Donovan Donovan

This 1967 concert recorded at the Anaheim Convention Center, just a few weeks after his Hollywood Bowl show, was recorded in its entirety and released as a single LP with a total of 14 tracks. Flow in a Donovan concert is important, and here, presented as it occurred, listeners can drift right into the tidepool of magic. The band is a quintet with Harold McNair on flute and saxophones, Loren Newkirk on piano, Andy Tronosco on upright bass, Tony Carr on drums, and John Carr on bongos. Donovan plays acoustic guitar throughout. The hippy mysticism and flower power poet is everywhere here. This isn't rock star excess at all, but an organic, drenched-in-sunshine concert full of gentleness with a premium on good vibes.

7-Tease might be considered the opening of what one could call Donovan's years in the wilderness. His next to last album, Cosmic Wheels, had managed to generate sales but its successor, Essence to Essence, marked the tipping point beyond which, because of the seeming datedness of his image, or whatever reason, he was no longer regarded by the public as being terribly important or relevant, or his records programmed by radio stations or ordered by record retailers in quantities resembling his earlier work. All of this is a pity because a fair hearing of 7-Tease reveals an album steeped in disillusionment, yet built upon beautiful melodies and some of the most diverse and appealing sounds and arrangements of his career, and a harder rocking sound than he was usually known for (courtesy of Nashville-based producer Norbert Putnam, who'd done something similar for Joan Baez).

Paced by the title track, one of Donovan's best singles, 1966's Sunshine Superman heralded the coming psychedelic age with a new world/old world bent: several ambitious psychedelic productions and a raft of wistful folk songs…

This re-release of Sunshine Superman might well be titled "The Ultimate Experience," or "The Total Immersion Version" - expanded to 67 minutes, it contains a new 24-bit remastering of the U.S. version of the album (the U.K. version, though it contained Donovan's preferred cover art, was compromised in its content by its extended delay in release, into the following year, owing to legal wrangling of the artist's management and recording contracts in the U.K.), plus seven chronologically related bonus tracks, "Breezes of Patchulie," "Museum" (in an early, lighter-textured version than its officially released recording from the next album), "Superlungs" (in the first of three distinctly different renditions); the longer stereo mix of "Sunshine Superman," and four never-before-heard tracks - "The Land of Doesn't Have to Be" and demo versions of "Good Trip" and "House of Jansch"…

It is difficult to say why this album designed for children doesn't work any better than it does. Perhaps it's because everything here is so quaint, and quaintness is a distinctly adult notion, a close cousin to willful nostalgia, and neither trait is anything that most kids would even bother exploring. Mixing in older songs like "Mandolin Man and His Secret" and "Little Boy in Corduroy" with a handful of newer pieces (and what must be the 400th version of "Colours"), Donovan actually does here what he has really always done, and that is make a pleasant, at times even interesting, album for adults who want to feel like they're children again. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. Just don't try selling it to the kids, because they undoubtedly wouldn't sit still for it.

Mellow Yellow is actually more diverse in its sounds than Sunshine Superman, drawing on some of the same era's better follow-up material but also reaching back somewhat further for repertory. It was, as one could rightly guess, a by-product of the late-1966 hit title track, but the songs dated back in some instances as much as a year, to a point prior to Donovan's having made the leap from folk to pop artist. "Mellow Yellow" itself was cut after "Sunshine Superman" and boasted one of the earliest arrangements by John Paul Jones to achieve international recognition (although not without some resistance from Donovan himself), with its broad, biting brass sound. The next two tracks, however, reached back to the singer-songwriter's earlier acoustic/folk songbag, and a very different point in his career - the reflective, somber "Writer in the Sun" was written in Greece during the spring of 1966…

Upon his emergence during the mid-'60s, Donovan was anointed "Britain's answer to Bob Dylan," a facile but largely unfounded comparison which compromised the Scottish folk-pop troubadour's own unique vision. Where the thrust of Dylan's music remains its bleak introspection and bitter realism, Donovan fully embraced the wide-eyed optimism of the flower power movement, his ethereal, ornate songs radiating a mystical beauty and childlike wonder; for better or worse, his recordings remain quintessential artifacts of the psychedelic era, capturing the peace and love idealism of their time to perfection…

Due to the contractual dispute between Pye Records and Epic Records, Donovan's releases were held back in the United Kingdom throughout 1966 and early 1967. During this time, Donovan released Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow outside the UK. To catch up to the Epic Records schedule, Pye Records compiled a cross-section of both albums and titled it Sunshine Superman.
Upon his emergence during the mid-'60s, Donovan was anointed "Britain's answer to Bob Dylan," a facile but largely unfounded comparison which compromised the Scottish folk-pop troubadour's own unique vision. Where the thrust of Dylan's music remains its bleak introspection and bitter realism, Donovan fully embraced the wide-eyed optimism of the flower power movement…