( * with the Jeff Beck Group ) ( ** early pressings had the title as "Goo Goo Barabajagal" )
Chart entered : 9 July 1969
Chart peak : 12
Donovan was the last artist whose singles chart career concluded in the 1960s. As we shall see that was , to some extent, a self-inflicted wound but he certainly went out on an interesting note with this one.
The team up with the Jeff Beck Group was the idea of Mickie Most who produced them both. He felt that Donovan's music needed more muscle and Jeff needed better songs and hoped they would beneficially influence each other. Jeff's singer Rod Stewart was not needed so did not attend the sessions. "Babarajagal" differs markedly from any of his previous fey and acoustic singles. It's a tale of a charlatan using mystical techniques to effect a seduction. Donovan maintained the character was fictional but he of course was one of the party that went to India with the Beatles in 1968 so this may be another song about the Maharishi's more earthy inclinations. Donovan's breathy insinuating vocals are a good fit for the subject matter although he slips into an exaggerated Scots brogue for the weird spoken section. The music is a loose-limbed ramshackle piano groove laid down by Nicky Hopkins with Jeff's guitar commenting throughout rather than waiting for a solo and the singers Madeline Bell and Lesley Duncan taking control so that you can hardly hear Donovan at the back end of the song. It's this single that makes sense of his hook-up with the Happy Mondays two decades later. Most thought it was a bit of a mess but that's kind of the point.
Apart from the B-side "Trudi" , the rest of the tracks recorded with Beck remained unreleased until 2005. The album "Babarajagal" was otherwise made up of material recorded earlier and, apart from "Superlungs ( My Supergirl ) " which would have made an excellent follow-up, falls into his usual airy-fairy flower power style including the execrable "I Love My Shirt". Due to a complicated contractual situation the album could only be released in the States where it reached number 23 in August 1969.
Shortly afterwards Donovan parted company with Most following a recording session in Los Angeles. Donovan brought friends like Stephen Stills and Mama Cass along and when the dope began to flow, Most whose drug of choice was always hard cash, reminded them who was paying for the session and chucked them out. An offended Donovan declared he would be working with someone else but was in no hurry to find them , making "Barabajagal" the last piece of sixties music we'll be discussing in a "Goodbye post ( we'll be going back to the sixties in "Hello" posts for a long time ).
Donovan went away to Greece to recharge his batteries for six months. Though advised by his agents to stay away for longer in tax exile he returned to the UK in 1970 to work on a new album. For the first time he had a regular band , The Open Road though he called the shots and the records came out under the name "Donovan and the Open Road" The single "Ricki Ticki Tavi" came out in September, a rough semi-acoustic number using the heroic mongoose from The Jungle Book as a metaphor for the vanished certainties of childhood. It's more recognisably him but there's an underlying sturdiness to the rhythm track that wasn't there before. It reached number 55 in the States.
The album "Open Road" is an interesting document of the hippy response to the new decade whether that be physical flight ( " Changes " with its references to Vietnam and Biafra ) , conscious immersion in Gothic fantasy ( "Roots Of Oak" and "Celtic Rock") or helpless lamentation ( "People Used To... ). Controversy is courted in the two Fleetwood Mac-ish rock songs the sensitively-titled "Curry Land" and "Poke At The Pope" where paisley is swapped for Paisley. Two more optimistic songs "Season Of Farewell" and "New Years's Resovolution" leaven the dose and reflect his personal happiness; he married Linda Lawrence ( formerly with Brian Jones ) shortly after its release. The album , produced by Donovan and involving no musicians outside the four piece band, reached number 16 in the US and 30 in the UK though you suspect its sales were boosted by being the first of his LPs UK fans could actually buy for two years.
Donovan dropped Open Road shortly afterwards ; they went on to record an unsuccessful LP without him. With Linda now pregnant he began work on a double album of children's songs "HMS Donovan" largely popular poems set to music. It was recorded at various times; "Homesickness" was recorded with Most. A single came out in December 1970, "Celia Of The Seals", celebrating the model ( and Jeff Beck's girlfriend ) Celia Hammond who sacrificed her career by refusing to wear animal skins and cursing the seal hunters in phrases not too dissimilar to the Smiths' Meat Is Murder. Bassist Danny Thompson got a co -credit as performer on the label. Its failure ( it made 84 in the US alone ) didn't bode well for the album , released in July 1971 and the US label declined to release it. It didn't chart in the UK.
Donovan spent 1972 as a tax exile working in films, acting in The Pied Piper and providing part of the soundtrack to Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon . With young mouths to feed Donovan settled his differences with Most ( now styling himself Michael Peter Hayes ) and got to work on a new LP "Cosmic Wheels". The album was released in March 1973 in advance of any singles. By this time glam rock was at its peak with Most a key player ( his new prodigy Suzi Quatro cut her teeth as a backing vocalist on one track ) and so the title track has the doomy feel of Children Of The Revolution with its sawing strings and wailing backing vocals and Donovan himself sounds a lot like Mr Ferry. There was some cross-pollination with Alice Cooper who were recording Billion Dollar Babies in the same studio. Donovan shared the lead vocal on the title track and "Sleep" on "Cosmic Wheels" sounds very like them. Cozy Powell and Chris Spedding play on most of the tracks though pointedly both absent themselves from "The Intergalactic Laxative" which I must admit is quite funny the first time round but probably should have been a B side only. It reached a promising number 15 in the UK ( 25 in the States). The singles didn't fare so well. "I Like You" was an over-ambitious choice , too diffuse to work as a single and Radio One ignored it. In the US it was his last hit single peaking at 66. The vacuous busking tune "Maria Magenta" sank without trace.
From this point , with Donovan unwilling to fully get back on the promotional treadmill , his commercial profile quickly evaporated. Wishing to discard the glam rock trappings of "Cosmic Wheels" he went to Andrew Loog Oldham to produce his next LP "Essence To Essence" which had him dressed in white robes and kneeling penitently on the cover. It was released in December 1973. If he hadn't been a fading sixties pop star it's possible that some of the more fragile songs like "There Is An Ocean" and the hopeless single "Sailing Homeward" would have seen him bracketed with the likes of Nick Drake and Tim Buckley but as it was both critics and public ignored him. A residual following in America ensured that the LP and its two immediate successors got into the lower half of the Top 200 but the UK was now deaf to him.
Donovan next tried the Lulu route of doing a Bowie cover, in his case "Rock 'n 'Roll With Me" from Diamond Dogs. I haven't heard it and it didn't appear on the next album perhaps because Oldham produced it and he was now working with American producers Norbert Putnam and Mark Radice. The album "7-Tease" came out in November 1974. I haven't heard all of it but it seems very variable in quality from the pleasantly Mott The Hoople-ish single "Rock n Roll Souljer" and "The Ordinary Family" a Don McLean-ish ballad of Everyman family worries to the insipidness of "Great Song Of The Sky" which seems to be angling for a New Seekers cover or the lamest anti-royalty song ever, "How Silly" with the line " We hope for better things from Charles".
Donovan decided to produce his next album "Slow Down World" himself, a tacit acknowledgement that the game was up. He knew Epic would not be renewing his contract, that this could be the last record he would make and, well before the self-abasing "A Well Known Has-Been" opens Side Two, he sounds like a beaten man. Even when the subject matter is positive on songs like "Dark-Eyed Blue Jean Angel" the unadorned music is bleak and dreary.
In fact things were not quite as bleak as he thought. Epic did drop him as expected but he was invited to support Yes on their world tour in the first part of 1977. He was also invited by Most to record an album for Rak. The album "Donovan" came out in August 1977 and is an uncomfortable listen. Donovan's clearly cheered up a bit and Most once again updates his sound ( at least to the extent of making him sound like new labelmates Hot Chocolate and Smokie ) but exposure to Jon Anderson has led him back towards trippy lyrics and hippie pseudo-wisdom on songs like "Astral Angels" and the single "The Light". The problems are compounded by a lack of any catchy tunes. The album bombed and his association with Most finally came to an end.
Donovan retreated to Europe where he got involved in anti-nuclear and famine protests. His next album "Neutronica" was only released in Germany and France and ranges from old-style acoustic ballads like "Madrigalinda" to "Mee Mee I Love You" which sets eight-year old Astrella's lyrics to the eerie New Wave rock of Split Enz. "Heights Of Alma" is a Crimean War folk ballad given a synthesiser makeover while "Neutron" a protest about the bomb of the same name is an unholy cross between Don Partridge and Kraftwerk.
"Love Is Only Feeling" was the second album under the European contract released in October 1981. All the synths and agit-pop are gone and it's all pastoral acoustic ballads many inspired by his new muse, the 10-year old Astrella who joins him - not mellifluously it has to be said - on the title track. The flowery "Lay Down Lassie" was released as a single in the UK and the album was made belatedly available in 1983.
His next album "Lady Of The Stars" in 1984 was a compromised affair containing re-worked versions of "Sunshine Superman" and "Season Of The Witch" to ensure a UK release and three other updated songs from earlier albums. The new tracks are Al Stewart -style soft rock efforts which are pleasant in a dated sort of way but rather characterless. They were his last new recordings for some years
At the end of the decade enjoyed some Janus-faced new attention. On the one hand the Madchester rave scene cited "Barabajagal" as a seminal work and he - and in particular his daughters - attracted the attention of the Happy Mondays. On the other hand his whole oeuvre was targeted by The Singing Corner a so-called comedy duo on BBC1's Going Live programme . He agreed to record a new version of "Jennifer Juniper" with them which, with a single week at number 68 in December 1990, became his final appearance in the UK charts. There are actually few jokes on the record ( a predictably lame one about mistaking him for Jason closes the record ); Trevor and Simon are relying on their adolescent audience finding the song and its performer ridiculous in themselves which makes it a tawdry affair all round.
Donovan had no new material to hand to take advantage of this interest and instead released the live album "Rising" drawn from performances in 1971 and 1981. His next "album" "One Night In Time" was a collection of rough sketches of songs released only in Japan as a fanzine-distributed cassette in 1993.
In 1995 he got the call from Rick Rubin wanting to do a Johnny Cash resuscitation on him. The album "Sutras" was the result. Although Donovan wrote nearly all the songs it sounds very similar to the recordings with Cash but of course he didn't have the latter's gravitas and iconic status to win attention and the album didn't sell.
Donovan spent the next few years getting acquainted with the internet and writing his autobiography. Only a couple of live albums were released In the meantime a record Label Beat Goes On was releasing some of his earlier LPs on CD for the first time including the children's LPs. Rhino Records suggested he might like to release another and 2002's "The Pied Piper " ( the first release on his own Donovan Discs label ) was the result although only three of the songs were new as opposed to re-workings. Two years later his original demos for Pye were released through his website as the LP "Sixty-Four". He also released acoustic versions of his songs for "Brother Sun Sister Moon" through itunes having failed to acquire rights to the original versions.
In 2004 he released "Beat Cafe" .Donovan's band for the sessions included Danny Thompson and his upright bass-playing dominates the sound of these sparse, jazz-based tracks which celebrate Donovan's early beatnik heroes. It has the feel of a personal project rather than an attempt to return to the musical mainstream.
The following year his autiobiography "The Hurdy-Gurdy Man" was finally published and he toured the last album in the UK with the unlikely presence of Rat Scabies on drums. In 2010 he released the album "Ritual Groove" through his website and invited people to make videos for its slow, low-key tracks. You can find a lot of results on youtube. Subsequent releases have been "The Sensual Donovan" ( 2012 ) a short collection of tracks recorded with John Phillips in 1971 and most recently the country album "Shadows Of Blue" (2013). Doubtless there's more to come.
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