Hurdy Gurdy Man
Donovan's 1968 hit, rebuilt by Hillage and Todd Rundgren with a real fifteenth-century hurdy-gurdy, and one of his most played songs.
Steve Hillage, from L (1976)
- Written by
- Donovan
- Released
- March 1977 (single, edited)
- Producer
- Todd Rundgren
- Length
- 6:32
- Album
- L
Donovan recorded Hurdy Gurdy Man in April 1968 and took it to number four in Britain and five in America. Hillage's version opens L. One account, drawing on his 2016 box-set notes, traces the idea to an afternoon on a Gong tour in May 1975 when he played a hurdy-gurdy in a Lyon workshop that built them and was taken with its drone. On the album Sonja Malkine plays a fifteenth-century instrument, Utopia supply the band, and the song runs straight into Hurdy Gurdy Glissando.
Edited to three minutes, it was a single in 1977 but did not chart. On stage it was second only to The Salmon Song in his sets, usually introduced by an arpeggiated piece called Castle in the Clouds, as on Live Herald, and it has been played from Hyde Park in 1976 to the 2023 tour. The upload in the hypersongs web is the 2006 remaster of the full album version.
Covers and versions
- Donovan (1968) the original
More songs by Steve Hillage
Solar Musick Suite, It's All Too Much, Motivation, Searching for the Spark, Unidentified (Flying Being)
Sources
- Hurdy Gurdy Man, Wikipedia
- Hurdy Gurdy Man by Steve Hillage, Music Aficionado (2017-07-18)
- Hurdy Gurdy Man: song statistics, setlist.fm