Genre dabbler Donovan gets his accolades
Donovan Leitch — or just Donovan, as he became known — might have become a painter instead of a musician. As he tells it, he was considering arts school when he decided, instead, to take his guitar and hitchhike to London, where he began performing as a folk singer. By 1965 he had won a following, as well as recording and publishing contracts, with guitar-accompanied folk songs like “Catch the Wind” and “Colors.”
Without entirely leaving folk behind — he styled himself as a modern troubadour — he quickly produced a stream of mid-1960s songs with trippy, elliptical lyrics that evoke the nascent drug culture of the time.
At 68, Donovan likes touring less than he did in the old days. Still, he is planning a celebration of some sort (he won’t be specific) for the 50th anniversary of his first hits, in 2015. And having been inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, he also joined the Songwriters Hall of Fame at that institution’s annual awards ceremony in New York on Thursday. He recently discussed his approach to songwriting.
Q: You’ve touched on a number of styles over the years — the folksiness of “Catch the Wind,” the early psychedelia of “Sunshine Superman,” the bluesy sound of “Season of the Witch,” the almost Elizabethan quality of “Guinevere,” the jazz-tinged “Beat Cafe,” the country music on “Shades of Blue.” Were you consciously trying to embrace that variety, or is it just how things unfolded?
A: I think that must have come from my love of popular music and the idea of packing an extraordinary story into a three-minute disc. I found that I just liked to listen to, and to try my hand at, many different kinds of music. You know that we were all first powered by jazz when we were young, in the music scene in Britain, especially.
Jazz, blues and folk are a great way of expression. But I also listened carefully to what Buddy Holly, the Everly Bros. and Elvis Presley were doing. Songwriting has always been at the center of what I do, and the making of well-made songs, with poetry in mind, and on subjects that pop music doesn’t necessarily cover, has always been, for me, a fine thing to be fascinated with.
But the fact that the genres I used kept changing may have made it hard to put a finger on what Donovan does. At first it was, “Oh, he’s a folk singer.” Then I used a little jazz, a little classical music. And it was hard in those days, because everybody was in a faction. You played rhythm and blues, or folk, or jazz, or classical. I felt that putting them all together seemed a lot of fun.
Q: Your approach to arrangements has been one of your hallmarks, but you began very simply, with just voice and guitar. How did you become interested in orchestration?
A: My producer, Mickie Most, introduced me to John Cameron, in mid-1965. John had just come down from Cambridge, and he knew everything about classical music, folk, jazz — he could do anything, and he knew how to draw on all the elements I wanted. I would tell him: “On this song, I want a harpsichord, a theremin, Caribbean congas and upright bass, but it would be nice to have an electric bass, too. And a sitar.” And because I hadn’t been trained as a musician, I would draw out sections, and change the beat, as the song’s drama required it, particularly with something like “The Legend of a Girl Child Linda,” the seven-minute song on the “Sunshine Superman” album.
It wasn’t a problem for John, because he was a free spirit — he would just write down what I wanted. But I remember him saying, at one point, “Wait a minute — you actually mean the music to be like a soundtrack to the lyrics.” And that was exactly right. The lyric was the story, and I wanted the music to illustrate it — to be the soundtrack to the movie you would see when you close your eyes and listen to the song.
Q: It’s interesting that you think of your songs in visual terms.
A: For me, it was experimental. But the actual trying out of different things, I think most of it came from art. Although I didn’t go to art school, I’m a painter, and by the time I almost entered art school, I decided that I wanted to do the music. But in modern art you have collage, and in film you have montage, and I think these elements must have entered the way I was putting all these bits together.