofoam coffee cup? You must find it hard to hide your
trusty M-16 under your coat-- I just hope your local coffeehouse has a metal
detector at the door.

Guess those years in the Army taught you how to deal with all manner of
threats, huh? Start shooting and ask questions afterwards, just like it was
back in the Nam. You seem, for some reason, to live in utter terror of being
brained by a champagne bottle wielded by some crazed woman, so much so that
you're apparently ready at all times to kill any woman who even appears to
be holding one in what you perceive as a potentially threatening manner. You
must be a barrel of laughs at New Years' Eve parties. God help any woman who
offered you champagne straight from the bottle-- she'd be shot full of holes
in an instant, while you'd stand over her bleeding body screaming about
"self-defense" until the boys in white coats came to take you away to the
rubber room.

Whatsa matter, big tough guy like you didn't you get any hand-to-hand combat
training in the Army? Were you absent the day they covered champagne
bottles, jealous spouses and all those other deadly women and the lethal
contents of their deadly handbags and backpacks?

What the hell are you doing in a folk music NG, anyway? The folk music scene
is simply infested with anti-gun commies and long-haired peace creeps, you
know. Wouldn't alt.right-wing-maniac-gun-nut-homicidal-looney suit you
better? Just curious. And please don't shoot me.
>>

[BigAl]

"Bob Norton" <bobn...@mindspring.net> wrote in message
news:Xns9113A26F7C0BFdi...@216.65.3.131...

> "G. M. Watson " <gm...@pop2.intergate.ca> wrote:
>

> > What the hell are you doing in a folk music NG, anyway? The folk music
> > scene is simply infested with anti-gun commies and long-haired peace
> > creeps, you know. Wouldn't
> > alt.right-wing-maniac-gun-nut-homicidal-looney suit you better? Just
> > curious. And please don't shoot me.
>

> Please don't tempt me.

Oy!

You said you weren't going to respond any more.

And, in a folk(ish) way, have you heard Marshall Chapman's "Guns R Us"?

BigAl
Who's perfectly capable of looking after himself without the need of
weaponry. In LT's case I'd offer a kiss.

[G. M. Watson]

----------
In article <3B96EE84...@earthlink.net>, Jon-Jon <unic...@earthlink.net> wrote:

What does all this have to do with Donovan?  Children you need to take your fight elsewhere.

I quite agree. This thread has gone about as far OT as it's possible for a thread to go. I have no intention of taking it elsewhere, though; I believe that if one must fight, it's best to do so with words, whereas some, it appears, prefer to use guns and speak casually of killing others, especially women, as though it was no big thing. I find that pretty appalling; however, it also reflects an extremely disturbing cultural pandemic to be found lurking everywhere in society these days: violence, whether overt or implied.

[Michael Ollier]

It has gone on too long: it is NOT better to fight with words... otherwise Martin Luther King (and countless others) would still be with us.

 

Go to some other forum.

 

Mike