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Revision as of 09:49, 27 July 2004 by Dunks58 (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Donovan Philips Leitch (usually known simply as Donovan) (born May 10, 1946) is a British musician. He spent his early years in Glasgow, and although he contracted a bout of polio as a child he fortunately suffered no permanent injury.
In 1956 the family moved to Hatfield, England. Influenced by his family's love for Scottish and English folk music, he began playing guitar at fourteen. He and longtime friend Gypsy Dave travelled the country playing folk songs. He began writing original songs in the early Sixties and by late 1964 he had recorded his first ten-track demo tape at a London basement studio; this included the original recording of what was to be his first single, 'Catch The Wind', a song that showed the unmistakable influence of Bob Dylan.
The tape was heard by Elkan Allen, producer of the television pop show Ready Steady Go! which led to the unknown young performer (then only 18) being invited to appear on the show. Donovan made his TV debut on 6 February 1965. Unusually for pop programs of this time, Donovan played and sang live, and after his performance he was interviewed by host Cathy McGowan. His appearance was so well-received that he was invited back for the next two weeks, and this in turn led to a recording contract with Pye Records and a meteoric career start.
Donovan's first UK single, a re-recorded version of 'Catch The Wind', was released soon after his third Ready, Steady Go appearance and it was a hugely successful debut shooting to #4 on the UK charts and selling more than 200,000 copies. On 11 April he performed with the biggest stars of the day at the annual New Musical Express poll winners' concert at the Empire Pool, Wembley. The single was subsequently released on the small Hickory label in the USA, where it managed an impressive #30 chart placing.
Donovan's folk-oriented music (and his Dlyanesque appearance) led to him being touted as a British version of Bob Dylan and this brought with it a certain degree of criticism, so not surprisingly the meeting between the two musicians later in April 1965 made headlines. However, the initially wary Dylan was impressed, as can be seen in the scenes featuring them in D.A. Pennebaker's film of Dylan's '65 UK tour, Don't Look Back, which was released in 1967 and as a result he was invited to tour with Dylan and Joan Baez.
Donovan's second single 'Colours' was released in May, reaching #4, accompanied by his debut LP 'What's Been Did And What's Been Hid', which reached #3 in the UK album charts. Retitled "Catch The Wind" for the US, it reached #30 there. He made his first trip to the USA at this time, performing in New York with Pete Seeger and Reverend Gary Davis and appearing on Hullaballoo and Shindig, as well as performing to critical and audience acclaim at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival in July.
His next recording was a four-track EP, "Universal Soldier", which included his classic cover of the Buffy Saint-Marie title track, along with three other overtly anti-war tracks. As Australian rock historian Glenn A. Baker has observed, this was quite a radical move for an emerging pop performer -- the Vietnam war still had majority popular support in 1965 -- and Donovan's pioneering pacifist stance is often overlooked by his critics. Despite its contentious subject matter, the record was a significant commercial success, topping the British EP chart for eight weeks and even reaching #14 on the singles chart. It was also released in Australia, where it reached #17 on the singles chart.
'Colours' was also released in the USA but it fared rather poorly, reaching #40 on the Cash Box charts but only reaching #61 on the Billboard chart. At this point Donovan's success was greater in sales than in radio airplay, since American Top 40 radio tended to avoid folk-style recordings, preferring more highly arranged pop records. The Catch The Wind LP had also charted better in Cash Box than Billboard, reflecting the fact that Billboard's charts factored in radio airplay, whilst Cash Box did not.
A single version of "Universal Soldier" was issued in the USA in late August 1965 and it mimicked the chart performance of 'Colours', reaching #45 in Cash Box but only #53 in Billboard. Pye released Donovan's second UK album, "Fairy Tale", in October 1966, along with his next single, "Turquoise". Both were less successful than his previous releases, with the album only reaching #20 and the single peaking at #30. Donovan made a second US tour in November, and hickory released the American version of Fairy Tale later that month, but as in the UK it did charted much lower than the first LP, only reaching #85.
In late 1965 Donovan split with his original managers and signed with Ashley Kozak, who was working for Brian Epstein's NEMS Enterprises. Kozak introduced Donovan to American impresario Allen Klein (who would later take over management of The Rolling Stones) and Klein in turn introduced Donovan to producer Mickie Most, who was then riding high on the success of his chart-topping productions with Herman's Hermits.
Most was to produce much of Donovan's music in the late Sixties. The tracks they recorded together repesent some of the best UK pop releases of the period, and feature the cream of the London session scene, including 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 already known each other for several years -- they were among the top freelance musicians in London at that time, and worked on literally hundreds of well-known British recordings in that period, until Page retired from session work in 1966 to join The Yardbirds.
By 1966 Donovan had abandonded the overt Dylan/Guthrie influences and taken on a definite 'hippie' image, and more importantly, his music was developing and changing rapidly as he immersed himself in jazz and blues. He was also entering perhaps his most creative and original period as a songwriter and recording artist, working in close collaboration with Most and arranger, musician and jazz fanatic John Cameron.
The first fruit of their collaboration was the funky pop-psych classic 'Sunshine Superman', an innovative blend of psychedelia with jazz and classical elements set against a catchy percussive backbeat. It also contained subtle but unmistakable hints about LSD in the line "coulda tripped out easy, but I found another way". Unfortunately, in December 1965 Billboard reported on an impending deal between Klein, Most and Donovan and followed it up on 18 December with a story that Donovan was about to sign with CBS Records. Despite his business manager's denials, Pye Records abruptly dropped the single from their release schedule.
The dispute dragged on into early 1966 but during the hiatus in his recording career he holidayed in Greece, where he wrote one of his best songs, the wistfully languid 'Writer In The Sun', which was inspired by the claims that his recording career was over. He also toured the USA and collaborated with The Beatles, contributing lyrics and (possibly) backing vocals to the song 'Yellow Submarine, which was recorded at Abbey Road Studios on 26 May 1966.
By late 1966, with the American contractual problems resolved, Donavan signed with the CBS subsidiary Epic Records for a $100,000 advance. Donovan and Most then headed to CBS Studios in Los Angeles where they recorded the tracks for a new LP, much of which had been formulated and written over the preceding year. Although folk elements were still prominent, the album showed the increasing influence of rock, American west coast psychedelia and folk-rock, especially The Byrds, whose records Donovan had been listening to constantly during 1965.
The LP sessions were completed in May and the title track was released in June with huge success -- it sold 800,000 copies in six weeks and and eventually reached #1 in the US. The LP followed in August, preceded by advance orders of 250,000 copies, and it reached #11 on the US album charts.
The LP is perhaps the best and most consistent of Donovan's albums and it contains many beautiful and memorable songs. Highlights include 'The Fat Angel', a song written for 'Mama' Cass Elliott of The Mamas And The Papas and which famously namechecked cult San Francisco acid-rock band Jefferson Airplane long before they became successful. Other standout tracks include 'The Trip' , the gorgeous 'Guinevere' and the dark and ominous 'Season Of The Witch'. Recorded with a pick-up band he had met in a local club, this track also featured Donovan playing electric rhythm guitar for the first time on record. It was later used very effectively in the memorable closing sequence of the Gus Van Zant film To Die For, starring Nicole Kidman.
On 24 October 1966 Epic released the second single from the LP, the rollicking 'Mellow Yellow', arranged by John Paul Jones and featuring Paul McCartney on backing vocals. believed by many to be about the supposed practice of smoking banana peels, which became his signature tune. It was an even bigger success, reaching #2 in Billboard and #3 in Cash Box and earning Donovan his first US gold record award for sales of more than one million copies.
Later successful tracks include the psychedelic nugget "Hurdy Gurdy Man", and his snarling 1968 freakbeat classic 'Barabajagal' on which he was backed by the Jeff Back Group; it 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" and he was one of teh invited guests for the all-star orchestral overdub sessions for 'A Day In The Life'. 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.
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