Donovan, we hardly know ye

When I was a sexually confused adolescent in the late 60's, my earliest celebrity crushes were Raquel Welch (I had the poster of her in a dripping wet bathing suit from the movie Fathom on my wall for more years than I will admit) and Donovan. Why Donovan, I don't know--I think there were pictures of him looking snub-nosedly cute and scrawnily bare-chested inside his Greatest Hits album, and his best friend Gypsy Dave looked kind of dangerously hot as well. My interest in Ms. Welch dwindled soon after Kansas City Bomber, but even after my teen crush on Donovan ended, I still enjoyed his music, and songs such as "Sunshine Superman," "Season of the Witch," "Atlantis," and "Goo Goo Barabajagel" remained in heavy rotation over the years on my turntable, tape deck, CD player, and now my iPod.

I am sad to report that his recently published autobiography, subtitled "The Hurdy Gurdy Man," is a massive disappointment. First, it is badly written; I respect the fact that he apparently decided against a ghostwriter, but this book shows why there is a place for ghostwriters in the literary world. The prose is awkward, the chronology is occasionally jumbled (he has Jimi Hendrix performing "Sgt. Pepper" months before the song was released or even written), and the pretension is staggering--apparently, Donovan is the reason for the popularity of folk-rock, Celtic rock, psychedelic rock, and heavy metal; he inspired Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, the Beatles (individually and collectively), the Rolling Stones, and T. Rex, among others; and he thinks he is responsible for the founding of Led Zeppelin (as all the members but Robert Plant played on the "Hurdy Gurdy Man" sessions). Even granting some of the above (he surely made the world safe for T. Rex), he comes off sounding like a rather obnoxious person. He is honest about his drug use, and I respect him for not trying to excuse it away or claim it meant nothing to him, and there is something touching about his story of finally finding the love of his life, Linda, after several years of missed connections. But to make sense of his career and his influence, I will have to wait for someone a bit more objective (and someone who is a more straightforward writer) to issue the definitive book.

Lastly, the book was terribly edited and proofread. There are glaring mistakes of every kind on every page. The names of people such as Allen Klein, Phil Spector, and Steve Winwood, all of whom come up more than once, are misspelled consistently. Sentences are missing the words that would make them grammatical, or even make them make sense. At one point, he mentions the chart positions of some songs, but someone forgot to go back and dig up the chart numbers for a Bob Dylan song, resulting in blank spaces instead of numbers. Considering this came from a major publishing house (St. Martin's) and that the book was originally published in the UK two years ago, leaving plenty of time for corrections to this edition, this is nothing short of shameful. The book is a huge letdown and I cannot recommend it. Instead, go back to his original albums, most of which are available on CD, and listen to his music, most of which holds up quite well. [Now for those of you who stuck with me to the end, here's Ms. Welch!]