Donovan
I started listening to a lot of Donovan's music earlier in the year. I found a copy of the "Hurdy Gurdy Man" LP, and given how beastly I was about him here, I suppose it's surprising I picked it up.
"The Hurdy Gurdy Man" (Germany 1968)
The LP is a start-to-finish treat. Poised at the succulent junction of Pop, Folk and Jazz it is blessed with Donovan's preternatural knack for crafting catchy hooks, yet is at once decidedly un-poppy and beguilingly over-cast. The story of the song "Hurdy Gurdy Man" could be a microcosmic study of the pitfalls of the man's career. It's a defiantly heavy tune. Donovan's quivering phrasing of the lead vocal is twisted, even unhinged. It's one of the classic encapsulations of the souring of the hippy vibe, its drums are utterly savage (indeed are all the drums on this remarkably Hip-Hop-friendly LP), and yet it ends up being appropriated my Nigel Planer of 80s comedy act the Young Ones, Donovan seemingly complicit in his humiliation. There's not a bad track on the record, which is strafed with droning harmoniums, break-neck beatnik tabla (the Celtic Fringe weaving into the North African continuum) and brightened by John Cameron's (later of "Kes" notoreity) chamber-jazz orchestrations.
On one level Donovan's career was a disaster. His discography must be one of the most fractured ever, unlike that of his contemporaries The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, who managed to release commercially-tangible coherent LPs. Working with producer Mickie Most, who was famously disdainful of anything but the 7", Donovan compounded the chaos by endorsing different versions of LPs for the US and UK ("Mellow Yellow" for instance was combined with "Sunshine Superman" on one LP in the UK), in the case of "From A Flower to a Garden" putting out two LPs in a box-set replete with engravings and then allowing Clive Davis to split the double into two discreet offerings, an acoustic and electric set with them being released independently on its tail. The "Hurdy Gurdy Man" LP itself wasn't even available in the UK! The three records I've chosen here the ones you want.
"Mellow Yellow" (USA 1967)
You might shirk a little when you hear "Mellow Yellow", like I do, it's too cheery and has been used on too many adverts. But did you know it was orchestrated by Most's man, and soon-to-be Led Zeppelin bass-player John Paul Jones? The rest of the LP though is delicious. My personal favorite being the porous, almost electronically-abstract, "Sand and Foam" in which a seemingly incapacitated Donovan reflects, like a mottled mirror, the bleaching sunshine of Mexico. It contains one of my favorite lines ever: "Grasshoppers creaking in the jungle of the night, microscopic circles in the fluid of my sight". It's a shame that his previous years LP "Sunshine Superman" isn't better really, it falls prey to whimsy, though the title track is scorching. I'm almost ashamed to admit I first knew it as a Husker Du song.
"A Gift From A Flower to a Garden" (UK 1968)
Donovan's masterpiece is "From A Flower to a Garden". Talking to John Tobler he makes some serious claims for the packaging itself, supposedly it employed revolutionary printing techniques and was (by Donovan's account) the first box-set. I'm not sure to be honest, I can't believe neither Classical music (which exhibited a great fondness for the format) nor Moses Asch at Folkways didn't pip him to the post. Notwithstanding this the first "electric" LP is fabulous, sounding less like a period-piece than almost anything other I've heard recorded that year. "Mad John" must surely have been covered by The Happy Mondays?* "The Land of Doesn't Have To Be" is like riding a beam of sunlight, its organ ravishingly solarised; Donovan's vocal tics throughout are endlessly fascinating. "Wear Your Love like Heaven" is, well, just plain groovy. The acoustic LP, billed as songs for children, is lovely too, and certainly not different enough to merit being hewn off.
In recent years Rick Rubin tried to pull off "the Johnny Cash effect" with Leitch, but to no commercial avail. Donovan did the maddest thing at the end of the 1960s, jumping on a plane to Thailand and dropping-out with unnerving recklessness. I suspect he permanently lost touch with his muse at this point. Apparently his fleeing fucked up a tax dodge which his accountant had constructed for him, and effectively cost him a million quid. Lennon didn't really "drop out" did he? Next time you see archive footage of Donovan with The Beatles at Rishikesh, or escorting Dylan round London, don't scoff. I've come to the realisation that his queer manner, what comes across as supercilious arrogance, is but an awareness of his divine talent.
*Shaun Ryder married Donovan's daughter.