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Donovan Philips Leitch (usually known simply as Donovan) (born May 10, 1946) is a British musician. Born in Glasgow, he moved with his family to Hatfield, England when young. Influenced by his family's love for Scottish and English folk music, he began playing guitar at fourteen. He and his friend Gypsy Dave traveled the country playing folk songs. In 1963 he appeared on the television program Ready Steady Go!, which led to a recording contract.

Orginally billed as the British version of Bob Dylan, a meeting between the two in 1965 made headlines. He toured with Dylan and Joan Baez, and can be seen backstage in the concert film Don't Look Back. He performed to critical and audience acclaim at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

Almost all of Donovan's output in the Sixties was produced by Mickie Most and many tracks feature future Led Zeppelin members John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page. Although it has been claimed that Donovan introduced them and essentially created the band, Jones and Page had in fact known each other for many years, both having worked on scores of well-known British pop hits, and they were two of the most in-demand freelance players on the booming London studio session scene.

By late 1966 Donovan had abandonded the overt Dylan/Guthrie influences and taken on a 'hippie' image, becoming one of the musical icons of the so-called "Summer Of Love" in 1967. His first international hit was "Sunshine Superman", which was followed by "Mellow Yellow", a song believed by many to be about the supposed practice of smoking banana peels, which became his signature tune. (Paul McCartney is said to be heard whispering on it).

Other hits included the smouldering "Season Of The Witch" (recorded in a single take in a Los Angeles studio, with a pick-up band he had met in a local club), the psychedelic nugget "Hurdy Gurdy Man", and his snarling freakbeat classic "Barabajagal" (backed by the Jeff Back Group) is perhaps the hardest rocking mystical evocation of Christianity ever recorded, while the anthemic "Atlantis" is as pagan and hippy-dippy as they come.

Donovan was a personal friend of and sometime collaborator with The Beatles, supplying lyrics for Yellow Submarine and appearing in the film-clip for "All You Need Is Love". He penned "Jennifer Juniper" in honor of Jenny Boyd, sister of George Harrison's wife Pattie Boyd and accompanied te Beatles when they travelled to Rishikesh in India to study meditation with the Maharishi. In 1969 he married Linda Lawrence, the widow of former Rolling Stones member Brian Jones.

In the late 1960s, seeing many of his friends and many in his audience succumb to hard drug use, Donovan went on record opposing the use of drugs. His rejection of drugs was perhaps also motivated in by the fact that in early 1967 he had become the first ivictim in a series of high-profile drug busts that year, which culminated in the famous arrest and trial of Mick Jagger and Keith Richard.

Donovan had been targeted by the Murdoch-owned 'News Of The World', which in late January 1967 began a three-part expose beginning "Drugs & Pop Stars - Facts That Will Shock You", which alleged that many leading pop stars including Donovan and The Rolling Stones were regularly smoking marijuana and using the hallucinogen LSD at celebrity parties. It emerged later that Murdoch's journalists were covertly passing information about this recreational drug use to the Drug Squad.

He became a student of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, embracing vegetarianism and Hindu and Buddhist philosophies.

He provided the songs for Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973), Franco Zeffirelli's film about St Francis of Assisi.

Donovan has two children who have become actors, his namesake son, Donovan Leitch, Jr., and his daughter, Ione Skye.

• British musicians
• Folk singers
• Pop singers