Donovan - Hurdy Gurdy Man
In a post guaranteed to make even the most eternally youthful feel as old as canned goods from a WWII bomb shelter, we've got the 80th birthday of a real windcatcher here to end one week and start another.
This guy has had quite a life too.
This tape I worked on, from the mid Eighties, has a dozen moments in it where you can tell.
His between song patter alone is worth the price of admission, like when he's introducing one of his signature songs, Hurdy Gurdy Man.
Example: "When I wrote this song, there were four Beatles, a Beach Boy.... and Mia Farrow."
He then goes on to describe sitting in the Maharishi's lair with George Harrison and a guitar, and how George volunteered a verse that he didn't end up putting in the final lyrics. "Would you like to hear George's verse?" he asks the audience, mystically.
The whole hour and a half is kind of a crash course in what it sounds like when an old hand places an audience into the palm of his, and keeps them right there.
So yeah! Do you feel old yet? Donovan -- last name, Leitch, father of Ione Skye, 1960s trippy folk boffin seen chasing Bob Dylan around England in Don't Look Back -- is 80 today.
As I write this I wonder what a hippie trippy Sixties icon like Don must feel about everything that's been going on in the world these days.
I'd imagine it's somewhat like how he must feel about that YouTube video I watched the other day, that ranked Hurdy Gurdy Man -- possibly the most benign, peacefeelingly psychedelic '60s anthem of all time -- as having the distinction of being the scariest use ever of a pop song -- the kids call these "needledrops" now -- in a major motion picture.
Anyway he was born this day in Glasgow in 1946 as a charter Baby Boomer, so in honor of that milestone I rebrewed this 90 minutes from the old Catalyst in Santa Cruz, using the infamous AI splitter tool to separate the vocal from the guitar a little better, because there was originally a lot of boomy bleed betwixt the two. Which I manually fixed over a whole day's work, because AI doesn't do that part... and I wouldn't trust it to regardless!
Donovan
The Catalyst
Santa Cruz, California, USA
11.13.1985
01 Josie
02 Isle of Islay
03 Catch the Wind
04 The Lullaby of Spring
05 Sunshine Superman
06 Brother Sun, Sister Moon
07 Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)
08 Happiness Runs
09 Lalena
10 Hurdy Gurdy Man
11 Donovan talks about Czechoslovakia
12 Living On Love
13 Mellow Yellow
14 Little Tin Soldier
15 There Is a Mountain
16 Jennifer Juniper
17 Atlantis
18 Season of the Witch
Total time: 1:29:05
disc break goes after Track 08
Tracks 01-13 & 17-18: late set
Tracks 14-16: early set
Donovan Leitch - guitar, harmonica & vocals
4-channel cassette masters, matrixing 2 channels from the soundboard and 2 stage mics
de/remuxed for slightly better balance, edited & remastered by EN, May 2026
506 MB FLAC/direct link
506 MB FLAC/direct link
I'd like to think this was one of those shows I really improved sonically, and I feel I got it good and crispy minus the muddy lows, as they can often get with these guy-and-a-guitar singer/songwriter types. All throughout eternity, the crying of humanity etc etc.
I kid, I kid. Donovan is a survivor and like I was saying, he's led a lifetime most people would dismiss as exaggerated lore out of some sort of fictive fantasy, but which for him was just 1946 until this moment and beyond!--J.
there goes the roly poly man
he's singing songs of love