Donovan: Please Don't Bend (My Heart)

Donovan Leitch's stories are so coherent and uncomplicated that, in an infantile way, they partake in our dreams but, when psychical activity in his lyrics gets complicated and mystical and the Scotsman starts chanting mantras, it conjures up visions of The Tillerman who, after his beef with Christ, dabbled in eastern mysticism and traversed into the seventh century.

The antidote for a journeyman about to enroll in a religious school is simply to engage the bibles of KoRn, Thousand Foot Krutch and Puddle of Mud, in order to locate his bearings.

A Scotswoman artist assured me that, although her Hurdy Gurdy countryman is not likely to time-travel or close his gem box to his fans, his administration has become a bone of his contention.

Where are the signs I wondered, because the stripped-out Sutras released 1996 sounds as fresh as grass under an open sky. She replied that it was Celtia that would have been his last in 2004 if not for the slew of numbers hijacked by the administration before release, leaving just one gem - Everlasting Sea - surviving in the 1996 offering. Scotswoman added that Celtia was actually due in 1990 before Sutras was even mooted, thus making good sense of the opening track.

Please Don’t Bend (My Heart) is a polished folk strain of pleading and question with an elegant acoustic treatment of a pleader who spills his heart out to those who are 'bending' it.

Artists are vulnerable to capitalism and meanderings of the administration and vintage Donovan is no different. In the Hurdy Gurdy Man, "you can kill the revolutionary but you can't kill the revolution."

Words, Videography - Tommy Peters  (on YouTube)

(The clip was made on a Mac with CoverVersion's Cuboid and Screenflow)