RE: The Sensual World, and Donovan

["Forward, Jonathan" <JForward@sitgbsd1.telstra.com.au>]

>  From: jgower@mtholyoke.edu
>  Subject: The Sensual World, and Donovan
>  Date: Saturday, 19 October 1996 12:32AM
>
[snip]
>
> On another topic, I know that Kate did a version of Donovan's "Lord of
> the Reedy River". I am a big fan of Donovan also. Does Kate acknowledge
> anywhere any influence or any special enthusiasm for Donovan's work, or
> was this just a one-shot off-the-wall thing? Just curious.
>
> Jeff

Taken from 'The Garden' by Andrew Marvick - Kate's second radio interview
with Paul Gambaccini from December 1980 (bracketed comments are Andrew's):

'     Well here's a man who grew popular with his images and his
unusual voice, 'cause in the selections you played both last time
and today I know you love the use of the human voice as an instrument.
The man I'm talking about is Donovan.
     "Yeah, Donovan has got the most beautiful voice--that very slow
vibrato that people like Cliff Richard can put on; but [Donovan] has it
very naturally. I mean he sings like this all the time. And again, he's
an incredible songwriter, lyric writer, he can play the guitar and he
has that fantastic voice. And it seemed that he'd got really caught up
in the copying of Dylan when he first signed up and was singing. And he
was wearing the hats and he was carrying the guitar and everyone
thought he was just a Dylan copy. When in fact he wasn't at all. And it
seems that he's just, um, been forgotten, he's gone under."
      It's unbelievable. He was one of Britain's leading, hit-making
solo stars of the Sixties and a great international artist. And now
it's almost as though he'd never existed.
     "It's ridiculous. I can't stand to see that happen to people,
especially someone like him. Um, one of my favourite albums of his is
H.M.S. Donovan-- which I think has been deleted now, which is even more
ridiculous. And it's beautiful: fantastic illustrated cover; a double
album, and each song is either a fairy story or something he's written
to other people's words. He's used Blake's poems, he's used some Lewis
Carroll--a big selection of fantasy stuff. And one of my favourite
tracks from there, which he actually wrote himself to his own music, is
Lord of the Reedy River.
      [ The record is played. Donovan actually performed this song well
before recording it for H.M.S. Donovan. He appears in the 1968 film If
It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, singing this song to his own guitar
accompaniment. Of course, Kate herself recorded this song, and put it
out as the b-side of the Sat In Your Lap single in 1981. A rumour
persists that Donovan actually contributed a bit of backing vocal on
Kate's track, though this has not been confirmed.]
     Donovan, and Lord of the Reedy River. I suppose--
     "...so beautiful..."
 --all it would take would be one or two really good tracks and--
     "Ah, but he's got them, you know, that's the silly thing, he's got
so many good tracks. I think that song there too, is so essential
and erotic. And you know no-one's even heard of it--incredible. I mean
if you put a bit of film to that...what a fantastic..."
     Most people don't realise that most of his hit records were
produced by Mickie Most.
     "I didn't realise that either, no."
     There's another track of his that you like alot, a b-side.
     "Yes. Uh, it was the b-side of [indecipherable], called Mr. Wind
[I am unsure that this is what she says here]. What I liked about it
was he was using 'Vari-Speed', Um, he was using very low voices and
very high voices [Kate imitates these--precious audio unfortunately not
transcribable] all mixed in together: Mr. Wind spoke like this! And all
the people that he woke up in the morning spoke like this! [Laughs] And
it was beautiful; it was just a really fun track putting a different
speed to the voices of the various characters. And it was really
fabulous for kids, uh, you know? I...I wish there
had been more." '


TSB