PopSyndicate.com

An excellent documentary on the Hurdy Gurdy Man

When filmmaker Hannes Rossacher took on the project to make a retrospective of Donovan Leitch’s (simply known as Donovan to his adoring fans) life, he may not have been aware of how large a task he was undertaking. The result is a 2 DVD set with over 5 hours of interviews, concerts, videos and TV show appearances.

The collection is called Sunshine Superman: The Journey of Donovan, and what a journey it is, told by Donovan, himself, the DVD is an autobiography that includes a few interviews here and there: George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Linda Leitch, David Lynch and others. There are also a handful of old films showing Donovan in India with the Maharishi, alongside The Beatles, Mike Love (The Beach Boys) and other followers of the man who taught the Pop music world about meditation; footage of Donovan and Gypsy Dave traversing the European countryside in the ‘60s; some entertaining footage of Donovan and Bob Dylan hanging out when they first met and were being compared (This contains the only scene in which there is a curse word out of the entire 5 hours of content).

The chronological journey that the poetic Scotsman takes the viewer through is concise, articulate and gives good insight into the world of the beatniks & flower power. It shows his quick rise into Pop stardom not to mention a very personal and close-up look at this traveling troubadour and romanticist. Being a fan of his music, I’ve always enjoyed Donovan’s lyrics and experimentation with instruments on his recordings, not to mention some of the extraordinary studio musicians (three members of the future Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck and some Jazz greats). I had never really seen any live performance footage, and there is plenty of that on these discs, and I had never realized how talented and accomplished of a guitarist Donovan really is.

Disc 1 is Donovan’s history and lasts 3 hours. Disc 2 is an additional 2 hours and 15 minutes. It includes extended versions of some of the interviews from disc one, including an interesting discussion with his guitar maker, Danny Ferrington and a more in-depth look at his Joshua Tree era and Gram Parsons, the man probably most responsible for making Country music capable of blending over with Rock music - which would eventually lead to crossover bands such as The Eagles.

The second disc also has a lot of music videos, some of which are bit misleading just looking at the title because it may be a name such as “wear Your Love Like Heaven” or “In An Old Fashion Picture Book” but turns out to be 3 or 4 songs presented as a short film by the title. Basically, the viewer is getting a lot of cool extra bonus material.

There are also entire live performances, some that are current, which are briefly shown during interviews on the first disc but presented in their full-length versions on this disc, unreleased songs, including the beautiful “Olive Tree,” and then a private look at Donovan. This includes some of his art, his basement and archive collection, his recently deceased father reciting poetry, a family photo album (with or without captions) his acceptance of the Maharishi Award, his Doctor of Letters from the Saint Albans Cathedral (2003) and the Donovan University opening along with his benefactor, director David Lynch.

Sunshine Superman: The Journey of Donovan is widescreen, in English and only contains Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound. There are no subtitles, but as mentioned, there are captions for the photo album. The documentary also conveniently leaves out the fact that Donovan was in the studio next to Alice Cooper during the recording of his Billion Dollar Babies album and participated in some background vocals. Maybe they didn’t want to break the idealism of the ultimate Flower Child participating on an album from the Father of Shock Rock. The directing, cinematography of the modern footage and pacing are very well done. Rossacher should definitely be up for an award for his work on this documentary and, at the very least, extremely proud of the end result. So spend an afternoon or two taking a trip through the past with Donovan.

5