Donovan Quotes

Donovan

Profession : Musician

Birth : May 10, 1946

The Faces are my old chums. We used to hang out.

Donovan

Honors and awards are very interesting, and I truly accept them. I have very high regard for what they mean. What they mean is that they're pointing to the work.

Donovan

My particular space has always been quite unique in popular music. I have a background in R&B and hard rock and straight pop, but I never went all the way with any of those genres.

Donovan

It seems to be very clear that each new generation that comes - not only audiences but young bands as well - are very encouraged and enthused and inspired by my work.

Donovan

I already had top 10 records before 'Sunshine Superman,' with 'Catch the Wind' and 'Colors,' but this was a real breakthrough for me. It was a consciousness change for songwriting, as people are now saying I initiated the psychedelic revolution with this album, 'Sunshine Superman.'

Donovan

Before, it had been fame, and then super-fame came. And then it became super-super-fame. One loses one's personal life, really; you're recognized everywhere. But I embraced that.

Donovan

The similarity between my music and The Beatles' music is it has within it a very positive quality. It's woven with humor.

Donovan

In bohemian circles, we were very aware that poetry was missing from popular culture.

Donovan

Part of being a pop star is image. I'm told by many of my female fans that I was the poster on their bedroom walls. But if I only had that - the image and the beauty and the curly locks - I would have been a 'normal' pop star, one who comes and goes after one hit record.

Donovan

Coming from art school, I had a great sense of style - as did The Beatles and the Stones - and I enjoyed projecting that. Image, attitude, great music and great lyrics - that was the '60s.

Donovan

On the outskirts of the desert in Yemen, there was a cafe with a jukebox that had 'Sunshine Superman' on it. I loved that.

Donovan

In 1968, I bought a 114-foot yacht, built in 1946, and lived on the Greek islands for a while. We had an extraordinary time in it. Then I gave it to The Beatles.

Donovan

I've exhibited quite a few of my photographs. I expand them digitally till they're very big. It's an art school thing, I suppose.

Donovan

I think of myself as a poet. I grew up with poetic influences - what I know from my background is the bardic poetry, which came down through oral tradition.

Donovan

The songs I write and sing try to say important things with a lightness.

Donovan

I am so highly skilled that when I pick up a phrase and then pick up my guitar, a form comes out almost immediately - a song - and once I start, I have to finish it.

Donovan

I think my legacy is important because my songs - perhaps more than those of any other songwriter I know - cover every movement from 1965 on, socially and artistically. If you want songs about ecology, I've got ecology songs; if you want songs about spirituality, I've got spiritual songs.

Donovan

I didn't know until later, but my uncle was quite a famous bohemian in Glasgow, and he played guitar. My father was a kind of a poetic bohemian, and he read me poetry.

Donovan

In England, we'd leave school at 15 and go on to a college, and I went to further education in a town called Welling Garden City. I fully immersed myself in bohemia there, which included poetry and modern art, jazz, philosophy, social radicalism.

Donovan

My father brought me up to be a socialist.

Donovan