The rise and fall of British singer Donovan's career and popularity paralleled that of the 1960s counterculture. In the dreamy world of the late 1960s, the exotic and popular performer personified the earthly flower child. Appearing simultaneously wide-eyed and cynical, a little silly yet nobody's fool, and an intensely commercial hippie, he seemed to embrace antithetical categories in popular

culture. For five years between 1965 and 1970, he lived so close to the cutting edge of each new trend that it almost seemed as if he had initiated them. Then, with shocking rapidity, he became irrelevant, discarded—like the counterculture—by critics and audiences alike as passé and/or uncool. Yet, for a singer so identified with that specific time and world view, his best songs never lost either their catchiness or their ability to charm.

Donovan Leitch was...