(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Fri 19 December 2025 17:30, UK
Any musician who is not a fan of The Beatles is instinctively not to be trusted. There is, however, a very big difference between appreciating the musical genius of the Fab Four and attempting to work alongside the band, as Donovan found out back in his 1960s heyday.
Beatlemania was already in full swing by the time that Donovan made his first mark on the music industry during the mid-1960s, and with his psychedelic folk tendencies, it should come as no real surprise that the Maryhill-born songwriter was a noted devotee of the band. More so than that, though, he managed to foster a friendship with the group during perhaps their most exciting musical period, around the production of the White Album.
Unlike many of their contemporaries at the time, The Beatles tended to refrain from recruiting session musicians or musical collaborators to fill out their recording sessions, with exceptions being few and far between, in the form of Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, and Nicky Hopkins. Even though Donovan himself never made it onto a Beatles track in an official capacity, his influence was all over their later material.
On beloved efforts like ‘Blackbird’, for instance, Donovan is often cited as the person who exposed the band to the kind of finger-picking style that drives that song, along with a few others, on the band’s self-titled effort. Inevitably, after having such an unavoidable impact on the sound of The Beatles, particularly on that album, it didn’t take long for Donovan and The Beatles to share some songwriting ideas.
Ultimately, though, working with The Beatles was never going to be an easy task, even for the most ardent of Beatles devotees. Recalling his relationship with the ‘Mop Top’s to Classic Rock back in 2009, the songwriter shared, “George and I were closest because of our spiritual paths and the books we were both reading. John was fascinating to be around; he didn’t suffer fools gladly. Paul was full of light and energy and jokes, and we would constantly be jiving each other.”
It was with McCartney that Donovan attempted to collaborate, particularly during the recording sessions of Mary Hopkins’ Post Card back in 1969. Although these efforts were interesting enough to have been extensively bootlegged in the years that followed, the songwriters themselves quickly decided that things weren’t working.
“We tried to write songs together, but it was impossible,” Donovan declared. Seemingly, though, the futility of their efforts wasn’t down to any butting of heads or creative differences, even though this was occurring in 1969 when The Beatles were consistently at each other’s throats. As he explained, “Every idea I had sparked him off and every idea he had sparked me off.”
In the end, then, very little ended up getting done, and the late 1960s were such a chaotic period for Macca and The Beatles that those few sessions with Donovan weren’t high up on the priority list for McCartney; after all, he had the likes of Allen Klein to deal with first.
Still, the Post Card bootlegs remain as an interesting insight into what might have happened if a full collaboration ever did occur between two songwriters who dominated the sounds of Britain in the 1960s.
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