Donovan

It was inevitable when Donovan first appeared on British television in 1965 - to become a resident performer on Ready Steady Go - he would be hailed as Britain's answer to Bob Dylan.  Dressed in denim (topped by a denim hat), with a harmonica harness around his neck - and an acoustic guitar strapped to his side, he summed up the fashionable ideal of the lone protest singer of the mid-1960s.

Born Donovan Phillip Leitch in Glasgow on 10 May 1943, his family had moved to Hatfield, just north of London, while he was a child. He was still in his teens when he decided to make the break from art college for a career in music and began to spend his time travelling the UK singing and writing songs and taking odd jobs where necessary to make ends meet. Donovan's fortunes began to change when he made the acquaintance of Geoff Stephens with whose assistance he cut his first demo at a Denmark Street studio.

Donovan enjoyed considerable commercial success: he had seven Top Ten hits between 1965 and 1969: Catch The Wind, Colours, Sunshine Superman - which reached Number 1 in the USA in 1966 - Mellow Yellow, There Is A Mountain, Jennifer Juniper and Hurdy Gurdy Man.  In 1969 he collaborated with Jeff Beck to produce the hit single Barabajagal, and then almost dropped out of the limelight and into semi-retirement in Ireland. 

Despite the long string of hits that he had behind him Donovan decided to end his collaboration with Mickie Most before he re-surfaced a year later, as composer of the film score for If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium.  In 1972, he appeared in the musical film The Pied Pier, for which he also penned the soundtrack, and in 1973 he completed the score for another major picture - Brother Sun, Sister Moon. That same year he released his successful album, Cosmic Wheels.  Once again he dropped out of the limelight.  The singer was probably too strongly identified with the trappings of the late sixties and the flower people movement in particular to be taken seriously by a new audience. Despite several reunions with Most, the next twenty years were not a very fruitful period for  him.   However, his music mounted a renaissance during the 1990s when he finally managed to introduce his talents to a new younger audience.

Throughout his career he was unfairly compared to Bob Dylan. In fact, Donovan was an accomplished songwriter with his own style and a musical output that struck a far more optimistic note than his American counterpart.  Donovan once said, 'It was hard when people said I was copying Dylan. It wasn't so much that he created a new sound – he had a new way of looking at life. I was inspired rather than influenced by him in the same way as he was inspired by Woody Guthrie.'

See Donovan sing Catch The Wind