U.Okay. Folks Icon Donovan on Engaged on Ken Loach’s First Movie

On a latest morning in Cannes, Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan sat over espresso on the Lodge Martinez and recalled a telephone name he acquired practically 60 years in the past, not lengthy after he’d made a splash on the British folks scene. On the opposite finish of the road was a rising screenwriter and director referred to as Ken Loach. “He stated he was making his first characteristic…and would I assist him with the music?” Donovan instructed Selection.

The movie, a kitchen sink drama referred to as “Poor Cow,” primarily based on a novel by British playwright and writer Neil Dunn, tells the story of a working-class single mom main a hard-luck life within the slums of London. It’s a film that set the tone for the kind of social drama that propelled Loach all through a outstanding, prolific profession.

This week on the Cannes Movie Pageant, Loach will bow what he says might be his last movie, “The Outdated Oak,” which premieres Could 26 in competitors for the Palme d’Or — a feat that Donovan describes as “extraordinary” on the tail-end of a profession spanning practically six a long time.

“I actually need to say hi there to Ken,” the singer stated. “I simply needed one thing — even a fast picture with him — and say, ‘Ken, keep in mind after we started? You referred to as me!’”

Donovan is in Cannes this week to advertise “Tales of Aluna,” an animated adventure-comedy collection created by the singer and spouse Linda, which was introduced at a market showcase on Could 22 hosted by Animaze – The Montreal Worldwide Animation Pageant. The story of a musician and his entourage who crash land on a secret, magical island inhabited by a half-spirit, half-human woman and her protector, the collection performs on the ecologically minded Donovan’s lifelong preoccupation with residing in concord with nature.

The singer additionally took half in a dialogue on Could 21 hosted by the American Pavilion, “The Artwork of Film Music,” concerning the profitable enterprise of music licensing for movies and TV reveals. It’s a topic that Donovan can be exploring with a brand new collection of the identical identify that he describes as “a spread speak present filmed within the Metaverse,” which options animated interviews between the Scottish folks icon and different recording artists.

Donovan, who was born in Glasgow, emerged on the U.Okay. folks scene in 1965 and broke out the next yr with the album “Sunshine Superman,” which topped the Billboard chart within the U.S. and reached #2 within the U.Okay. At his induction into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2012, the singer was credited with “singlehandedly initiat[ing] the psychedelic revolution” along with his breakthrough album.

The 77-year-old musician has been licensing songs all through his profession, most just lately in Zach Cregger’s 2022 horror hit “Barbarian,” in a memorable — and jolting — scene the place his 1970 single “Riki Tiki Tava” performs on the automobile radio as Justin Lengthy barrels down a sundrenched stretch of the Pacific Coast Freeway. “When music is in a film, it has a robust impact,” Donovan stated. “It’s a rare component that can be utilized by filmmakers to focus a sure emotion.”

Talking of his collaboration with Loach, the singer stated he hadn’t met the director earlier than working collectively on “Poor Cow,” although he knew of Loach by his BBC tv film “Cathy Come Residence,” a social drama a couple of British lady’s downward slide by her nation’s beleaguered welfare system. That film, stated Donovan, “developed among the traces” of the director’s debut — and impressed him to pen a number of unique songs for the film.

“This was the primary time I’d seen a socially acutely aware filmmaker in that manner,” he stated. “Ken phoned me up significantly, as a result of I feel he [recognized] the socially acutely aware lyrics I used to be introducing to well-liked tune. It might develop into fairly widespread after some time, talking of social points. However once I started in ’64 and ’65, it was all ‘I like you, why’d you make me blue?’” He added: “Once I noticed Ken making these movies, I assumed it was fantastic.”

Donovan contributed three songs to “Poor Cow,” together with “Be Not Too Onerous,” which performs in the course of the movie’s opening sequence and would later be lined by Joan Baez. “It was a protest tune, and that’s what Ken needed — that form of lyric,” stated the singer, who borrowed a number of traces from the poet Christopher Logue as inspiration. Pausing over the breakfast din on the Martinez, he leaned ahead and softly sang the chorus: “Be not too onerous for all times is brief/And nothing is given to man.”

“The Outdated Oak” might be Loach’s 18th movie to premiere on the Cannes Movie Pageant and fifteenth to bow in competitors. He’s one in all solely 9 filmmakers to win the Palme d’Or twice, for “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” (2006) and “I, Daniel Blake” (2016). The director, who turns 87 subsequent month, has introduced his retirement earlier than, most just lately when his gig-economy, social-justice drama “Sorry We Missed You” bowed on the Croisette in 2019. However Loach insists that “The Outdated Oak” might be his curtain name, citing his declining schools resulting from outdated age.