Life

Songwriting Superman

MELLOW Yellow, Sunshine Superman, Hurdy Gurdy Man, Catch The Wind, Colours, Season of The Witch: six enduringly groovy reasons why Donovan Leitch is to be accepted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame this June by the American National Academy of Popular Music in New York.

Along with fellow 60s veteran Ray Davies of The Kinks, the Glasgow-born troubadour is set to join the likes of his early rival Bob Dylan, Jagger/Richards and Lennon/McCartney as a recognised songwriting great. Having already been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year in recognition of his artistic longevity and 'musical excellence', Donovan's latest accolade means even more to the life-long songwriter.

Not only does it take into account his impact in terms of his run of seminal late-60s chart hits, more importantly it recognises the seminal qualities and enduring influence of Donovan's music. "The Songwriters Hall of Fame doesn't rely so much on celebrity status," agrees Donovan (67), speaking to us from his part-time home in Mallow, Co Cork - the inspiration for many 'Mellow in Mallow' headlines over the past few years. "They dig deep to find the writers who have broken through and influenced others."

As George Harrison famously said, "Donovan's all over The White Album".

The young star accompanied the Fab Four on their visit to India in 1968 and ended up teaching an inquisitive Harrison, John Lennon and Paul McCartney his signature guitar technique. "We were thrown together by our obsession with trying to find out how to meditate," remembers Donovan of that fateful trip, by which time he'd already enjoyed a string of chart smashes. "Having walked away from all the splendour of our success, we were sitting there in the jungle playing our acoustic guitars when John turns to me and says (adopts nasal John Lennon voice) 'How do you do that?' "I didn't know what he meant. By then I'd been playing for at least three years and the way I played had become second nature to me. "Of course, I was an overnight success compared to them who'd already put in thousands of hours learning every form of song imaginable."

However, it seemed as though The Beatles missed out on some of the blues, jazz and classical techniques Donovan had picked up.

He continues: "Then I remembered, there was a form to what I was doing, which was using all your fingers to pick: the clawhammer, invented by Mother Maybelle Carter of The Carter Family in the States. "I said, 'John, there's a pattern - but it will take three days to teach you.' He says 'I've got time'." Having sat down diligently with Donovan every day after meditation, Lennon later employed what he'd learned on Dear Prudence and Julia. Although left-handed Paul McCartney found it more difficult to follow Donovan's lessons, he also eventually get the hang of the clawhammer style by ear, deploying it on Blackbird to great effect.

As for George, he took something quite different from Donovan's instruction: "George was more interested in the chord structures," remembers Donovan. "He was fascinated by the A minor descent - and out of it came While My Guitar Gently Weeps." Donovan didn't come away from the India trip empty handed either - he wrote one of biggest hits, Jennifer Juniper, while there. Interestingly, despite being full of praise for the Beatles and the 'big brothers' role they played in his musical development, Donovan reveals he feels more of a songwriting kinship with his fellow Hall of Fame inductee Ray Davies than the Liverpool legends. "I've always felt very close to Ray because there's not really anyone else like me in Britain - they're all in bands," he says. "Although Ray had The Kinks, he's now out on his own and we're both very influenced by the British music hall tradition. "When you listen to a lot of our songs you'd say 'well, it's not rock and roll.' But there's something about it that goes back to the legacy of Tin Pan Alley. "Me and Ray know where we come from."

Following his debut hit Catch The Wind in 1964, over the next five years the young Donovan soon found himself in and out of recording studios with some of England's most talented session players - including a pre-Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones.