Role Models: A Q&A With Donovan

Do you have a particular technique for songwriting that you practice or preach?

People ask me, “How do you write songs?” I say, “Well, you have to choose three songwriters that you really love, and then you have to learn every song that they have written and practice the structures again and again. And then of the three songwriters, choose three of each of their songs that really move you, and practice them again and again. At the same time, study the ballad forms of the great folk ballads, because these melodies have been known for hundreds of years. And just like Dylan did, and just like I did, make up your own lyrics and put them onto the traditional ballads. You’ll get the rhythm, you’ll get the rhymes and you’ll get the lines.” When you’re studying other genres, you’re down to three of each of your favorites, and they could be very changeable. But when you actually get down to your best three of each, take it down to the next two of each and then down to the one. Now you’ve got your best songs that you love of these three heroes of yours and you’re studying the ballad forms. And you’ve got to do this again and again. If you love it, you’ll do it gladly, but if you feel it’s a push or a chore, you may not become a songwriter. If you become a cobbler and you want to make shoes, you’ve got to learn to follow the form of the foot. Now choose only one of those favorites, and now you’re down to the one song of the great hero that you like. Play that song again and again. One day, you might make a mistake on that song, and it will break through to you that you’ve found another combination of the very chords that you love of your favorite, cause you ain’t gonna learn anything unless you mimic the masters you love. And that one song could lead to your own song, and that’s how it happened to me.

Who were the masters you chose to follow?

Buddy Holly was an obvious [influence] for the real simplistic songs. I would say Carlos Joabim for the chord structures of the Latin songs, and the Beatles, John and Paul together. I practiced a lot of their song forms. So I had jazz, I had Latin. Leonard [Cohen] was a big influence on me to compose in a very special kind of way. One of my kinds of compositions are very Leonard. It’s very easy to practice the Leonard Cohen music forms, because he’s very simplistic. Buddy Holly is a master songwriter. How do you get 10,000 songs out of three chords? It’s impossible when you think about it. The melodies are coming out when you change from one chord to another, because you’re lifting the fingers off, and other strings are making notes. And if you’re playing and watching and listening, out of these structures can come the 10,000 songs.

Are there current artists or songwriters who seem to be working out of the same mold you did?

It was a different world when we came up in the ‘60s. There wasn’t anywhere to go but the blues, jazz and folk. New songwriters have Donovan and the Beatles and Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. They’ve got much more to choose from. I’d say Devendra [Banhart] has the feeling of experimenting with songwriting that I had. But there’s a new artist who just applied in England called Rumer. She actually was a student of mine in the only composition class I’ve ever given in my life. I was listening to her songs, she said she was influenced by me and a little bit of jazz and calypso music. But what I liked about it was the lyrics. So I think a lot of the young writers have been maybe more influenced by the freedom I’ve encouraged them to have in writing about their thoughts. Not just a basic-structure song about a relationship, but to give it some color and to expand it and to take the phrase and create what you’d call in modern art an abstract way of looking at it. Rumer does this.

Do you think it’s possible things might go full circle where the artists you’ve inspired influence you?

I think it all comes when you’re young. Leonard Cohen said he’d only written one song and he only writes about one theme. And, of course, the interviewer laughed and said, “You’re joking, right?” He said, “No. When you begin as an artist, you set a theme, and it’s pretty much your life’s theme.” I was already influenced by Jack Kerouac, William Butler Yeats, Woody Guthrie for the social consciousness, Joan Baez for the extraordinary commitment to presenting songs to the world. And Leonard Cohen influenced me very early to be very concise with a line of a song. He’s so concise, and he keeps it really tight. A new influence that would come along that would influence me would probably be more like an instrumentalist, someone showing a great talent for interpretation of melody. The influence would be not to be like them, but to be encouraged, to continue to be committed to songs and music. David Lynch speaks about catching ideas like fishing, and he calls it “catching the big fish.”

Ideas come from a very deep part inside of us, which meditation takes to you to, but if you’re in a certain state of mind and you’re a songwriter, you can access these ideas, but you have to be in a certain space within yourself. David Lynch says, “The small fish swim on the surface, the big fish are deeper down.” So if you could catch those big fish, other fish will be attracted always to the big fish. I found that sometimes another big fish will come close. I’d have this idea of a melody, and the words would start getting attracted to it. So it’s not that I have to listen anymore to other artists, young or older, to be influenced. It’s all been set when I was young—what I like, what I love and how I feel about songwriting. I’m still fascinated by it, I’ve got a whole new set of songs, I’m wondering whether I’ll go to a record label or just keep it on the website. I think young people are going through the same thing: Where do you put your music these days?