Donovan was the Pied Piper of the counterculture.

A sensitive Celtic folk-poet with an adventurous musical mind, he was a key figure on the British scene during its creative explosion in the mid-sixties. He wrote and recorded some of the decade’s most memorable songs, including “Catch the Wind,” “Sunshine Superman,” “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” and “Atlantis.” He charted a dozen Top Forty hits in the U.S. and a nearly equal number in the U.K.

His songs have been covered by some two hundred artists, notably Jefferson Airplane (“The Fat Angel”), Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, and Stephen Stills (“Season of the Witch”), and the Allman Brothers Band (whose “Mountain Jam” was based on Donovan’s “There Is a Mountain”). Beyond all that, he was a gentle spirit who sang unforgettably of peace, love, enlightenment, wild scenes, and magical visions.