
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Donovan talks about his psychedelic revolution inspiring 1966 album Sunshine Superman.
Series in which leading performers and songwriters talk about the album that made them or changed them.
Recorded in front of a live audience at the BBC's iconic Maida Vale Studios, each edition includes two episodes - the A-side and B-side.
In the A-side, Donovan talks to John Wilson.
Sunshine Superman, according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 'ignited the psychedelic revolution virtually single-handedly' when it was released in the summer of 1966.
It was Donovan’s breakthrough third album and a radical departure from his previous work.
Born in Glasgow, Donovan Phillips Leitch grew up listening to his father reading him poetry and his family singing Scots Irish folk music. He began playing guitar when he was 14 and was 18 when he had his first hit, Catch the Wind. A year later he began work on the album that first introduced meditation, Celtic mythology and Flower Power to the world.
Creating a unique fusion of classical, jazz, folk, pop, Celtic, Latin and Indian music, the album veered from the LA-influenced The Trip and The Fat Angel (written for Mama Cass) to the medieval tinged Guinevere and Legend of a Girl Child Linda (written for Brian Jones’ ex-girlfriend Linda Lawrence who became Donovan’s life-long muse and wife). Linda is also the Sunshine Super-Girl of the song Sunshine Superman which topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and featured a young Jimmy Page on lead guitar.
In the B-side of the programme, it's the turn of the audience to ask the questions.
Producer: Clare Walker
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2016.
By BBC Radio 44.2
2222 ratings
Donovan talks about his psychedelic revolution inspiring 1966 album Sunshine Superman.
Series in which leading performers and songwriters talk about the album that made them or changed them.
Recorded in front of a live audience at the BBC's iconic Maida Vale Studios, each edition includes two episodes - the A-side and B-side.
In the A-side, Donovan talks to John Wilson.
Sunshine Superman, according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 'ignited the psychedelic revolution virtually single-handedly' when it was released in the summer of 1966.
It was Donovan’s breakthrough third album and a radical departure from his previous work.
Born in Glasgow, Donovan Phillips Leitch grew up listening to his father reading him poetry and his family singing Scots Irish folk music. He began playing guitar when he was 14 and was 18 when he had his first hit, Catch the Wind. A year later he began work on the album that first introduced meditation, Celtic mythology and Flower Power to the world.
Creating a unique fusion of classical, jazz, folk, pop, Celtic, Latin and Indian music, the album veered from the LA-influenced The Trip and The Fat Angel (written for Mama Cass) to the medieval tinged Guinevere and Legend of a Girl Child Linda (written for Brian Jones’ ex-girlfriend Linda Lawrence who became Donovan’s life-long muse and wife). Linda is also the Sunshine Super-Girl of the song Sunshine Superman which topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and featured a young Jimmy Page on lead guitar.
In the B-side of the programme, it's the turn of the audience to ask the questions.
Producer: Clare Walker
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2016.

7,877 Listeners

1,074 Listeners

5,576 Listeners

1,801 Listeners

1,766 Listeners

1,041 Listeners

2,097 Listeners

1,960 Listeners

425 Listeners

346 Listeners

295 Listeners

40 Listeners

216 Listeners

46 Listeners

4,107 Listeners

46 Listeners

1,993 Listeners

21 Listeners

3,215 Listeners

790 Listeners

1,014 Listeners

79 Listeners

41 Listeners

3,875 Listeners