New strings for a sixties troubadour Donovan
Aug 27 2010 By Dave Freak
Folk legend Donovan tells Dave Freak why he’s more happy ‘living in the now’ as he prepares for a city festival.
Donovan Leitch is Googling himself. The famed singer-songwriter, who found success in the 1960s has been described as the Godfather of Acid Folk and he’s wondering what to make of it.
“Acid folk?” he ponders. “I know ‘poke’, which is folk with an electric punch, but acid folk? Is that considered a genre? I guess I might have opened the door for it, but I’m not sure. Often people don’t know where to put me.”
He chuckles. For the uninitiated ‘acid folk’ is a term often used to describe acts from Donovan, the Incredible String Band and Comus in the 1960s, to contemporary names such as Devendra Banhart and Espers. It’s also referred to as ‘psychedelic folk.’ Now he understands.
“That’s if you play acoustic guitar hard and tune it down... but it’s not just a sound, it’s a philosophy. Like modern art, it’s a search for inner colours. Photography had killed realism, so painters painted states of mind, and acid folk is a state of mind – if you’re reading certain books, pagan texts, that comes out in your music. The sound is generally very simple, but the effect is other-worldly, it’s a journey and you’re taking the audience with you.”
There’s no doubt that Donovan, who headlines Moseley Folk Festival on September 4, has taken his audience on a journey. Born in 1946 in Scotland, the singer/guitarist made his name with a series of appearances on pioneering pop programme Ready Steady Go! in 1965.
From a run of gentle acoustic folkie ballads, notably Catch The Wind and Colours, he reinvented himself with the more psychedelic sounding Sunshine Superman, Mellow Yellow and Wear Your Love Like Heaven.
Very much part of pop’s royalty, he headed off to India with The Beatles, The Beach Boys’ Mike Love and Hollywood star Mia Farrow, and performed at The Rolling Stones’ free Hyde Park concert.
And he’s never really stopped performing or recording, working with production ace Rick Rubin (the man responsible for Johnny Cash’s revival) in the ‘90s and earlier this year found himself sharing a stage with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder.
His longevity amuses him.
“One couldn’t remember last Tuesday or think about next Tuesday,” he laughs, recalling his lack of career plan when he started. “We were reading about the eternal now... the past is gone, the future is about to happen, and as soon as it’s happened, it becomes the past, so you live in the moment – that’s all there is, only now... we’re the ‘now generation’.
"And I’m still living in the now! There was only Paul McCartney, who wrote When I’m 64, who was looking ahead. I didn’t look ahead. Who knows about longevity? You never know how long anything will last or what makes a song continue.”
But continue Donovan has, his songs championed by everyone from Georgie Fame, Eartha Kitt, Mel Torme and Joan Baez to The Allman Brothers and Kate Bush, while he’s been name-checked by such acts as Jimi Hendrix and Happy Mondays.
“Every three or four years, I seem to reach a whole new audience who respond to these bold, experimental, fusions. They hear Mellow Yellow on a Gap advert, get on the internet and out jumps 27 albums!” he chuckles before listing a few choice covers.
