‘Sunshine Superman’: the ultimate hippie love song
Several bands lay claim to inventing psychedelic rock. The Yardbirds had their instrumental “rave-ups” that pushed the boundaries of what a rock band could play on stage; The Beatles had ‘Norwegian Wood’, the first western rock band to feature a sitar on their record. Any Los Angeles-based band from the mid-1960s probably has a claim on it too. However, true innovation in music isn’t just who does it first; it’s who brings it to the top of the charts. With that in mind, the first artist to make a psychedelic hit record was pretty inarguably Donovan.
The man born Donovan Leitch in Maryhill, Glasgow, probably doesn’t get the flowers he deserves when discussing the most beloved songs of the 1960s. When talking about the music of his homeland, his name is understandably overshadowed by the Fabs, The Stones and countless others. When talking folk music of the time, the discussion rarely strays from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez until Joni Mitchell and Neil Young started releasing records later in the decade.
In fact, it was those Dylan comparisons that made him come into his own. At first, Donovan was a serious, literate young folkie. Influenced by Rimbaud and Woody Guthrie, much like the ‘Bobfather’ himself. Once Dylan started rising the ranks to the biggest artist in pop, Donovan realised that if he continued as is, he would never be seen as much more than a discount Dylan.
This led his music to absorb a wider range of influences, such as jazz and Eastern music, and look to the first generation of acid rock bands, like The Byrds. He began writing songs that reflected these impressions with a new collaborator in the form of John Cameron, who was as tapped into these new sounds as Donovan was. However, that would only make up the first half of what inspired Donovan’s breakout hit.
In 1965, Donovan had met and befriended Linda Lawrence, who’d previously been in a relationship with The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones. Donovan fell hard for Lawrence, and their on-again-off-again romance would define the next five years of his romantic life. The time they met, Lawrence reciprocated his feelings but absolutely put her foot down on the prospect of being another pop star’s girlfriend. She instead left for Los Angeles, dreaming of starting her own modelling career.
Speaking to Wall Street Journal, Donovan said that this turn of events left him “miserable but undeterred. Back in London, in the early fall of ’65, I lived above the flat of my manager, Ashley Kozak. Missing Linda, I began to write ‘Sunshine Superman’. As I wrote the words and music, it became an optimistic heartbreak song. Like many of my songs, it expressed hopeful melancholy.” If only we could all rebound from profound heartbreak by writing songs as spectacular as they are influential.
And ‘Sunshine Superman’ was both of those things. A truly colossal hit on both sides of the Atlantic, breaking him in America and fully shedding the Dylan-copyist coat that had been forced on him in his home country. There’s a happy ending for Donovan and Linda, too. It took them a while, but they eventually married in 1970 and have stayed happily together ever since.
