Donovan - Visions From an Enchanted Kingdom

A Humiliation

In Bob Dylan's hotel room, a showdown is about to unfold. People are even sitting on the armrests of the chairs. The smoke is so thick you can barely breathe. A boy in a cardigan is invited to “show what he's got”. He has a mild look, a gentle smile. Picking up the guitar, he sings a ballad with an old-fashioned flavor, its very title an offer of friendship to those present: “To Sing For You”. Dylan, dressed in black and barricaded behind his Ray-Bans, laughs and shoots glances at his entourage. When it's his turn, he picks up the guitar and performs “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue”. The post-modern, mocking lyrics cling to the boy one after another, leaving him speechless, until he's told to get out of the way. The scene of “Don’t Look Back”, Pennebaker's documentary, ends on his bewildered gaze.

In London in 1966, the newspapers were calling Donovan "the English Bob Dylan". Naturally, the Bard of Duluth was keen to show himself superior. An easy thing to do, given his rival's decidedly naif image. Donovan sank into obscurity the following decade, and nowadays risks being remembered only for that label, rediscovered solely thanks to this clip on YouTube.

In truth, Donovan is one of the greatest artists of the Sixties. A folksinger with a unique sensibility, he found an alternative path to Dylan's with a handful of songs that had a childlike spirit, yet could brush up against metaphysical vertigo. A pioneer of the psychedelic revolution, he brought Indian music and philosophy into pop culture. An experimenter, he managed to fuse folk, jazz, raga, Celtic music and chamber music. Above all, he was a poet, able to blend the visions of Blake and Yeats with the nonsense of Carroll and the spirit of children's fairy tales.

He was also one of the few who truly believed in the positive values of Flower Power. He kept singing, throughout his career, of an enchanted kingdom where innocence and fragility can redeem mankind. Once the trip of hallucinogens and transcendental meditation had passed, and the communes had been left behind, the world wasted little time in forgetting him.

From Woody Guthrie to the little tin soldier

Donovan Phillips Leitch was born in 1946 in Glasgow, among buildings gutted by bombs. His mother was a bigoted woman, his father a labourer. At three he contracted polio, leaving him with a limp. It was during the hours spent in bed that his father introduced him to books. Young Donovan asked above all to hear Celtic myths and the poems of visionaries. He didn't shine at school; everything that drew him belonged to the world of imagination. A few years later, the family moved to the English countryside, where Donovan discovered the beauty of nature. But it was listening to the radio that made him realise his calling: "I wanted to sing to my generation," he recalls, "that's all I knew." He got hold of books by Kerouac and Ginsberg, a pair of jeans, and set off on the road. He learned to play Irish and Scottish ballads under the guidance of mentors like Mick Softley. He soon became known on the folk circuit. He wasn't even 19 when he ended up on TV.

In 1964 he appeared on the programme Ready Steady Go! with the single "Catch The Wind". Maybe it was his vagabond look, maybe it was the fact that, right from the title, the song recalled an already legendary track from three years earlier: the press leapt at the chance and christened him "the English Dylan". Donovan, who until the week before had been sleeping on the beaches of Cornwall, suddenly found himself with the eyes of two nations on him. In truth, the resemblance to Dylan stemmed from the fact that they were both copying Woody Guthrie. The tones, however, couldn't be more different: caustic and rough-edged Dylan, candid and childlike Donovan. One is a seasoned realist, the other a wide-eyed dreamer. For Dylan, revolution means routing one's enemies; for Donovan, it means attaining purity of vision. One is a prophet, the other a mystic.

All of this can already be glimpsed on his debut album. Carried by that single, What's Bin Did And What's Bin Hid topped the UK chart and broke into the American top ranks. The album reveals an insecure songwriter. While "Catch The Wind" and the sweet melody of "To Sing For You" are gems born of Irish ballads, the true glimpse of Donovan's sensibility comes with "Josie": a track that lives on the enchanted repetition of a few naive assonances. The rendition of "Donna Donna" is also original: the soft voice and legato singing turn the traditional into a mantra that induces a dreamlike half-sleep. The results are more mixed when Donovan tackles the American tradition: stripped of choruses and military drum rolls, "Remember The Alamo" shines. "You're Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond", on the other hand, is a bore - not by chance, the only blues number of his career. The tributes to his mentors are dutifully paid: Woody Guthrie with the playful "Car Car", Mick Softley with "Goldwatch Blues".

The most curious moment is "Tangerine Puppet". Donovan introduces it by whispering "this is a fairy tale", but what follows is just a simple arpeggio. The fairy tale has to be seen with closed eyes. It's the first sign of his tendency to drift towards the metaphysical.

Donovan enters the folk firmament: proof enough is Joan Baez's invitation for him to take the stage at the Newport Festival. He rides the wave by releasing the single "Universal Soldier", a protest song by his friend Buffy Sainte-Marie. The tone, however, isn't that of a diatribe, but of someone entering battle barefoot and unarmed.

During these months, spending time at the Rolling Stones's studio, Donovan befriends Brian Jones. It doesn't take him long to run into Jones's ex, Linda Lawrence: a model, with Brian Jones's son in tow. It's love at first sight. Although she feels the same, Linda has no intention of getting married, and shortly afterwards she flees to the States. Found, lost, pursued - Linda is the muse of his entire life.

In October of that same year, Fairytale is released. Having cut ties with Guthrie, with Dylan, with the world, Donovan writes a collection of songs lit by the most fragile grace. Transcending folk, he enters the realm of poetry. "Colours" is the new single, a Franciscan hymn to nature. But it's with "To Try For The Sun" that we step into the magical. The fingerpicking and the hypnotic repetition of the refrain bring the track close to the spell of a child's babbling. Across all these songs, the voice rarely moves beyond the interval of a fifth, and the guitar rarely shifts through more than three chords. Here lies the miracle: Donovan shrinks the listener down, strips them bare, carries them into the microcosm, and turns them back into the Eternal Child.

It's not a painless operation. Every song balances on one foot, between wonder and panic. "Jersey Thursday" lives on an almost unbearable tension. And what can "The Summer Day Reflection Song" be compared to? the perpetual motion of two chords seems to mimic a hypnotised snake. A cosmic ache runs through "Belated Forgiveness Plea", which repeats the stunned vision of a deserted beach, where "the seagulls have flown away". It's hard to say whether desolation or beauty prevails in "Ballad Of A Crystal Man". "Ballad Of Geraldine" is a tale in which, with every note, you can hear the tolling of fate. The only arrangement comes on "Sunny Goodge Street", a song brushed with flute and cello, like a blurred postcard. The emotional peak is "The Little Tin Soldier": the limping Donovan sings, heart in throat, the story of the tin soldier with the missing leg, seeing in the ballerina his beloved Linda. This masterpiece, perhaps owing to its excessive intimacy, doesn't repeat the success of the debut, stalling in the top 20.

But the storyteller's mind has already moved on. The clue is "Turquoise", a single that could belong on Fairytale, were it not for that tremulous piano: a touch that expands its dreamlike vibration, announcing the revolution to come.

Sunshine Superman and the misunderstanding of children's music

In 1966 three-colour photos of Donovan are in every newspaper. He's the first musician to be arrested for drug possession. And he's the one who kick-starts the psychedelic revolution. The album Sunshine Superman enshrines him in the pantheon of the Sixties and is his ticket into the Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame. Under the guidance of producer Mickie Most, Donovan turns his music into a kaleidoscope of genres. Folk and beat merge with Indian raga, with touches of chamber music and jazz forays. Among the guests are Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones. The manifesto is the title track: an open letter to Linda, albeit one with the frenzied rhythm of a dance. The voice is doubled by electric guitar, against a backdrop whirling with percussion, tambura and harpsichord. "The Trip" is the tumbling account of a lysergic journey. Even more acid is "Season Of The Witch", on which Donovan picks up the electric guitar and howls a memorable refrain.

In the fairy tales, by contrast, his voice turns persuasive and the music becomes a shimmering watercolour. “Legend Of A Girl Child Linda” is a courtly vision, painted with harpsichord, flute and string quartet. “Guinevere” casts spells worthy of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, marrying medieval suggestion to touches of sitar. The raga influence runs through all the tracks, but above all “Three King Fishers”, an arcane tale that closes with a winding interplay of tabla and sitar. If “Bert's Blues” is the most experimental moment, the emotional peak is “Celeste”: an ecstatic flight with eyes wide open, carried by an organ while the little orchestra keeps on dancing in the distance. Anyone who gets hold of the 2012 remaster can also enjoy some formidable B-sides, among them the exhilarating “Superlungs”.

It's hard to pin down the full spectrum of influences at work on this album. From Syd Barrett to the Beatles, all of English psychedelia builds on the ideas laid out here: the expansion of instrumentation, the transfiguration of sound, the transformation of songs into visual or mental experiences. Just look, in the video for “A Day In The Life”, at the copy of “Sunshine Superman” spinning on the turntable to understand what the Beatles were listening to while recording “Sgt. Pepper's”. Donovan, however, proves to be an unusual experimenter: far from any lunatic or post-modern excess, he finds in magical balance the key that opens the doors of perception.

Just a few months later, Mellow Yellow repeats the success of Sunshine Superman, even if it doesn't reach the same heights. In place of the ethnic instrumentation, Donovan turns to a big band. The sound becomes urban, sensual, at times downcast. Donovan gains in realism what he loses in enchantment. The only trace of the fairy-tale atmosphere is the flute, which on several tracks gains its own autonomy, becoming from here on the trademark of the Pied Piper of Glasgow.

Pulling the album to the top of the charts is “Mellow Yellow”, a nursery rhyme loaded with racy double entendres. More brilliant is “Sunny South Kensington”, a surreal tour de force through Swinging London. Almost every track edges toward jazz. Standing out is “Bleak City Woman”, a softly padding song dedicated to his new flame, Enid Stulberger.

“Hampstead Incident” and “Writer In The Sun” are steeped in spleen, despite the bright touches of xylophone. It's perhaps the memory of Linda, who had left for the States, that inspires “Young Girl Blues”: Donovan has never sounded so bleak, so alone in a room with his guitar. Yet it's precisely in this acoustic purity that he's at his best. Listen to “Sand And Foam”, the only track here that carries the visionary breath of his earlier work.

In 1967 Donovan retreats to a cottage in the woods with Enid, who is pregnant. There he conceives a double album: one electric half for his own generation, one acoustic half for the generation to come. A Gift From A Flower To A Garden is the finest portrait of Donovan, of his talent and of his limits. The first record, “Wear Your Love Like Heaven”, coins psychedelic pop outright: fast, catchy songs, transfigured by keyboards and disorienting reverb. Listening to the choruses of the title track, of “There Was A Time” and “Someone's Singing”, you get the feeling of watching music through an enchanted lens. The best track is the fairy-tale-like “The Land Of Doesn't Have To Be”. It's a shame the rest sounds rushed, leaving little impression.

The real masterpiece is the second record, “For Little Ones”. By paring his means down to a minimum, Donovan reaches maximum suggestion. The songs are stripped of everything, suspended in nothingness, on the verge of vanishing. “Isle Of Islay” is his metaphysical peak: the voice reduced to an aching vibration, the guitar steeped in blurred reverb, the pauses crossed by a supernatural shiver. A tiny song that makes you feel the silence surrounding it. “The Mandolin Man And His Secret” is a fairy tale, poignant in its innocence, that could only belong to the untainted world of the pure of heart. “The Enchanted Gypsy” arrives and vanishes, almost like the fleeting vision of a pagan feast in the woods.

For the first time Donovan uses field recordings: “Voyage Into The Golden Screen” is enriched by birdsong, “Widow With Shawl” by the sound of the ocean. The Pink Floyd, orphaned by Syd Barrett, would go on to develop these ideas throughout their own bucolic tracks. With “Epistle To Derroll” the minstrel closes out a miraculous record, in which his sensibility finds its most extreme expression. This album, overshadowed by the radio success of the first, dismissed as “children's music”, would remain an overlooked masterpiece.

Donovan found a path opposite to that of his contemporaries. The new idea was that rock music could connect man to his deepest dimension, setting it free. The utopia was that this shift in consciousness might become collective, putting an end to consumerism and war. What's interesting is that, while psychedelic music tries to “expand” consciousness by having it experience the ecstasy of Being, Donovan instead tries to “reduce” it, having it experience the ecstasy of non-Being, a coincidence with the point of origin. The next step could only be India.

In 1968 Donovan travels to the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with the Beatles, Mia Farrow and a retinue of journalists. It's he who introduces George Harrison to Transcendental Meditation and teaches finger-picking to John Lennon. Julia is the fruit of those guitar lessons, and Harrison would later admit: “There's Donovan behind the whole White Album”. In India, Donovan finds the worldview he'd been seeking. But it's also a good chance to study the harmonium and write new songs.

Crowning the Summer Of Love comes The Hurdy Gurdy Man. The album reshuffles his previous ideas, positioning itself as the ideal opus magnum of the psychedelic season. The title track is Donovan's finest attempt at fusing mysticism and hard rock. The vocal, shaped by Pranayama breathing, is a mantra rich in vibrato, while tambura and electric guitar paint deeply acid-drenched scenes. Almost a dress rehearsal for the future Led Zeppelin, with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham all playing on it. What's new in these songs is the use of the drone, borrowed from Indian music. “Peregrine” is a sinuous melody doubled by harmonium and immersed in a forest of tabla. “Tangier” goes even further, with an arcane atmosphere worthy of Nico. Even a folk song like “The River Song” has the cyclical pulse of a mantra. A kind of chamber folk-rock, meanwhile, inspires the tender portrait “Jennifer Juniper” and the pyrotechnic “Hi It's Been A Long Time”. Twenties jazz returns in “As I Recall It”, while a childlike spirit emerges in the nursery rhyme “The Sun Is A Very Magic Fellow”.

Though it lacks the cohesion of Sunshine Superman, the innocence of Fairytale or the magic of For Little Ones, this record is the last on which Donovan appears at the peak of his creativity.

In 1969 the British singer-songwriter tops the charts with the single “Atlantis”. The song, opening with a spoken recitation and closing with a very long choir, is a vision of the discovery of Atlantis. A fine premise, but it's a shame the new album, Barabajagal, doesn't live up to it. Backed by the Jeff Beck Group, Donovan writes a series of folk-rock songs that give full rein to his most childlike, lively side. A prime example is the title track, a tongue-twister driven by a frantic rhythm and a black choir. The new version of “Superlungs” loses some of its charge, though it keeps its lysergic edge. “Happiness Runs”, the most musical moment, turns a nursery rhyme into a round sung by multiple voices. The vocals, reduced to an androgynous whisper, the bright melodies and the sophisticated arrangements would prove influential on Britpop, down to bands like Belle And Sebastian. But all of this is far from the charm of his earlier records.

The Songs Of Wandering Aengus

Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix are dead, while the thunder of bombs grows louder. What to do, now that the utopia has failed? Donovan chooses to go back to his roots, and in 1970 releases Open Road. To define the new record he coins the genre “celtic rock”. In reality, the sound follows Dylan's turn toward country. Even so, the album, the first he wrote together with his band, is full of collective energy: Donovan jams, howls, and delivers moments of real fun. “Curry Land” has a verse-bridge-chorus progression full of pathos. “Celtic Rock”, starting from an ancient-sounding riff, pulls the listener into an unstoppable pagan dance. “Roots Of Oak” surprises, turning into an arcane, almost feral incantation. On the single “Riki Tiki Tavi” the country band sounds almost reggae.

The other songs follow a more traditional path, but that doesn't stop the album from topping the charts. The world tour that follows, however, suddenly collapses. Donovan is in Japan when he suffers a nervous breakdown.

Perhaps the cause is his sudden breakup with Enid, mother of his two children. Perhaps it's the exhaustion of having written eight albums in six years. Perhaps it's the creeping feeling that the magic is about to break. Donovan cuts the tour short, returns to England and retreats to his cottage in the woods. Who knows what would have happened if a hand hadn't unexpectedly knocked at his door. It's Linda. After years apart, the two reunite for good. They go to live together in Joshua Tree Park in America, and on October 2, 1970 they marry. That date marks both the fulfilment of Donovan's romantic dream and the beginning of his artistic decline.

Immersed in domestic bliss, Donovan decides to record a new album "for children," HMS Donovan. With just his old acoustic guitar, he paints twenty-eight enchanting little sketches: from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" to the classic "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," sung together with his daughter Celeste. No songwriter before or after Donovan has ventured down such paths. Whether these are really children's songs, though, is another matter. What child would take pleasure in the shadowy, arcane intoning of "Yeats The Song Of Wandering Aengus"? Not to mention "The Walrus And The Carpenter," a sound collage that wouldn't look out of place on "Ummagumma". Unfortunately, without an electric side to make it more palatable, HMS is an album doomed to disaster: no label will release it, and for the first time the Pied Piper fails to chart.

Donovan reinvents himself two years later with Cosmic Wheels. Blending the two trends of the moment, astrology and glam rock, he aims squarely at the charts. The songs are superbly crafted, the production maximalist: there are black gospel-style choirs, children's voices, horns, mellotron, moog. The title track lodges in your head on first listen, "Sleep" has grit to spare, "I Like You" brings a tear to the eye.

The album flies into the top 20. But it leaves a bitter aftertaste, as if this grandeur were missing the one essential thing.

A decade of contradictory albums follows. Essence To Essence (1973) tries to strip away the frills, but unfortunately what's left are flavourless songs. 7-tease (1974), by contrast, goes for pop-rock, flaunting grandiose orchestrations and radio-friendly tracks like "Rock'n'roll Souljer," "Love Of My Life," "The Voice Of Protest." Pleasant as it is, the nostalgia factor looms large. The audience keeps shrinking.

Slow Down World (1976) swims against the current, betting on acoustic intimacy. Donovan's songwriting seems to fade with each passing year, the arrangements growing ever more generic. Donovan (1977) is a poor record, despite the gem "Maya's Dance." Neutronica (1980) tells of nuclear nightmare, but the real nightmare is the use of synths.

Love Is Only Feeling (1981) is today one of fans' favourite albums, thanks to romantic pieces like "Lady Of The Flowers," "Lover O Lover" and the title track, but on release it goes almost unnoticed.

On Lady Of The Stars (1984) our hero hits rock bottom, going so far as to record new versions of his old hits.

Donovan has no choice but to retire to Ireland with Linda, devoting himself to his children and to meditation.

Only What Is Fragile

Ten years go by, and then the phone rings. It's Rick Rubin, mega-producer of American Recordings. The idea is to repeat the experiment that worked so well with Johnny Cash: put a microphone in front of the old glory and record live. Planned turnaround: one week. The two of them take two years, but it's worth it.

Sutras comes out in 1996 and is the best thing Donovan has done since '71. The sound is stripped bare, the voice right up front. The arrangements, sober as they are, never grow dull thanks to subtle touches of mellotron, cello, piano, flute and sitar. The inspiration for these sutras comes from the Tao Te Ching, the Vedas, Celtic prayers, but also from such disparate figures as Thich Nhat Hanh and Edgar Allan Poe. The quintessence of Donovan's songwriting shines again in the timeless melody of "Give It All Up," in the mystical surrender of "High Your Love," in the pathos of "Universe Am I."

Among the standout moments is "Everlasting Sea," a minimal track whose coda mimics the ebb and flow of the tide. What's surprising is how nothing on this hieratic, shadowy album sounds dated: "Nirvana" could have come out of a session with R.E.M.. Granted, it's hard for flower-children idealism to resonate with the ripped-jeans children of the brambles. Sutras is a fine album, but it fails to restore its author to the limelight.

After the children's-song remakes of Pied Piper (2002), Donovan releases Beat Café (2004). How to describe this attempt to merge beat poetry, tongue-twisters and "modern" backing tracks? When in doubt, best to take it off the turntable. More interesting is the compilation Sixty Four, which delights fans with several demos from his debut, among which the traditional "Dirty Old Town" and "London Town" stand out.

With every attempt at a comeback having failed, Donovan seemed resigned to devoting himself solely to transcendental meditation. But it's precisely this passion that leads him to meet the one madman willing to produce one of his records: David Lynch. In 2010, under the director's guidance, Donovan selects and records some of the hundreds of songs he's been keeping in a drawer. He releases the double album Ritual Groove through his own website. The sound is polished to a shine: the aging hippie sings amid a cascade of drum machines, reversed guitars, delay and keyboards. The lyrics are dangerously reduced to pacifist, environmentalist, Buddhist slogans.

As gaudy as the idea might seem, tracks like "Waves", "Diggin' The Future" or "Love Seed" hold up, while "The Illusion" is one of his finest melodies. It's a shame you have to dig through a huge amount of recycled or subpar material to find the good stuff: the single "I Am The Shaman" is as experimental as he's ever gotten, while "E-Motion" could win over radio play, if it ever reached that far.

One thing becomes clear when you hold Donovan's career up to the light. His hits aren't necessarily his best songs, and plenty of gems have gone unnoticed. His attempts to reach a wider audience have often led him to artistic decline. What still shines today belongs to an uncontaminated realm that few ever set foot in. These are visions, as he himself declared in one of his masterpieces, "for little ones". There's no better description of his art than this passage from the Tao Te Ching: "All beings, the grass and the trees, while alive are supple and pliant, in death are hard and rigid. Suppleness is the companion of life, hardness the companion of death. An army is destroyed, a trunk is broken. Only what is supple grows." In light of this, even his embarrassing showing alongside Bob Dylan seems to take on a different glow. One wonders who really won that contest and, deep down, what there was to win at all.

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