Donovan – Sunshine Superman
It’s easy to laugh at Donovan. So often painted as a bandwagon-jumping, wide-eyed innocent, he was initially marketed, somewhat wrongly, as the British answer to Bob Dylan, before he embraced the flower power movement, turned all trippy and started hanging around with John Lennon. The fact that he took his dad on the road with him didn’t really help matters.
Despite the ridicule fired in his direction back then and in the intervening years, Donovan was nonetheless responsible for some of the gentler and more memorable songs of the psychedelic era. His blend of acid-folk flavoured psychedelic pop/rock first found an outlet on his third album release, 1966′s Sunshine Superman.
Originally denied a release in the UK due to contractual disputes, Sunshine Superman finally saw the light of day over here in 1967, although with an amended track-listing that threw in some songs from the follow-up, Mellow Yellow, and omitted others. The 2005 EMI reissue reinstates the original line-up, as well as a further 6 bonus tracks.
Sunshine Superman is a fairytale of an album, dripping in paisley-hued imagery, mystical wordplay, far off, wistful melodies and a healthy dose of naivety. Despite the dynamic kick-off, with the familiar title track, things soon settle into a mellower groove with the seven minute enchantment that is ‘Legend of a Girl Child Linda’, its lilting orchestral arrangement by John Cameron (responsible for the score to cult 70s Brit biker-horror, Psychomania).
From then on, Sunshine Superman throws out some splendidly haunting acoustic affairs in ‘Three Kingfishers’, ‘Ferris Wheel’ and the Arthurian ‘Guineviere’, incorporating sitar and an array of percussion instruments to convey the feeling of otherworld, hallucinatory bliss.
Cranking things up again into full electrical territory is ‘Season of the Witch’, a rare excursion into the realms of the menacing, which prophesised Donovan’s soon-to-be status of being the first high-profile British pop star to be arrested for marijuana possession. The song would go on to be covered by Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger, Sam Gopal and Vanilla Fudge among others.
Closing with the eerie, celesta and harpsichord-laden ‘Celeste’, Sunshine Superman is, with the odd notable exception, a beguiling and ethereal album, its head lodged firmly in the clouds, which glides effortlessly into the consciousness like a sea breeze drifting through a coastal village, somewhere in 1966.
The seven bonus tracks are merely cosmetic and neither add to, nor take anything away from Donovan’s first complete foray into the realms of psychedelia.
Sunshine Superman is reissued by EMI and available from Amazon.co.uk
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