The Donovan song that Paul McCartney said is one of his favorites

Formed by Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, The Beatles were certainly the most important band of the 1960s. However, many other artists also changed the course of music during that decade, and some of them, unfortunately, are not as well known as the Fab Four.

One of them is Donovan, who, despite having many hits and an incredible discography, is not as widely recognized as some of his peers. He was a good friend of The Beatles, and Paul McCartney has praised him many times, even revealing one of his favorite songs by the Scottish musician.

The Donovan song that Paul McCartney said is one of his favorites

Their friendship started back in the 60s and Donovan even was the one who taught George, Paul and John how to play the “fingerstyle”, which is a guitar playing technique where the player plucks the strings directly with their fingertips, fingernails, or fingerpicks. Donovan used that technique a lot during his career and it was really useful for the Fab Four especially in their late 60s albums.

It was in an interview with Uncut magazine in 2004, that McCartney revealed which were some of his favorite songs of all time. One of the tracks he mentioned was Donovan’s “Sunny Goodge Street”.

“Britain’s answer to Dylan, this song features intricate playing and lyricism with big, hefty strings,” Paul McCartney said. The song was part of Donovan’s second studio album “Fairytale”, released in 1965.

Donovan’s contribution to The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine”

Although Lennon and McCartney were quite loyal to their songwriting partnership in The Beatles, sometimes they would accept advice from people outside the band. Donovan was one of the musicians who helped Paul to come up with part of the lyrics of “Yellow Submarine”. One day the Beatle appeared at Donovan’s house carrying a guitar and they played together for a while.

The Beatle sang the melody that would later become “Eleanor Rigby” and then “Yellow Submarine”. “Then he said, ‘I’ve got this’. He started singing ‘Yellow Submarine’, at one point he stopped and said: ‘But I don’t have any words for this bit.’ I said, ‘Give me a moment.'”

“I went into the bedroom and came back with: ‘Sky of blue, sea of green, in our yellow submarine.’ He said, ‘That’ll do.’ It was nothing earth-shattering. It wasn’t a new piece of poetry that was going to change the world. All I put in was ‘sky of blue,’ but I felt very proud after that. That’s how it was then. It was a time to share, there was enough time to share,” Donovan told Spinner in 2012.

The Beatles members used to go see Donovan playing live. They famously attended his show at the Royal Albert Hall in 1967. Other famous artists who were there that night were Marianne Faithfull, Small Faces and Steve Winwood.

How Donovan taught “fingerstyle” to the Beatles

Donovan and The Beatles had a lot of things in common, including the desire to learn how to meditate. They even traveled together to India in the 60s. The Scottish musician used to carry a guitar everywhere and his friends from Liverpool eventually asked him about the different technique he was using to play the guitar. “One thing they didn’t learn was the combinations of the folk-blues-classical-flamenco-New Orleans-jazz progressions.

“In India, I sat around playing the guitar. I never stopped. I felt naked if I didn’t have the guitar. Ringo used to say, ‘Donovan, you never stop playing the guitar, do you?’ [laughs] One day, John said, ‘How do you do that? That fingerstyle, that picking. Will you teach me?’ So I showed him and Paul would stand around. He’d steal a look and then he’d walk away into the woods. He was listening. A smart boy, our Paul. And from that, he wrote Blackbird. John came up with Julia and Dear Prudence.”

“George liked the chord progressions. Under that great shadow of John and Paul, he came up with While My Guitar Gently Weeps. It was a great pleasure to pass these styles on. That’s why The White Album is so fantastic… and so acoustic,” Donovan told Music Radar back in 2012.

Donovan was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame back in 2012 by John Mellencamp. He is known for songs like “Atlantis”, “Hurdy Gurdy Man”, “Mellow Yellow”, “Season Of The Witch” and “Sunshine Superman”.