DONOVAN
Recording years |
Main genre |
Music sample |
1965–2021 |
Folk Pop |
Mellow Yellow (1966) |
Page
contents:
|
WHAT’S BIN HID |
|
||||||
Album
released: May 14, 1965 |
V |
A |
L |
U |
E |
More info: |
||
3 |
2 |
3 |
2 |
3 |
||||
Tracks: 1) Josie; 2) Catch The Wind; 3)
The Alamo; 4) Cuttin’ Out; 5) Car Car; 6) Keep On Truckin’; 7) Goldwatch
Blues; 8) To Sing For You; 9) You’re Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond; 10)
Tangerine Puppet; 11) Donna Donna; 12) Ramblin’ Boy. |
||||||||
REVIEW As
we all know (or, at least, can guess), physiognomy is a dangerous business —
sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, depending on both luck and
experience, and making behavioral decisions based on one’s initial assessment
of a person’s looks can be harmful to both parties concerned. When the same
technique is applied to art, it results in biases that may strongly impact
one’s perception of every move the artists make right after their entry into
public space. After all, most people shift, evolve, mature, and grow, and
often do so in unpredictable ways. Who could guess Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones based on Closing Time? Who could calculate
that ‘I Can’t Explain’ would lead to Quadrophenia,
while ‘Any Way You Want Me’ would lead to nowhere? Who could deduce
‘Sussudio’ from the drumming of ‘Dancing With The Moonlit Knight’?.. |
||||||||
On the other hand, there’s probably no harm done in
occasionally looking back at the initial efforts of young, idealistic
performers and making pseudo-prophetic judgements on them that would agree
with what we already know about their general career arches. Call it a form
of retrospective debutognomy, if
you wish (I can’t remember anybody committing the aesthetic crime of joining
a French and a Greek root within a single word as of yet, so sign me up for
the firing squad). For instance: From
Genesis To Revelation by Genesis is way too overtly ambitious for an
album of fairly unsophisticated mellow orchestral pop ditties, but it still
shows a lot of promise because it is not trying to openly emulate anybody
else, but rather attempts — poorly, but charmingly — to push forward a young
band’s original vision. Who knows, maybe some day these guys will finally
succeed and match their craft and professionalism with their pessimistic view
of the world? The reason I’m engaging in this lengthy preamble is
that, every time I put on Donovan’s first album, I am smitten by one and the
same thought: «This guy is good,
but there is not a single chance in Heaven or Hell that he shall ever be great». And this is not because great
artists are always supposed to be great right from the start — far from it.
For instance, the Kinks’ self-titled debut, on a purely competitive level, is
probably more of an embarrassment than Donovan’s debut. But even if that
debut did not contain ‘You Really Got Me’, even if it were all filled with
second-rate covers of American rhythm and blues, I would still refrain from
making a strict statement about how these guys will never ever make it into
the big leagues. Why? Simply because the Kinks do what they do in their own
way. They don’t want to be Chuck
Berry, Slim Harpo, or, God forbid, Odetta; they want to take the melodies and
styles of those guys and play them the way they want to play them, or, at the
moment, the way they are capable of playing them. It might suck — for the
moment — but it’s the only guarantee that they might eventually arrive at
their own, and nobody else’s, thing. Problematically, when Donovan Phillips Leitch
emerged on the music scene in late 1964, he did not really want to be
«Donovan». Sharp-tongued critics complained that he wanted to be Bob Dylan.
This was only a half-truth, because he did not merely want to be Bob Dylan.
He also wanted to be Woody Guthrie. He wanted to be Joan Baez. He wanted to
be Leadbelly, and he wanted to be Charley Patton. In short, he wanted to be
the embodiment of Americana within the cozy confines of English folk clubs.
He was young, fair-faced, ambitious, diligent, hard-working, and sincerely in
love with both the old folk and blues traditions and their recent reinvention
in the «green pastures» of Greenwich Village. The only person he was clearly not in love with was... Donovan
Leitch. And I don’t mean that in a good way (lack of a narcissistic
attitude); I mean it in the
«I-have-no-idea-what-this-guy-is-actually-bringing-to-the-table» way. This is by no means equivalent to saying «Donovan’s
early records suck»; on the contrary, they are fairly enjoyable and certainly
hold up better than, say, Chad & Jeremy, or Peter & Gordon, or any of
those other nice, melancholic British boys whose moodiness ends up being the
only thing you remember about their songs. Let us start with the very first
single that Pye Records released on February 28, 1965: the shorter,
«orchestrated» version of ‘Catch The Wind’ (as opposed to the slightly
extended and less pompous version on the LP). The first thing everybody must
have noticed about it (even Brian Jones, Donovan’s official «pal», publicly complained
about this detail) is that it opens as a straightforward tribute to Dylan’s
‘Chimes Of Freedom’ — there is too much in common between the guitar patterns
and the openings ("in the chilly
hours and minutes..." = "far
between sundown’s finish...") to believe that this was not an
intentional borrowing. Likewise, the use of the word "wind" to
finish off each verse is, of course, reminiscent of ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ —
also quite intentionally. What does separate Donovan from Dylan, however, is
that, from the outset, Donovan is a starry-eyed romantic, without an ounce of
Dylan’s cynicism or irony: "I want
to be in the warm hold of your loving mind / To feel you all around me / And
to take your hand, along the sand" are lines that would probably
make old Zimmerman puke into Bobby Neuwirth’s jacket pockets. This
sentimentality is more, I dunno, Judy Collins than Bob Dylan, and this
crossing of the formal aspects of Dylan’s songwriting with a decidedly
non-Dylanesque spirit is the only thing that could be called «original» for
this song. Unfortunately, it’s still... not «Donovan-original». There is exactly one area in which ‘Catch The Wind’
is more sophisticated than ‘Chimes Of Freedom’, and that is in its guitar
pattern — introducing Donovan’s crosspicking techniques that he originally picked
up from more seasoned British folk guitar players (Keith MacLeod and Mick Softley,
in particular, but there is probably some influence from big names like Davey
Graham and Bert Jansch as well). ‘Catch The Wind’ already sounds as if there
are two guitars playing at once, giving the song a fuller, more lilting and
impressive sonic pattern; where Dylan usually had an instinct for finding a
strong musical hook and pummeling it with all his might, Donovan prefers to evenly
stretch his meticulousness and precision across the entire song, so much so
that when he himself states that his chief influence were his guitar teachers
rather than Dylan, there is certainly much truth to it, even if it’s probably
never the first thing to come to your attention. But even if he did learn to play his guitar from British
folksters rather than Dave Van Ronk or Odetta, the songwriting still kept
using Dylan as a reference point, over and over. The B-side to ‘Catch The Wind’
was ‘Why Do You Treat Me Like You Do’, a song melodically and atmospherically
reminiscent of ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ — and once again, Donovan
crawls under Dylan’s throne because, unlike his idol, he simply cannot allow
himself to be anywhere near as nasty.
The protagonist of ‘Don’t Think Twice’ needs no fickle excuse to dump the
girl and move on — she just kinda wasted his precious time, you know. The
hero of ‘Why Do You Treat Me Like You Do’, on the other hand, refers to the
time-honored leitmotif of his girl cheating on him ("you say you’re so young, gal, I guess that’s
your big excuse"), and — horrors! — even permits the thought that
maybe he might have been
responsible for some of that attitude ("now, maybe I been thinkin’ wrong about you, gal / And you ain’t
really the one to blame"). Three guesses as to whether it is Dylan’s
or Donovan’s attitude that would be more applauded in the 21st century; and
yet, in the context of 1963–65, it was Dylan who looked like the great
modernizer here, whilst Donovan’s gallantry comes across as a tad
old-fashioned. Well, what can I say? I still remain more partial towards a sharp-mouthed
cynic with an acoustic guitar than a sweet-tongued romantic with the same. There can hardly be any doubt that the big success
of ‘Catch The Wind’ both in the UK and in the US was due to the song’s Dylanism,
but this may have actually annoyed Donovan a little, so that he made the
follow-up, ‘Colours’, even more in the style of a traditional mellow folk
ballad, something that Dylan had gotten over with already by 1962 and now lay
more in the domain of beautiful ladies like Joan or Judy. It’s... kinda okay;
something to divert yourself, with, perhaps, on a nice warm afternoon for a nice
little picnic with your girlfriend. "Green’s
the color of the sparklin’ corn in the mornin’ when we rise", that
sort of thing. The B-side was ‘To Sing For You’, slowed down to, this time,
match almost perfectly the typical Dylan strumming pattern, as Donovan lays
out his big innovative strategy to settle all of his girlfriend’s troubles
and worries: "I’ll sing a song for
you / That’s what I’m here to do". At least he’s goddamn honest
about it — though it does remind me, for some strange reason, of how the Bard
usually remains the most despised of all possible D&D classes. In a rather cruel turn of events, it is precisely
this «niceness» of attitude (some might even say «submissiveness») that
probably earned Donovan the image of «Dylan’s little British lapdog» on Bob’s
1965 tour of the UK, with the master-and-servant pairing of the two later
described in various memoirs and even partially documented by Pennebaker in
the Don’t Look Back film. This was,
after all, the peak of Dylan’s «mean asshole» period, and woe to anybody he
could regard as even very minor competition in 1965; nevertheless, Donovan
survived, and it is possible that the metaphorical beatings and humiliations
he took from Bob and his clique taught him a serious life lesson. In any
case, his first full-blown album which he had completed a couple months
before the meeting did its best to show that his influences were far wider
than just Dylan, though most of them still roamed somewhere in the vicinity
of Greenwich Village, one way or another. The actual covers are mostly pointless, though —
typical filler, whose only purpose is to pay homage to Donovan’s heroes
without any new ideas thrown into the mix. Namely, he tips his hat to The Kingston
Trio with ‘Remember The Alamo’ (one might wonder just how much the message of
the song could mean to UK audiences); to Woody Guthrie with ‘Car Car’ ("this
is for Woody", he hastily admits in the song’s opening, as if Woody
could really care at this point); and to Joan Baez with his faithful
interpretation of her faithful
interpretation of ‘Donna Donna’. Unless you’re an admirer of the fair-haired
boy’s charisma in general, there is hardly any need to bother with them. He then tries to dig a little deeper into the American
heritage, covering the old rag melody of ‘Keep On Truckin’ and the equally
rusty old blues ‘You’re Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond’ (which he probably
learned from Buffy Sainte-Marie rather than Blind Willie Johnson) — the
latter is a bit of a stand out in that it is the only song on the album with
a proper rhythm section and even an electric guitar lead melody, although at
this point this was as far as he was willing to concede to the «going
electric» trend (Dylan had not even released Bringing It All Back Home at the time Donovan was holding his own
sessions). Strangely, the electric arrangement helps: the slightly
mysterious, foreboding «hum» of the guitar tone, coupled with Donovan’s own «nasty»
nasal delivery of the vocals, gives it a very mildly proto-psychedelic sheen
that would later characterize many of his best songs. At the very least, of
all the «extra-territorial» material he records for this album, this song is
the most unique-sounding. The same cannot be said, alas, about quite a few
other songs credited to Donovan himself. ‘Cuttin’ Out’ is a rather blatant
rip-off of ‘St. James Infirmary’ (it even dares to begin with the same "I went down to...") with lyrics
that seem to have been written in about two minutes’ time (perhaps Donovan
originally just thought of covering ‘St. James Infirmary’ but changed his
mind at the last moment, for some reason). ‘Ramblin’ Boy’ again rips off
something by Dylan (the closest melody I can think of right now is ‘It Ain’t Me
Babe’, but I’m sure there must be something else as well). ‘Josie’ is
basically a sequel to ‘Colours’ (again with the frickin’ corn references!), melodically different but with the exact same
lazy, nonchalant, static vibe. And ‘Goldwatch Blues’, credited to Donovan’s
friend and mentor Mick Softley (who would himself only record the song as
late as 1971 for his Street Singer
album), introduces a little bit of social consciousness but sounds no
different from gazillions of contemporary protest songs built on the musical
foundations of traditional folk. Finally, Donovan’s acoustic-playing skills are best
assessed on the short instrumental ‘Tangerine Puppet’, which is indeed quite
pretty and shows the kind of technique that Dylan never even began to strive
for; however, it still fails to distinguish Donovan from all those expert British
guitar players that came before him, and there is a good reason why people
still come back to Bert Jansch’s ‘Angie’ instead — that tune tells you a
dynamic story, whereas ‘Tangerine Puppet’ is more like a "hey, there’s
this cool picking pattern I just learned and I wanna show it to you"
kind of thing. Returning to the debutognomy
exercise mentioned earlier, what we can see is that Donovan sincerely loves
different types of music, but has few ideas of how to enhance their potential
or even bend them to his own purposes, because, essentially, he does not have any purposes other than to show
how sincerely he loves different types of music. We can see that he is a
nice, charming, romantic, idealistic type of person, but — as is, indeed,
quite often (though not always) the case with nice, charming, romantic,
idealistic types of people — that he also does not have a whole lot of depth
of artistic character. We can see that his typical vibe is that of the, let’s
say, young country swineherd, whose chief passion in life is weaving
dandelion wreaths for his sweetheart (and corn, corn, lots of corn, green
corn, yellow corn, you name it). We can see that he is a good learner, but is
more interested in mastering the craft that already exists than even slightly
pushing its borders in some unpredictable direction. We can consequently
predict, with a certain degree of certainty, that even if he goes electric,
psychedelic, progressive, or acid house (I think he would try all of these
except for the latter), all of those developments will be in accordance with
the current times rather than bringing on the future. And yet, there is also no denying that if you and
your sweetheart are enjoying a nice, warm, sunny day in the countryside, with
plenty of dandelions for wreaths in the surrounding meadows (and a little
green corn to nibble on), the ghosts of ‘Catch The Wind’ and ‘Colours’ and ‘Josie’
will all be hovering somewhere nearby. Even if all of those put together are hardly
worth one single ‘Mother Nature’s Son’ (in which McCartney captured the same
vibe better than Donovan ever did with anything), you might, after all, need
a slightly longer soundtrack than 2:48 for such a particular vibe. This is
where Mr. Leitch comes to the rescue, and where even his first, formative
album might still be of some use. |