Summer day reflections on two socially distanced Leitch gatherings

Donovan, that seeming child of faerie, recently turned eighty. He is still performing and only a week or two ago on social media trumpetingly denounced as "fake news" the possibility of his retiring. At the time of writing his most recent concert was four days ago, in Cork; another, in Galway, is scheduled for October.

I don't think I'll be buying a ticket should he ever venture to England again, but I'm glad I went to see him a few months ago at Richmond Theatre; it felt like a final farewell to one whose music had once meant a great deal to me.

Settling into my (very comfortable) seat an usher handed me a Donovan CD. Possibly this happened to everybody - I was rather late in arriving, so don't know - but for a moment it felt like a "thank you" from the veteran troubadour himself, a way of acknowledging all the cash I must have thrown his way over the years, though later I did entertain the unworthy thought that his merch people might have been trying to offload copies of the less well-known albums which hadn't attracted many buyers in the foyer.

A few years ago in these pages I described my disappointment at a 2004 Dono-concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the first experience to test my Dono-faith, nevermore to resume residence in my heart with the same ardency. As I finished that piece, I found myself being pulled two ways: he had meant so much, even if he was no longer what he had been. Then, still searching for the precise words with which to tie a ribbon neatly around the experience of those long years of fandom, I noticed that his official site had a link to a live concert in Germany ...

Click.

The sound of his guitar had been beautifully captured on this occasion and, unlike the concert which had led to my disillusion, he seemed able to keep the vibrato in his voice within acceptable levels: he was still audibly older but it worked; whether or not that restraint had been aided by some sonic magic known only to the Teutonic technical crew, I was beguiled enough to break off from writing in order to listen, in thrall once again to the voice which had first called to me in the 1960s.

Shortly before lockdown I booked a ticket for a Donovan concert, partly because of the encouraging sound of that German online gig but mostly because of the forthcoming show's supposed twist: the advertising promised a welcome break from the usual one-man greatest hits presentation as songs old and new, including some oldies with reworked lyrics, were being brought together because they were all thematically related to climate change and the environment and - crucially, as far as I was concerned - Donovan was to be backed on this occasion by a band. 

The gig, at London's Cadogan Hall, was postponed when covid hit, and for a long time it wasn't clear when it would be rescheduled. Like other ticket holders I was given the option of claiming a refund but decided not to forego the prospect, however distant, of revivified minstrelsy. 

Eventually, some months later, a date was announced; as there had to be suitable separation between seats Donovan would be playing two shows in order to accommodate all those who had stuck with their tickets ... But we were also informed that the lockdown restrictions which had imposed that condition also meant that he would now only be playing his usual solo set. 

Ah.

Yet even though the element of surprise had vanished, for reasons I can't fully explain I still didn't apply for a refund, and right up to the day, almost the hour, in question told myself that I had every intention of going ... 

Around about four o'clock, however, I thought to myself of the faff of getting to Sloane Square, the inconveniences which came with travelling during lockdown, and finally decided not to go - too late by then, of course, to ask for any money back. 

The decision was partly because I knew both concerts were to be streamed live on YouTube anyway, so I could see the Don without the schlepping but partly because I knew that disappointment, to a greater or lesser degree, was almost inevitable - and would the experience of actually being there, seeing him in the flesh, really make that much of a difference to my experience?

But why deceive myself right up to the last minute? Why throw away around forty quid? 

I suppose it's because I felt mean about claiming the money (especially as "your ticket plants a tree", according to the promotional material) and wanted to make a gesture of some kind, to thank Donovan for his work as a whole, his late diminution a minor detail. Maybe I felt guilty, too, about seeming to spurn him on the grounds of diminished powers. 

That said, I did watch both concerts live on YouTube via my TV screen, taking a single, very blurry, shot of Donovan in action during the transmission. Although I kept that jpeg, trying to find images on my PC is a whole lot harder than rummaging through a pile of unsorted snaps in a shoebox, so you will have to take my word for it that the figure flitting past my shaky camera appears shadowy, ghostlike: a perfect encapsulation, in fact, of the person giving these two concerts.

Out of practice, I presume, after that enforced period of inactivity, Donovan seemed to make a few more stumbles than usual, though his schtick appeared to be more forceful than before as he solicited applause at each number's end with a crude guitar flourish, the musical equivalent of a magician's "Ta-daaah!" as a white bird flutters out and the occult operative pushes for the response he regards as his by right. To make matters worse, it had been a mistake on my part to watch the two performances back to back: the same anecdotes cropped up, the feathers of the dove (or seagull?) evident beneath the satin and velvet.

Yet despite the limitations of his performance the two concerts still had an undeniable power, even if that was mainly to serve as a reminder of the vigour and directness of the original recordings and the sheer quality, the poetic concision, of the songs themselves. The shows also served as a reminder that my own life, and doubtless the lives of countless others, had been bound up with the various phases of Donovan's career. I watched dutifully, though not without some pleasure along the way, to the bitter end but determined there and then that that would be my final Dono-concert or concerts, my last dip into his diamond-studded sea, even though I hadn't got my actual feet wet. 

So why, a few months ago, was I willing to traipse to Richmond, a more time-consuming journey from my part of town than Sloane Square? One answer is that the venue was a theatre rather than a concert hall and I anticipated a stronger likelihood of securing comfortable seats - not that I can actually speak for the quality of Cadogan Hall's furnishing - and as I had secured a seat at the end of a row there was little likelihood of my legs feeling cramped - a significant consideration as Time marches on. 

So off I went on the day to find the theatre fairly full and the audience - far from all being oldies like me - warm and receptive to the figure in the spotlight onstage. I recognised the same anecdotes as the Sloane Square stream, but that was okay: I'd been expecting that. The afternoon - no evening show - passed pleasantly enough, and those younger people who (I imagine) hadn't sat through the Dono-schtick before seemed to enjoy it as much as the seasoned Donofans. Some songs were less affected by his vocal limitations than others although it seemed to me that the more fervent applause tended to be more by way of a salute to a particular song as known from its hit recording than a response to the quality of Mr Leitch's performance on that particular afternoon, a truncated Hurdy Gurdy Man being a case in point. Donovan did say that he was condensing some songs in order to get all the audience's favourites in, which smacked to me of Chuck Berry (according to Frank Skinner) telling one audience: "If we do a bit of each one we'll get more done" - which is, as Mr Skinner opined, a lovely way to treat your legacy.

But I was glad I went, even if we, the audience - led by Donovan himself - were essentially collaborating in an act of memory, a summoning-up of past happinesses. (I suspect that, despite the aural evidence to the contrary, our medium continued to hear his youthful voice whenever he opened his mouth to sing to us.) And,even if  a Donovan concert is no longer the sublime aesthetic experience it might once have been, making the effort to attend seemed worthwhile. Whatever else we might be doing in showing up at such events we are celebrating our continuing survival: the fact that we remain alive and therefore connected, however tenuously, to those younger people who bought the records as they came out and that young, lantern-jawed man who wove the spells.

In short, I went without high expectations and passed the time agreeably enough; I didn't have a heart-thuddingly wonderful time but I didn't have anything else to do that day and it was a pleasant enough way of spending a Sunday afternoon - just as the very first Dono-gig I ever attended, a UCS Benefit Concert which he headlined at Green's Playhouse in Glasgow, had taken place on the same day around the same time.

And even though I didn't, with that more recent gig, experience anything like the excitement I once felt as a thirteen year old the fact of Donovan continuing into his eighties, armed only with a guitar and those songs of his which had so enriched my life, seems like a good thing. 

I made a surreptitious, lo-fi recording with my mp3 player's voice recorder; the sound was muzzy and not much better than the bootleg cassette which I purchased after the 1972 Glasgow gig.

I listened to it - the Richmond Concert - only once. It was comforting, the poor sound quality making it easier to imagine some ideal concert, closer to the records, in its stead.

As for the cassette I bought of the 1972 UCS gig, it was such poor quality I actually sent it back to the bootlegger after he had had the temerity to send me a Christmas card saying "Hope you enjoyed the tape!" He wasn't pleased that I wanted my money back and berated me over the phone, accusing puny thirteen-year-old me of lying and trying to muscle in on his patch; can't remember whether I ever got a refund.

Many years later, via the magic of the internet, I was able to hear that long-ago Glasgow gig again. The audio quality was on a par with that terrible cassette so may well have come from the same source. Is there an alternative, superior recording of the concert somewhere out there? Probably not, or it would have surfaced by now. 

In fact, I hope not: I'd rather not face the possibility of a professionally-made recording of the event which is still incapable of awakening in this newly-old me the excitement of the thirteen year old.

Selected Dono-posts - click on titles:

 The TRUE story of how I fell out of love with Donovan

 Of Lame and Pregnant Ducks: Donovan's UCS Benefit Concert