ROCKS OFF - The Rolling Stones Message Board
A Bigger Bang Tour 2005 - 2006
Sidemen staringt at Jaxx
Michael Davis, Bobby Keys and Kent Smith in Denver
© 2005 Jaxx
[ ROCKSOFF.ORG ] [ IORR NEWS ] [ SETLISTS 1962-2005 ] [ FORO EN ESPAÑOL ] [ BIT TORRENT TRACKER ] [ BIT TORRENT HELP ] [ BIRTHDAY'S LIST ] [ MICK JAGGER ] [ KEITHFUCIUS ] [ CHARLIE WATTS ] [ RONNIE WOOD ] [ BRIAN JONES ] [ MICK TAYLOR ] [ BILL WYMAN ] [ IAN "STU" STEWART ] [ NICKY HOPKINS ] [ MERRY CLAYTON ] [ IAN 'MAC' McLAGAN ] [ LINKS ] [ PHOTOS ] [ JIMI HENDRIX ] [ TEMPLE ] [ GUESTBOOK ] [ ADMIN ]
CHAT ROOM aka The Fun HOUSE Rest rooms last days
ROCKS OFF - The Rolling Stones Message Board
Register | Update Profile | F.A.Q. | Admin Control Panel

Topic: Donovan spreads the Bohemian Manifesto Return to archive
November 23rd, 2005 08:33 PM
Ten Thousand Motels Posted on Tue, Nov. 22, 2005
Donovan spreads the Bohemian Manifesto
By Brad Kava
Mercury News

For the folk-rock singer known simply as Donovan, the 1960s were a cultural renaissance, similar to the one that swept Florence hundreds of years ago and created so much of the art that is considered classic today.

Nowadays, his music is too-often underrated, pushed back in the hippie-dippy section with the patchouli oil and the tie-dyed shirts. But the man who was thought to be England's Bob Dylan collaborated with the Beatles on ``Yellow Submarine'' and, in a backhanded way, he helped create heavy metal.

Three-fourths of Led Zeppelin -- Jimmy Page, John Bonham and John Paul Jones -- backed him on his 1968 hit, ``Hurdy Gurdy Man,'' which holds up today as a blueprint for what Woody Allen humorously called ``heaviosity,'' but which seriously helped spawn the haunted likes of Ozzy Osbourne or Trent Reznor.

``It was all about experimenting all the time,'' he says, on the phone from Majorca, Spain. ``That was an experiment in overloading the drums and power riffs.''

The '60s were ``a rediscovery of an extraordinary amount of knowledge,'' says the 59-year-old Scotsman who will perform Wednesday night at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts and will be signing copies of his new autobiography and CD box set tonight at San Francisco's Tower Books & Music.

``After two wars and a depression, there was such dammed-up emotion, and then there was an explosion. It's hard to imagine today, but there was such propaganda enforced after the second World War. You couldn't even hear pop music on the radio. The control on radio was extraordinary.''

Then, suddenly, the airwaves filled with sounds from the United States -- blues, jazz, rock -- and the artistic English schoolkids who went on to form the Beatles, Yardbirds, Cream and Rolling Stones were inspired at the same time to put down paint brushes and pick up electric guitars.

Donovan, born Donovan Leitch, was one of them. He read the works of Jack Kerouac and the U.S. beat poets, and, at 16, started hitchhiking around England, living the bohemian life, strumming a guitar and quickly writing songs.

It was a time, he says, when artists, freed from materialism -- and freed by drugs -- weren't afraid to experiment and push the boundaries of what already existed. Strongly linked in a counterculture, they fed off each other, collaborating and supporting one another. By doing so, they created deep, lyrical music that has stood the test of time.

That's the reason, he says, teens and their younger siblings are listening to the same rock their parents grew up with. It's the reason movie producers and ad agencies still call him up every week trying to license his songs, from ``Wear Your Love Like Heaven'' to ``Atlantis.'' And it's the reason that classic rock radio is thriving and classic rock bands such as the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney are not only touring, but drawing new fans.

He says a lot of the '60s music holds up today because people are being exposed to it on the Internet or in movies and commercials, where the look or image of the performers is less important than the actual songs.

That's one reason he's allowed his works to be used commercially.

``It's like pop art,'' he says. ``Modern art movements adopt the tools of mass communications. You have to move along. When a young person hears my music in a Gap ad, it influences a whole new generation. At first I didn't like it, but there isn't a better way to expose people to a song than a movie or TV right now.''

Despite Donovan's popular staying power, he says his peripatetic musical wanderings, through folk, jazz, rock and Celtic mystical music, may have hindered him from getting critical recognition.

``It makes it hard to classify the music,'' he says. ``History doesn't like much experimentation.''

But for those who helped make the classic rock of the '60s, Donovan was considered cutting edge on a par with Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, for whom he wrote ``Hurdy Gurdy Man,'' but was talked into keeping it himself by producer Mickie Most.

He's written his autobiography, ``The Hurdy Gurdy Man,'' which tells of his collaboration with Paul McCartney on ``Yellow Submarine'' and ``Mellow Yellow,'' his trip to India with the Beatles, and his time with Joan Baez and Dylan. One reason he wrote it was to share with others what he calls the Bohemian Manifesto -- the rebel, anti-capitalist lifestyle spread in the United States by Kerouac, Woody Guthrie and Allen Ginsberg, and by poets and jazz musicians in Paris and London.

The '60s were shaped by these hobos wandering and turning away from the security of home and hearth and the materialism spurred in the post-war boom. They were students of Eastern philosophies, such as Buddhism's compassion for all living things.

``I had begun in earnest to introduce the Bohemian Manifesto into my work and the practice of compassion two years before the bloom of `Flower Power' and `All You Need is Love,' '' Donovan writes.

``It was what shaped the 1960s super-culture,'' he says by phone. ``Without the bohemians we wouldn't have had all these tools that led to so much later.''


November 23rd, 2005 11:19 PM
FPM C10 I never knew that Page, Bonham and Jones were on "Hurdy Gurdy Man". That's a pretty cool song. I think I would've actually liked Zepplin better with Donovan singing instead of Plant!

The Jeff Beck group backed him on "Barabajagal".

Page and Beck were on a lot of 60s pop records before they became guitar gods. One or both of them played on several hits by Herman's Hermits.
Search for information in the wet page, the archives and this board:

PicoSearch
The Rolling Stones World Tour 2005 Rolling Stones Bigger Bang Tour 2005 2006 Rolling Stones Forum - Rolling Stones Message Board - Mick Jagger - Keith Richards - Brian Jones - Charlie Watts - Ian Stewart - Stu - Bill Wyman - Mick Taylor - Ronnie Wood - Ron Wood - Rolling Stones 2005 Tour - Farewell Tour - Rolling Stones: Onstage World Tour A Bigger Bang US Tour

NEW: SEARCH ZONE:
Search for goods, you'll find the impossible collector's item!!!
Enter artist an start searching using "Power Search" (RECOMMENDED)