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Hard to believe, I know, but Donovan, that seeming child of faerie, recently turned eighty. He is still performing and only a week or two ago on social media he, or someone speaking on his behalf, trumpetingly denounced as "fake news" the possibility that he might be retiring from performing. 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, on my side at least, like a final farewell to one whose music had once meant a great deal to me.
As I settled into my (very comfortable) seat I was handed 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 the cash I've thrown his way over the years, though I also entertained the unworthy thought that his merch people might have been trying to offload the less well-known albums which hadn't attracted any buyers in the foyer.
A few years ago in this blog I described the experience at a concert at the Royal Festival Hall which first tested my Dono-faith, nevermore to return to my heart with quite such ardency. As I approached a conclusion to the piece, I found myself pulled two ways: he had meant so much, even if he was no longer what he had been. Then, as I searched for the right words to tie a ribbon around the experience of those long years of Dono-fandom, I noticed that his official site had a link to a recent live concert in Germany.
Click.The sound of his guitar had been beautifully captured and, unlike the concert which had caused my disillusion, he seemed able to keep the vibrato in his voice within acceptable levels. Whether or not that had been achieved by some sonic magic known only to the technical crew, I was beguiled enough to break off from writing in order to listen to the whole thing from the start, once again in thrall to a voice which had first called to me in the 1960s.
Shortly before lockdown I booked a ticket for a Donovan concert with a supposed twist at London's Cadogan Hall, near Sloane Square. From the advertising it promised a welcome break from the usual one man presentation as songs old and new, including some oldies with reworked lyrics, were being brought together to say something about climate change and the environment, and on this occasion Donovan was to be backed by a band, which might change his approach.
The gig, like so many, had to be postponed when covid bit, and for a long time it wasn't clear when it might take place; like other ticket holders I was given the option of claiming a refund but decided to hold on, keen to see this new, or at least revivified, minstrelsy.
Eventually the news came that it was about to take place with suitable separation between seats and Donovan playing a second show to accommodate all ticketholders. But we were also informed that lockdown meant that now he would only be playing his usual solo set.
Ah.
Yet even though the element of surprise, the possibility of change, had vanished, for reasons I can't fully explain I still didn't apply for a refund and right up to the day in question I told myself that I had every intention of going ...
But around about four o'clock I thought of the faff of getting to Sloane Square and the inconveniences which came with travelling during lockdown and, more or less at the last minute decided not to go - too late by then, to ask for my money back.
The decision was partly because I knew both concerts were to be streamed live on youtube anyway but partly because I knew that disappointment, to a greater or lesser degree, was almost inevitable.
But why deceive myself right to the last minute? Why throw away around forty quid?
I suppose it's because I felt mean about claiming the money and wanted to make a gesture of some kind, believing that the money, or most of it, would end up in Donovan's pocket. Maybe I also felt guilty about spurning him on the grounds of his great age and 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 them. Although I kept it, I'm afraid that trying to find images on a PC is a lot harder than rummaging through a pile of unsorted snaps in a shoebox, so for the moment you will have to take my word for it that the figure captured by my shaky camera is shadowy, ghostlike - providing a perfect encapsulation of the person giving these two concerts.
Presumably out of practice after that unusual period of inactivity, Donovan seemed to make more stumbles than usual, and to solicit applause rather more forcefully than I remember his doing at the end of most of the songs, the musical equivalent of a magician's "Ta-daaah!" as a white bird flutters out and performer waits for the response he regards as his right. And it had been a mistake on my part to watch both performances, with the same anecdotes, the feathers of the dove (or seagull?) momentarily glimpsed between satin and velvet.
I didn't wish to write about this experience at the time, but had I done so I would also have added that despite the limitations of his performance the two concerts still had a power, if only for the way they served as a reminder of the original recordings and of the quality of the songs themselves as compositions. And, of course, they also reminded me that my own life had been so bound up with the various phases of Donovan's career. I watched dutifully, and not without some pleasure, to the end but determined that that would be my final Dono-concert or concerts, even though I hadn't actually been there.
So why, a few months ago, was I willing to traipse to Richmond, a more time-consuming journey from my part of town than to Cadogan Hall? One answer is that it was a theatre rather than a concert hall I knew there would be a stronger likelihood of comfortable seats - not that I can actually speak for the quality of the Sloane Square venue - and as I had secured a seat at the end of a row there was less likelihood of my legs feeling cramped - a significant consideration as Time marches on.
So off I went 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 Sloane Square, but that was okay: I'd been expecting that. The afternoon - no evening show - passed pleasantly enough, and those who (I imagine) hadn't sat through the show before seemed to enjoy it a great deal. Some songs were less affected by his vocal limitations than others although it seemed to me that the frequently fervent applause was more by way of a salute to a particular song as known from its recording rather than a reaction to the quality of Donovan's performance of it on that afternoon; a truncated Hurdy Gurdy Man was 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.
So essentially the audience, and maybe Donovan himself, were participating in an act of memory. Does he still hear his youthful voice these days when he opens his mouth to sing? In going to such events are we simply celebrating the fact that our idols and ourselves remain alive and connected to those younger people who bought the records as they came out?
But whatever it might mean I went without high expectations and it was okay; I didn't have a heart-thuddingly wonderful time but I didn't have anything else to do 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 a Sunday.
Alright, I didn't, with that more recent gig, experience anything like the excitement I felt as a thirteen year old but the fact of Donovan continuing, armed only with a guitar and those songs of his which had so enriched my life, still seems like a good thing. I made a surreptitious very 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 made it easier to imagine some ideal concert, closer to the records.
As for the tape I bought of the 1972 UCS gig, it was such poor quality I complained about it in a letter to the bootlegger, asking for my money back. He wasn't pleased and berated me over the phone, accusing puny thirteen-year-old me of lying and trying to muscle in on his patch; I can't remember whether I ever got a refund.
Many years later, via the magic of the internet, I was able to hear an mp3 of that long-ago Glasgow gig. 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.
Oh, I hope not: the possibility of a professionally-made recording of the event which is still incapable of awakening in this newly-old me the excitement which my thirteen year old self once felt so easily is not a development I wish to contemplate.
Selected Dono-posts - click on titles:
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