Do you remember Donovan? He is seventy eight years old now and lives in County Cork, Ireland - not far from Dave Northsider - our esteemed blogging colleague. Donovan's full name is Donovan Phillips Leitch and he was born in Glasgow, Scotland though both of his grandmothers were Irish.
I must confess that when Donovan broke into the British folk-pop scene in the mid-sixties I was drawn to his music. It was pure, simple and unprocessed, driven principally by the lyrics. His output owed things variously to the hippy movement, to Bob Dylan and to anti-war artists. I saw him in concert three or four times and many years later saw him here in Sheffield. However, it didn't seem as those he had advanced.
I even learnt to play several of his songs on my guitar, including the following one which many would argue is his best and best-known song - typical of him in his heyday. Please listen...
In the East Yorkshire village where I grew up, my best friend during my teens was a lad called Paul Budd. We were almost exactly the same age. Paul was a pretty good footballer and in the summer of 1969 he joined a trip to Lemgo in West Germany where he played a few games. I don't think he had ever been abroad before.
When he returned, he kindly gave me a vinyl single he had bought in Lemgo. It was by Donovan and on the A side there was "Atlantis" with the following song on the B side. It's "To Susan on the West Coast Waiting". It imagines an American G.I. in the jungles of Vietnam writing home to his sweetheart from what was such a foolish and futile war. The song is far less well-known than "Catch The Wind"...
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/eoLBb5Q