Donovan

Discovered him last year when I stumbled upon Season of the Witch. I thought it was psychedelic rock at first but when I heard Atlantis my opinion changed a bit. He's definitely folk I'd say, especially that song.

Barabajabal (with Jeff Beck), Hurdy Gurdy Man, Season Of The Witch, Sunshine Superman are some

The intergalactic laxative will get you from here to Mars....

The Dark Elf wrote: The intergalactic laxative will get you from here to Mars....   Ummm...I've always liked Donovan. "Jennifer Juniper", "Hurdy Gurdy Man", "Catch the Wind" and the epic "Atlantis". Good mellow stuff. Mellow yellow even.

Yes, he wasn't the surrealistic poet that Lennon was, but who cared?

How cool it must be to 'recently discover' someone like Donavon! It's very hard for me to get my aged mind around that!

t d wombat wrote: Been a lonnnnnngggg time since I listened to any Donovan. While his early stuff was fun for the day I'm afraid he was never really in Dylan's league. Maybe he could have been but he just seemed to get totally caught up in all that faux mystic psycho babble cow patty gumph that was somewhat typical of the era. Perhaps a revisit to the world of Donovan might be a good idea ?

I mean, I like saffron, but c'mon; it's too strong, costs more than gold, and I always use more than I should've.  Mad about it I am not.

emigre80 wrote: t d wombat wrote: Been a lonnnnnngggg time since I listened to any Donovan. While his early stuff was fun for the day I'm afraid he was never really in Dylan's league. Maybe he could have been but he just seemed to get totally caught up in all that faux mystic psycho babble cow patty gumph that was somewhat typical of the era. Perhaps a revisit to the world of Donovan might be a good idea ?   If you listen to him without thinking of him in the context of Dylan his work is very enjoyable - and really does conjure up an era.  It sure takes you back.

The 'Dylan clone' tag was only in reference to his oblivious cop of Dylan's vocal style and songwriting style on his first charting song Catch The Wind. The follow up songs, starting with Colours, immediately dropped the obvious Dylan inflections and were just Donavon's style of folk rock before his got ultra spacy with Sunshine Superman. So his Dylan clone era was thankfully brief. But I actually like Catch the Wind.  

Edited by SteveG - September 22 2015 at 15:53

Donovan originally wrote Catch The Wind in 1964 when he was an impressionable 18 year old just starting to make a name for himself in the UK folk scene (Dylan would have been 23 and releasing his 4th studio album at that time). 

Edited by Dean - September 22 2015 at 11:59

Dean wrote: Donovan originally wrote Catch The Wind in 1964 when he was an impressionable 18 year old just starting to make a name for himself in the UK folk scene (Dylan would have been 23 and releasing his 4th studio album at that time).  The 1965 meeting of the two documented in Dont Look Back is now the stuff of legends (especially the exchange between them over "My Darling Tangerine Eyes"/"Mr Tambourine Man" that never made the final cut of the film), and no doubt resulted in the change of direction that Donovan undertook soon after. I suspect that had circumstances been different the relationship between Dylan and Donovan would have been a fair bit warmer but the press taunting of Dylan over this new upstart seemed to get under his skin - though quite how Donovan's lightweight songs could ever be perceived as a threat is anyone's guess, perhaps he feared that Donovan's accessibility would dilute what he was doing. Anyway, by the time Donovan released his second album Fairytale in late 1965, he was writing very un-Dylanesque little corkers like this gem:

Lovely.
It suddenly struck me that Nick Drake must have been a Donovan fan.