Music	Sunshine Supremacy by Donny Kutzbach

From the fresh-spirited troubadouring of “Catch the Wind” into the psych-tinged pop milieu of “Mellow Yellow” and “Sunshine Superman,” through the spine-tingling dark majesty of “Season of the Witch” and the epic pre-prog grandeur of “Atlantis,” the music of Donovan not only stands like a timeline totem of the 1960s but has reverberated through each generation since.

Born in 1946 in Glasgow, Scotland, Donovan Philips Leitch moved with his family to London when he was only 10. He fell under the spell of the radio and folk recording. His recent autobiography, Hurdy Gurdy Man (St. Martin’s Press), plots his rise from a bloke singing Woody Guthrie songs to an international chart-topper who influenced the Beatles and countless others. As Donovan himself points out, no amount of storytelling can really recollect the true account of the 1960s. That’s what the music is for. Donovan’s journey in song is perfectly captured on the 3 CD + DVD box set Try For the Sun: The Journey of Donovan (Legacy/Sony), from his earliest work right through recordings with Rick Rubin and material from the new millennium.

You can’t, however, begin to close the chapter on one the most significant artist/performers to emerge from the British Isles in the last half century. Donovan’s at work following up 2004’s Beat Café (Appleseed), has a new crop of young acolytes like Devendra Banhart and others in the new folk movement and continues to amaze crowds at live appearances, like his slated gig this Sunday, November 5 at Kleinhans Music Hall’s Mary Seaton Room.

AV: There’s something I’ve waited years to ask you: “Who threw the glass, man?” [Note: a reference to a tumultuous moment in DA Pennebaker’s Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back. —ed.]

Donovan: Who threw the glass? [Laughs.] No one knows. I guess it will never be known.

AV: Does everyone ask you about that scene from Don’t Look Back?

Donovan: Well, not everyone, but yes, it comes up. I thought I’d solve it all quite quickly and say I’d go clean it up but I didn’t in the end. Yes, an iconic moment.

AV: Many people view that moment as somewhat tempestuous, a sort of sparring session between you and Dylan. How do you see it?

Donovan: Well, there were a lot of crazy things going on in those days. People were coming in and out of our hotel rooms and the restaurants we were in. They were strangers and they’d usually be drunk. It was an element of the wrong crowd in the right place. Most of the tension came from outside of the group. A drunk walks in and Dylan doesn’t like it. There was a lot of harmonic moments that never made the film. When I watch it now—and I was in an email conversation with Pennebaker about it the other day—I look at myself bemused, smiling. I knew I was in the right place.

It was only two years previous that I’d left home and hitchhiked around. I’d been listening to Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez. I hadn’t heard Dylan yet. It took me awhile to realize that he had arrived. I’d been singing in the style of Woody. I look at myself in the piece of film smiling and I’m doing the exchange of songs, a folk tradition: I sing one and ask him to sing me one and so on. There it was, it was happening! Buffy Sainte Marie introduced me to Joanie Baez. Through Joan I met Dylan. Through him I met the Beatles. With in months I’d be on the Newport Folk Festival stage with Pete Seeger introducing me.

I had my eye on becoming singer/songwriter/poet who would merge meaningful lyrics with pop. There it was happening! You can see it in the movie. From that point in spring 1965, Joan, Bob and I introduced folk music to the pop charts. Folk music merged with pop culture.

AV: Since then you’ve been dogged by the tag of “the British Dylan” and not gotten the credit you deserve for shaping music’s landscape, including kickstarting psychedelic pop, deeply inspiring people like Bowie and Nick Drake. Does it bother you?

Donovan: No. It might have protected me. To actually keep changing, which was my mission, it’s difficult to stay in one place. It was hard for people to nail me down and put me in any one category. It’s always afterwards that you see the effects of various things I was exploring. The Dylan link was misunderstood over the years. We both paid homage to Woody Guthrie so, in that sense, I was “the British Dylan,” but more like the Scottish Woody Guthrie, or another description might have been better. It never stopped my contemporaries from recognizing my part in this extraordinary tree of music that came from bohemia and entered pop culture. I’m honored. It’s comfortable.

AV: Do you ever get tired of all this asking, some 40 years on, to tell stories about Dylan and the Beatles?

Donovan: No, younger audiences need to hear these tales. The tales, however, come from the music. When you hear the music it tells much more about the true feelings of the day than any stories can. It is interesting for songwriting to hear about the construction and creation of songs and where they come from. I like telling those stories. I don’t get into too much on stage these days but I do talk about meditation, which in retrospect is the true flower of the 1960s. Reintroducing the western world to meditation was what was the trip to India, with myself, the four Beatles and one Beach Boy, was all about. It’s important to tell that story.

AV: So you are still a big believer and practitioner of transcendental meditation?

Donovan: Yes. And that part of it is not a tale of the past at all. It’s very much a tale of the present and future. [Film director] David Lynch and I are working very hard to continue TM into schools, so I’m very involved. Through TM, there’s a creative field that everyone can contact, not just me, the Beatles or the Stones. We can all access it for own lives and it’s not just to make music.

AV: Gentlemen like Bert Jansch, Richard Thompson and Clapton always get the mention as England’s great guitar players, but you’re no slouch either.

Donovan: I didn’t think about my guitar playing for so many years. It seemed to just be doing its job in presenting dances underneath my music. Then people started asking what I was doing and I wondered, “What was I doing?” It had become second nature but then I realized I had gotten pretty good. Not only that but I was doing things that were considered groundbreaking that I wasn’t even aware I was doing! Then I would get together to share and play with Irish musicians they’d say [in Irish brogue], “I hope he doesn’t bring ’is fuckin’ guitar! None of us will be able to play!” [Laughs.]

I just love to play. My newest guitar is called Kelly, which comes from the Irish book of Kells, an eighth-century painted manuscript. It’s illuminated pages created by Christian monks of intricate, very trippy, psychedelic interweaving of colors and Celtic patterns. I had a new guitar made by master luthier Danny Farrington inspired by it. So, Kelly will be dancing away at my show at Kleinhans and she’ll playing styles never heard before! [Laughs.]

AV: “Sunshine Superman” is often singled out as a key moment when pop went psychedelic, or vice versa. How do you rate it these days?

Donovan: It stays up there as one of the most well made records with Mickie Most as producer and John Cameron as the producer. It’s fresh and, by the way, it’s been selling cider in England all summer. I allow my music to be presented in film and high-level commercials and that gets it to new audiences. The advert has been on about every four minutes and people are saying, “Can you please make it stop?” [Laughs.]

For me, the song was what I’d been looking for, an extraordinary acoustic sound with the flavors of Latin music, jazz and pop. It ended up as the flagship for the songs on the album of the same title. It did present and reflect that great exploration of the mid ’60s of musical change. I’m very proud of the song and that it holds up so beautifully.

AV: Mickie Most was sort of the quintessential “Swingin’ ‘60s” London producer, and he gets a lion’s share of credit for the sound of your music of that period. Do John Cameron and his arrangements deserve more credit than they get?

Donovan: Yeah. Talking about my guitar again, I was playing bass lines, middle chord changes and top lines and John Cameron would just listen. He would take the bass part from the guitar style. He would look for counter melody, and that’s where he’s a true arranger, which was how he came up with the bass line of “Sunshine Superman.” Then we would talk about congas, wooden instruments and the guitar was sort of a jazz style. Jimmy Page was playing on the session. Guitar players always liked playing on my records because the chord changes were sort of…quirky. John could hear where the tempos should be. His real forte was bringing the jazz style in. John would say, “Your songs are like little movies. They have characters, descriptions, tone and moods. So let’s make the soundtrack.” Mickie would be able to pick the singles. He’d talk to John about what songs to focus in on as the singles and then let us do whatever we wanted and we bloody well did. We went anywhere we wanted. I spoke to John the other day and we are going to work again on a few new tracks.

AV: Mickie Most was also something of a gatekeeper. In the spirit of the day, you’d want to let McCartney and Lennon hear your songs or give one away to Hendrix (“Hurdy Gurdy Man”). But he’d insist you hold them close, wouldn’t he?

Donovan: Yeah. My buddy Gypsy Dave was the first to meet Hendrix as he walked off the plane in ’67 when Chas Chandler brought him over from the Village. I said, “Let’s give him ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man.’” Mickie said, “No, that’s yours.” We tried to get Hendrix to play on it. He had a one-night stand. Okay, how about Page, then? We ended up cutting it with Jimmy Page.

AV: You made a record a decade ago, the underrated Sutras, with Rick Rubin. How did that come about?

Donovan: Rick called me up and said, “Do you want to make a record?” He was producer of the year, so I said, “All right, let’s do one.” We met, and he’s quiet with a hole in his jeans, a beard, long hair and a 1958 Bentley. He’d been doing TM for a long time so we talked and we meditated. The conversation was whether we do it with a band or solo. We started doing it solo with acoustic guitars and our interests started merging to make a very meditative record. The results were not financially incredible and it didn’t jump into the charts. American Recording was falling apart and Rick was going through changes with his catalog moving to Sony. The effect of the record was still extraordinary. People were phoning up the label saying that listening to the record caused them to throw away all their junk food. [Laughs.]

AV: There’s a handful of young acolytes showing their appreciation, like Devendra Banhart and Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips. Any thoughts on this new generation you’ve inspired?

Donovan: I met Devendra in Ireland. We talked all night. He thanked me for the doors I opened. He also championed an artist called Vashti Bunyan who made a remarkable album that supposedly failed [Just Another Diamond Day] and we didn’t hear from her for 30 years. Now she’s the queen of folk! I’m playing with her tomorrow on a BBC program. So the new blood tipping their hats: That’s what it’s all about. I want to encourage them. It’s great to be recognized for that.