Chart entered : 25 March 1965
Chart peak : 4
Number of hits : 10
A small personal connection here which I still can't quite get my head round. His daughter Astrella lived in Littleborough for a time in the nineties while she was with Happy Mondays' Paul Ryder and at least one of his kids went to the pre-school playgroup my mum ran. Astrella used to pick them up so my mum got to know her, no doubt regarding her as just another mother with an odd name rather than a rock chick .
Donovan Leitch was born in Glasgow in May 1946. The family moved to Hertfordshire in 1956. He inherited his love of folk music from his parents. After leaving school he enrolled for art college but dropped out to pursue a bohemian lifestyle. He joined the St Albans folk and blues scene and learned finger picking techniques from Keith "Mac" Macleod who he acknowledges as the biggest influence on his career. As soon as he emerged he was greeted with accusations of being a Dylan clone but Mac who introduced Donovan to much of the folk canon says they were both listening to the same things , Woody Guthrie , Rambling Jack Elliott and so they would sound similar.
Donovan began writing his own songs and was signed up by Pye in late 1964. "Catch The Wind" was his first single. It's a poetic expression of desire for an unattainable woman set to two interlocking acoustic guitar lines with humming strings in the background to fill the sound up. I prefer it to his later flower power anthems but even here his mannered voice is grating especially the way he declines to pronounce the final consonant at the end of every line so he's actually singing "catch the win".
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