Donovan

Once again this year I'm going to take a look at some of the artists who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Starting chronologically, I turn to Donovan, the Scottish troubadour who was instrumental in creating the flower power, psychedelic sound.

I picked up a copy of Donovan's greatest hits, in which, from a vantage point of some thirty or so years, he wrote a few liner notes. Born in 1946, he first achieved stardom in 1965, when he was part of the British folk scene. His earliest hits, "Colours" and "Catch the Wind," are very much in the style of Bob Dylan, who of course was influenced by Woody Guthrie and Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Donovan's vocals, though, seem a conscious aping of Dylan's nasal drone.

But in 1966 he hit it big with the album Sunshine Superman, which included the eponymous single, a mixture of hippie radiance and pop culture references to comic book heroes. This is the Donovan that everyone remembers today, and he had a string of hits until 1970 that today are like a whiff of patchouli.

It's hard to say what my favorite song of his is. There is, of course, "Mellow Yellow," which he wrote after the rumor swirled that smoking banana skins could get you high. The lyric, "Electrical banana, is going to be a sudden craze, electrical banana, is bound to be the very next phase" seems a nice capsule of the hippie ethos. Then there is "Atlantis," which begins with a spoken word section about how the continent of Atlantis was the precursor to all the great civilizations, or "There Is a Mountain," a "Zen ditty" that includes the koan-like lyric, "First there was a mountain then there was no mountain then there is."

Other Donovan hits were "The Hurdy Gurdy Man," which was written in India and was influenced by transcendental meditation and was written for Jimi Hendrix. He didn't play on it, but three future Led Zeppelin members, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham did (Bonham's drums are particularly effective). It's interesting that this song was used so effectively in the film Zodiac, which would seem to be about as far away from the principles of TM as possible.

In that vein, I very much like "The Season of the Witch," which seems intentionally to be spooky, and the unspeakably pretty "Jennifer Juniper," which is so delicate it feels like it wouldn't survive a stiff breeze. And what to make of the catchy "Epistle to Dippy":

"Look on yonder misty mountain
See the young monk meditating rhododendron forest
Over dusty years, I ask you
What's it been like being you?"

Donovan tells us that, "Whatever you think this song is about, it probably is."

Donovan also experiment with different styles of rock. "Epistle to Dippy" was an early example of Indian-flavored raga-rock, which George Harrison would embrace. With the Jeff Beck group, he also record "Barabajagal," and an early reggae song, "Riki Tiki Tavi."

Donovan's career was pretty much over after 1970, and he became seen as an artifact of hippie-dippie culture. He still performs, though, and is connected to another Rock and Roll Hall of Fame entry this year, the Red Hot Chili Peppers--his daughter, Ione Skye, was at one time an inamorata of their front man, Anthony Kiedis, and was on the cover of their album, Mother's Milk.