Donovan To Be Named BMI Icon

Donovan will be given the BMI Icon Award at this year's annual London Awards, set for Tuesday, October 6 at the Dorchester Hotel. The awards recognize the U.K. and European songwriters and publishers associated with Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) whose songs received the most airplay in the past year in the U.S.

The Icon Award is given to those songwriters who have "bestowed a unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers." Donovan had 11 consecutive top forty hits in the late-60's and his music continues to be played regularly. While BMI collects his royalties for U.S. airplay, he is actually a member of the British rights society, PRS.

Also being given that night are the Robert S. Musel Award to the writer and publisher of the most played BMI licensed song of last year along with their "Million-Air" certificates which go to songs that have achieved three million or more "spins" on U.S. radio.

In a press release, BMI had the following to say about Donovan:

Donovan is a master of poignant simplicity. Capable of evoking passionate idealism and freewheeling emotion in a single word or chord, he transformed popular music in the 1960s and went on to build a legendary career. Donovan enjoyed a three week residency on UK music programme Ready Steady Go without even releasing a single, and then proceeded to generate considerable radio success for the rest of the decade with 11 consecutive Top 40 hits, including Mellow Yellow, Sunshine Superman, Wear Your Love Like Heaven, There Is a Mountain, Lalena, Epistle to Dippy, Atlantis, Hurdy Gurdy Man, and Jennifer Juniper, all of which he wrote alone. While Jennifer Juniper has generated more than 1 million performances, Mellow Yellow has earned more than 2 million and Sunshine Superman has garnered almost 3 million performances.

His compositions have also resurfaced in hit films and television series including Goodfellas, Election, Dumb and Dumber, Rushmore, The Simpsons, Nip/Tuck, Ugly Betty, Clueless, Boys on the Side, Murphy Brown, My Name is Earl and Dancing with the Stars. Donovan’s songs have successfully been included in various advertising campaigns, notably the G.E. commercial for Wind Energy, in which the inclusion of his song Catch the Wind was highly praised.

He was profoundly influential on the Beatles, becoming one of an elite handful of artists who collaborated on songs with the band. In 1965, Catch the Wind earned an Ivor Novello Award for best contemporary folk song, marking the first time the honor was bestowed on an artist’s debut single. Donovan received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from University of Hertfordshire in 2003, and in 2009, he became Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters from the Minister of Culture, France, and garnered the American Visionary Art Museum Baltimore’s prestigious Grand Visionary Award. A man not only of unfathomable talent but of rare conviction as well, he is a well-known proponent and student of Transcendental Meditation and leads the musical wing of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. Hard at work on a new album entitled Ritual Groove, Donovan plans to tour continuously through 2010.