![\"Donovan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5110995_11_articleinline_GettyImages-2643067_1_.jpg\" "\\"Donovan")
Donovan in 1970. File photo: Keystone\/Getty Images<\/p>\nThere are certain pop artists that are known by their first name only. They include Elvis, Madonna, Prince, and Beyonc\u00e9.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Donovan, who grew up in post-war Glasgow as Donovan Leitch \u2014 the son of a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, and the grandson of two Irish grannies \u2014 also occupies that rarified air.<\/p>\n
Donovan, who has \u201creached the year of my 80th summer around the Sun\u201d, has been living in Ireland in an old rectory house about 15 minutes\u2019 drive from Mallow, Co Cork for over 30 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He first performed in the country in the late 1960s. The music impresario Jim Hand booked him to play a dancehall somewhere outside Dublin.<\/p>\n
\u201cI arrived,\u201d says Donovan. \u201cJimmy Hand took me to a small hotel where the wallpaper is peeling off the wall. I’m about to play after a showband. I’m a big hit already. All I have is my guitar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I look up at the peeling of the wallpaper when we’re checking into the hotel. I say to Hand, \u2018It looks like this place is falling down.\u2019 He said, \u2018Ah, sure, now, they’re just redecorating.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a 10-year-old, Donovan moved south from Glasgow with his family to live in Hatfield, a town in Hertfordshire, about 20 miles north of London, not far from St Albans, a university town where he hung out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a teenager in the early 1960s, he explains there were battlelines drawn between kids into pop music and beatniks who favoured jazz, blues and folk music.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery city with a university, a jazz club or a blues club was where the beatniks hung out. That bohemian scene was in the pubs. The pubs said to the beatniks, \u2018You take the back room, but don’t come anywhere near the front room.\u2019 It was happening in London too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The beatnik thing had nothing to do with pop music. The jazz, blues and folk people were so insular. They thought pop music was rubbish \u2014 that anybody who wanted to be in pop music was stupid and uneducated. They were all posh, saying, \u2018We\u2019re banning the bomb. We’re the real bohemians.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThen one day, I said to my bohemian friends in the bohemian pub in St Albans, The Cock Inn, which was an unfortunate name for a hangout for young people trying to make out: \u2018Guess what? I bumped into a songwriter. He wants me to do demos. I’m gonna make a pop single.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“They looked at me as if I’d gone three kinds of crazy, saying, \u2018You’re a disgrace to the world of folk.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Donovan hit the ground running. In early 1965, while still only 18, his debut single, Catch the Wind, reached number 4 in the UK singles charts. The following year, the title track from Sunshine Superman, which is widely credited as the world\u2019s first psychedelic pop album, went to number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 charts.<\/p>\n
More hit singles, including Mellow Yellow \u2014 in which Paul McCartney provides backing vocals \u2014 and Hurdy Gurdy Man, followed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Donovan was tight with The Beatles, socially and creatively. George Harrison famously said, \u201cDonovan is all over the White Album.\u201d<\/p>\n
In June 1966, police raided Donovan\u2019s apartment on London\u2019s Edgware Road.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was a soft target, having broadcast about smoking hash in his track, Sunny Goodge Street; and there was a scene with his friends smoking pot in a TV documentary, A Boy Called Donovan, which raised the hackles of notorious drugs squad officer Norman Pilcher.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the aid of a lawyer supplied by Harrison and McCartney, Donovan got off with a \u00a3250 fine and a scolding in court.<\/p>\n
Shortly before recording the White Album, Donovan joined the four Beatles on their spiritual trip to India in February 1968, a travelling party that included Mike Love from the Beach Boys and Mia Farrow. Their transcendental meditation retreat was led by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Donovan in 1970. File photo: Keystone\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The Beatles were in search of peace. \u201cThe Beatles were overwhelmed by their success,\u201d says Donovan. \u201cIt was overpowering. It was dangerous. It looked funny in the film Help! but it became quite intense.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The Beatles were on the verge of mental difficulties. They had no private life. Fans were screaming. They couldn’t hear their songs anymore in the concerts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our songs, we sang about smoking marijuana. Beatles\u2019 songs were saying, \u2018Turn off your mind, relax, float downstream\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019d love to turn you on\u2019 and me with hashish in my song. Dealers were saying, \u2018Hey, all these guys are famous, they’re promoting our stuff.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
“What could one do? Well, first we wanted to learn meditation, which was part of the bohemian tale going back to the 1800s. We needed to test whether meditation worked without smoking pot, without getting extremely stressed out with LSD or the heavier mushrooms.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whatever about the quest for transcendence, the journey was productive musically. \u201cAt one point, we’re sitting around playing acoustic guitars,\u201d says Donovan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn was watching me playing this extraordinary fingerpicking style I learned called the clawhammer. It’s fast. He said, \u2018How do you do that, that thing you’re doing with your fingers?\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I said, \u2018Do you want to learn it? It’ll take a little while.\u2019 He said, \u2018I’ve got a little while. We\u2019re out here in the jungle.\u2019 So, I had to deconstruct the pattern. He got it in two days.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lennon used the fingerpicking technique on his songs Julia and Dear Prudence.<\/p>\n
![\"Jimi](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5110998_11_articleinline_GettyImages-862242356_1_.jpg\" "\\"Jimi")
Jimi Hendrix in London. File photo: Central Press\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n