“I still have long hair, which is amazing!” AN AUDIENCE WITH DONOVAN
“The first thing I did was to get out of the pattern called society”
IT’S a crisp winter’s morning in “Sunny South Kensington”, where 53 years or so ago, Donovan was looning down Cromwell Road, mingling with “the girl with the silk Chinese blouse on” and the “fella with a cane umbrella”. Sitting in the lounge of the nearby Gore Hotel today, the singer indulges a little pang of nostalgia. “The memory of that song is clear when I walk in front of the British Museum [now the Natural History Museum],” he says. “Yeah, it all comes back… although you don’t see so many high-strutting young ladies around…” At least Donovan is keeping up boho appearances at 73, his flowing grey locks tied back beneath a purple felt bonnet: “I still have long hair, which is amazing!”
2019 was a busy year for Donovan. As well as releasing an album of Harry Belafonte covers, he oversaw a fulsome blues tribute to Brian Jones, fronted
