“I tried to write songs with Paul McCartney, but it was impossible, because every idea I had sparked him off and every idea he had sparked me off”: Donovan’s transcendental tales of The Beatles, Dylan, Hendrix and David Lynch

Donovan posing for a photograph in the 60s.

The first British folk singer to crack the UK pop charts, Donovan made the Top 5 with his first single, Catch The Wind, early in 1965. By the end of that year the ‘British Bob Dylan’ had scored two more hit singles, two hit albums and a hit EP. As flower-power blossomed, so did Donovan as songs like Mellow Yellow, Sunshine Superman, Hurdy Gurdy Man and Barabajagal soaked up rock and jazz embellishments.

He stepped off the merry-go-round in the early 70s before it turned into a treadmill, and recorded and toured intermittently. After the Happy Mondays sponsored his revival in the early 90s with a track on their Pills ’N’ Thrills & Bellyaches album, Donovan recorded Sutras with producer Rick Rubin in 1994. In 2008, he sat down with Classic Rock to look back over his cosmic journey and some of the larger-than-life characters he met along the way.