Songwriting is a burst of inspiration and then a long bit of work and a tremendous bit of desperation.
— Donovan
I was a virtuoso of all the folk-blues guitar styles by the time I reached 17.
Linda's in all the songs. 'Sunshine Superman,' 'Hampstead Incident,' 'Young Girl Blues'... Linda's the muse.
After having polio, my right leg was weaker, so I wasn't great at football. But I swam lots and even did long-distance running.
The audiences used to say, 'Are you a Donovan fan or a Dylan fan?' It was all very naive, really.
My guitar-playing always included bass lines, melody lines, and rhythm-guitar grooves.
I have amassed an enormous amount of songs about every particular condition of humankind - children's songs, marriage songs, death songs, love songs, epic songs, mystical songs, songs of leaving, songs of meeting, songs of wonder. I pretty much have got a song for every occasion.
When I was a boy, I had a grand, big tape recorder, and I made late-night radio shows with glasses of water and funny voices. I just loved radio plays.
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.
The way I sing my songs leads the listener into a place of introspection, a state of mind that can trigger self-healing and the kind of profound rest you cannot get from sleep alone.
I can't save the world, but if I can share some ideas, people might be able to save themselves.
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.
On the outskirts of the desert in Yemen, there was a cafe with a jukebox that had 'Sunshine Superman' on it. I loved that.
The poet is the voice of the people. And when the poet presents certain ideas, two phrases in one poem can alter a generation's view. So poets have always been feared - and controlled and jailed.
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.
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.
The Faces are my old chums. We used to hang out.
Society may shun bohemia, may put it down, may consider it useless and ineffective, but it is where everything cooks and boils and is created.
I'm in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Jimmy Page gave me the MOJO Maverick award. I got an Ivor Novella Award for my very first song.
A writer without a pen would be like a duck without water!
I feel strongly that having a disability in one area makes you explore others instead.
Any nobody from the folk blues world could avoid being influenced by Woody Guthrie, who is actually of Scottish-Irish ancestry.
'Superman' had nothing to do with the superhero or physical power. It's a reference to the book 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra,' by Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote about the evolution of consciousness to reach a higher superman state.
I went on the Andy Williams show, the Smothers Brothers show, and maybe I shouldn't have. But regrets - I don't think I have any.
My father brought me up to be a socialist.
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.
In the 1960s, I was convinced that the world was extremely mentally ill.
Sometimes the songs just come to me. I don't sit down to write like you'd sit down to make a pair of boots.
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.
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.
In bohemian circles, we were very aware that poetry was missing from popular culture.
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.'
I have always just experimented, and I come from a very ancient, acoustic root. It was very hard to put a finger on me.
What I needed and actually need is a discipline of tradition, which is lacking in our civilization. Discipline of tradition and the ceremony of humbleness.
The 'Bohemian Manifesto' represents those that actually have to step out of society because they cannot join, but then they become the saviors of society because they create the actual possibilities of change.
My father was a part of that generation, and my mother, too - the late-'30s, early-'40s big-band generation. Frank Sinatra, Art Blakey, Gene Krupa, Billie Holiday - all that stuff was in my background.
I've been vegetarian for many years and only eat fish if I have to.
Having had polio never held me back as I got older. Although having one leg smaller than the other isn't much fun, I could always get about without any trouble. Luckily, in the music industry, everyone was only interested in my singing and playing and not the size of my legs.
'Sunshine Superman' was a pioneering work that for the first time presented a fusion of Celtic, jazz, folk, rock, and Indian music as well as poetry.
I first met Linda Lawrence in March 1965 in the green room of 'Ready Steady Go!,' the British pop TV show. Linda was a friend of one of the co-hosts. She had an art-school vibe, and after a brief conversation, I asked her to dance to a soul record playing. As we jazz danced, I fell in love.
The songs I write are about searching, and they're ambiguous - always to be understood in different ways.
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.
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.
The songs I write and sing try to say important things with a lightness.
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.
All of us '60s pop stars came from old cities which had a jazz club, a folk club, a coffee house, and an art school.
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.
The similarity between my music and The Beatles' music is it has within it a very positive quality. It's woven with humor.
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.
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.
