#DONOVAN SONGS FREE#

Through going east I was trying to find my Celtic past. The Hurdy Gurdy Man chant I wrote was really my first solid Celtic rock song. Musically, he says, “I actually went deeper into my roots in India: my blues roots, my folk roots, Celtic chants, and the Beatles seemed to follow me, because we were playing every day at one point.” And the music entwined the mystic: “So I discovered the spiritual sound of my Celtic past. George later told Donovan that his “influence was so strong, it’s all over The White Album.”ĭonovan said his time at the ashram was life changing, as it was for me, as hopefully it was for everyone there. John had asked Donovan to teach him his fingerpicking style and two or three of John’s songs on The White Album carry the folk-style guitar that is a Donovan trademark. For the Beatles, they were away from their electric guitars, having only their acoustic instruments with them. Donovan was writing deep, deep songs and Hurdy Gurdy Man was the album that came out of Rishikesh. The ashram was one more step on that path. What he knew instinctively, from the start, was that they were on the same journey that he was. It’s a marvelous story and one best enjoyed in his own poetic words in his new autobiography. Bob Dylan introduced them, in a darkened room in Dylan’s suite at London’s Savoy Hotel, the only light coming from a figure skating competition on the television. It was Love Me Do and without knowing who they were he says, “Something clicked in me: The acoustic guitar, harmonica, drums, bass and Celtic harmonies, because that’s what the Beatles had in their first song-a Celtic sound.” Twelve months later he was sitting in the same room with them.

It was remarkable.”ĭonovan was about 17 years old when he first heard the Beatles on the radio. Just to be young men again and be fascinated with the wonder of the world, and to meditate deeper and deeper, to turn off fame-the outer way-to go inside.

#DONOVAN SONGS FREE#

They were free from this extraordinary celebrity and we all had the freedom and the rediscovery of one’s own bohemian self, and the path was followed.” He said it was amazing, not only to be musically free from the expectation that everyone put on them, but also “Just to be songwriters again. Where’s our Donovan.’ After camping out for days, the press went away and we were left on our own and for the first time in probably a decade, for the Beatles, they were on their own. “The press arrived en mass,” he added, “asking, ‘Where’s our Beatles. Recently, Donovan told me that when they all went to the ashram the Beatles walked away from fame and it seemed the whole world held its breath. He had written Sunshine Superman in admiration of them and they often attended each other’s concerts. Donovan and the Beatles had been good friends for a long time. He was taught meditation by the Maharishi in Los Angeles and when he got back to England he and the Beatles were invited to the ashram. Then his friends, the Beatles, got interested and he, George and Pattie were talking about spiritual things all the time. But how do you get there?” Later, he thought meditation might be the way but felt that meditation had been lost in the Celtic-Christian tradition. Brought up Christian, he accepted Jesus’ “Kingdom of God within. “It appealed to the bohemian in me,” he said. At fourteen, he read about Zen in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and became interested in the psychological and spiritual path of Buddhism. He told me he’d always been a quiet and introspective person. He had an interesting face, long and rectangular, with a shy, almost internal smile. He was twenty-one, soft-spoken and friendly.

I first met Donovan Leitch sitting with Mal at the table by the cliff.

Donovan songs