Man who taught Macca how to play a guitar
( ) ...at least that’s how he remembers it – it was the ’60s!
IN a smoky suite in London’s Savoy Hotel, a 19-year-old Scot sings his new folk song, accompanying himself on the guitar. Polite applause follows and t hen, in t he f i nest f ol k tradition, the instrument is handed to the next artist at the gathering. It is Bob Dylan, at the height of his creative powers. Smirking, the American launches into his song It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue – and the gaping chasm between the present performer and the previous one is painfully clear to all in the room.
Unfortunately for the young Donovan, one of those present that night in 1965 was a filmmaker shooting a fly- on- the - wall documentary about Dylan touring the UK. In DA Pennebaker’s movie, Don’t Look Back, the scene in the Savoy is as unforgettable as it is cruel. As Dylan plays, the camera zooms in mercilessly on Donovan’s face as the realisation dawns: Dylan is in a different class.
The young pretender f rom Maryhill, Glasgow, would never in his life produce something as vital, as seminal as what he was listening to now. But almost 50 years later, the singer of such Sixties hits as Mellow Yellow, Sunshine Superman and Jennifer Juniper, appears to have put this most infamous of career knocks well behind him.
The 67-year-old is now marketing himself as the world’s most exclusive songwriting guru. For a fee reckoned to stretch to five figures – he will disclose it only on application – the faded star is offering a week-long masterclass for aspiring musicians on a Bahamian island.
‘I will show you even more than I taught the Beatles,’ boasts the singer, with no apparent hint of irony. And, in a manner of speaking, it is t r ue. The musician who came to prominence as a Dylan wannabe in the British folk scene of the mid-1960s did show John Lennon and Paul McCartney a trick or two on the guitar during the Beatles’ sojourn in India with their sometime spiritual guiding light, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
A few of the tricks even ended up on the Beatles’ White Album but the band was already doing quite nicely, thank you, even before coming under the Scot’s tutelage.
Now Donovan promises: ‘If you join me, I will show you some very interesting chord formations that even The Beatles missed in their incredible study of popular music. I will also show you how to access the creative field.’
These days, for obvious reasons, Donovan does not much like to talk about the time he was humiliated by Dylan when confronted by the limits of his talents in that hotel suite in London.
‘Oh my God, that question is so boring. So boring!’ he told one of t he more r ecent interviewers who went there.
MORE plausibly, it undermines the Glaswe-gian’s preferred narrative of his 1960s and 1970s heyday – that he was up there with the most visionary and influential figures in music.
In the pantheon of genius that includes Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Jimmy Page, he has been known to quietly slip in the word ‘myself ’ before skating quickly on lest the ice should break.
Paul McCartney, arguably the most successful songwriter of all time, would no doubt be tickled pink by Donovan’s account of how he showed him his guitar techniques: ‘He did not have the application to get it – but he wrote some lovely ballads under the influence of my style.’
When pressed to speak of Dylan himself, Donovan is prepared to concede a draw, saying: ‘His lyrics are without equal, but I am musically the more creative and influential.’
Meanwhile, in his evaluation of the Rolling Stones, Donovan damns with faint praise, saying they are merely ‘the number one white R&B group in the world’.
The galling thing for the Scots musician who now lives in Cork, Ireland, is that reality keeps puncturing t hese delusions of pre-eminence.
Walking down Glasgow’s Buchanan Street last summer, he decided on a whim to whip out a guitar and join busker Murdo Mitchell in entertaining passers-by. Teenager Mitchell certainly appreciated the ges- ture, but he had no idea who this pensionable performer was. It was not until he went home and looked him up online that he was able to piece together why he was famous.
He would have learned that the man born Donovan Leitch in 1946 lived for ten years in Scotland before moving with his parents to Hertfordshire where, i nfluenced by his family’s love of folk music, he first picked up the guitar.
By the time he encountered Dylan, his sound-alike song Catch The Wind had already reached number four in the UK charts, prompting the music press to whip up a rivalry between the two. Its denouement came in that hotel room.
To his credit, the singer did not slink off from the Savoy in search of a bridge from which to throw himself. Indeed, the next five years proved his most commercially successful as he shed his f olk s i nger persona and became a flower power era hippie instead.
As Dylan went into retreat in the late 1960s, Donovan recorded the songs for which he is best remembered today – Hurdy Gurdy Man, There Is A Mountain and his biggest, most enduring hit, Mellow Yellow.
However, by 1970 it was all over, at least as far as chart success was concerned. And Donovan was still only 24. Yet ever since that day when he let his guard slip in front of the master, and whatever the inner demons may have been telling him, Donovan has maintained that implacable front of self-belief, saying: ‘You have to believe in yourself as an artist, because nobody else will, especially when you’re young.’
It is no doubt for this reason that, on the dust jacket of his autobiography, he is described as ‘one of the most influential musicians to have emerged from the 20th century’. Others offer a more grounded analysis. Michael Gray, one of Britain’s most respected music authors who has written extensively on Bob Dylan, said yesterday: ‘I like early Donovan. His singles were attractive, his voice often affecting, and his folkie heart was in the right place.
‘Catch The Wind might risibly be catching what was blowin’ in the wind, but it still sounds appealing and still has integrity, and so does To Sing For You – and actually Sunny Goodge Street (1965) really captures the feel of that innocent getting-high-in-mid-60s London moment.’
BUT Mr Gray, a former manager of the late Scottish songwriter Gerry Rafferty, adds: ‘On the other hand, it’s laughable for him to claim so much for his influence in the 1960s and beyond. And he didn’t teach Paul McCartney anything about writing tunes, or John Lennon a nything a bout singing, or George and Ringo anything at all.
‘ But if Donovan wants to offer songwriting holidays in the Bahamas, who am I to criticise? I’m offering a Bob Dylan discussion weekend at my home in South-West France in October.’
Those interested in talking Dylan should visit www.michaelgray.net/dylan-weekends.html while musicians hoping Donovan will tease out their inner songwriter should go to www.donovan.ie.
There they can read how Donovan helped the Beatles to write Yellow Submarine in 1965. There is, needless to say, no mention of the songwriting masterclass he himself was given that same year.