My first Donovan memory is equally down to earth and unreal and leads me back to the old schoolyard at the „Gebrüder Grimm Volksschule“ (no kidding) in the southwest of Dortmund. I got the ball from the left side, and a quick sharp shot let me score a nice, quite cool goal, Reinhold Wosab-style. Afterwards we were sitting on a bench near an old church, my blood brother Mathias turned on his transistor radio… and there it was, Donovan‘s long, long song „Atlantis“. I really don‘t know how these two memories can sit so close to one another, and I doubt it all happened on that same afternoon, but it is true anyways.
In the times thereafter (no other magic involved than young lads with a football and listening to music that kept more promises of worlds to come than the priest‘s sermon in Sunday‘s church) I was always wondering how much I loved the opening spoken word passage of the track, even more so than the melodic counterpoint with its invocation („wayyyy downnnnn…“) of a distant sunken planet. The whipper-snapper greenhorn critic in early action, and for sure, Donovan Leitch kept his place in my heart in the years (and decades) to come.
Some said he was just a kind of Dylan for the poor, or just a soft hippie with a guitar, but they could say what they fucking wanted, I loved that guy, being a soft young hippie without a guitar myself. His hits and some of his early albums from the 70‘s kept company, and in recent years, the wonderfully remastered „Wear Your Love Like Heaven“ is a regular guest on my turntable. The songs there are all so beautiful and always too short, but that‘s probably part of the trick of their never ending attraction.
In my early years as a music journalist, I was often sitting in Thomas Köner‘s home studio in Dortmund, and was a bit surprised when the „drone master“ one day put on „Sutras“ with a big smile on his face, a Donovan album from the 90‘s, produced by Rick Rubin. Thomas was impressed by the beautiful recording of the voice – and the heartfelt elementary impact of the music. There he was again, my hero from schoolyard days. And, no wonder, I‘m now, after all these years, in my recluse in the Black Forest, slowly rushing through the pages of his wonderfully written autobiography. Makes me revisit so many places of my life, catching voices, vistas, faces, kisses, sounds, feelings, and, well, the wind. The book just had to find me. Awesome.