Review Summary: Can you truly be full of shit if you’re also buying what you’re selling? Donovan’s self-assured and delicately instrumented tunes cut through any brick walls of pretension.
After Donovan’s first two releases, the media dubbed him the UK’s answer to Bob Dylan, but he wasn’t as concerned with being the critical voice of the generation. By the time of his third LP, Sunshine Superman, his image was closer to that of a trippy hippy forest nymph than to down-to-Earth, political Dylan. His fascination with psychedelic drugs had become so prevalent in his music that it more than just rivaled the Beatles, it usurped it. With a #1 single in the US that thinly veiled its allusion to LSD in 1966, Scotland’s only major player in the British Invasion was ready to take it a step further in the following year.
Cautiously, Donovan only released one single for his follow-up Mellow Yellow: the now-iconic title track. Saffron, a girl’s name, but also a yellow spice, seems to be the song's subject…or maybe it’s about an “electric banana” dildo. “Mellow Yellow” oozes sexy beatnik chic with refrains of the hushed “quite rightly” and jazz-pop trumpets. It characterizes 60s psychedelia’s laid-back and colorful approach to such a strong extent, that it earns its place as an essential piece in the soundtrack of hippy culture. Charting at #2 being his only single to certify Gold in sales, "Mellow Yellow" is a clear case for Donovan's signature song.
Acoustic pensiveness and electric languor color the mood of the album. Other than closer "Sunny South Kensington", no track is particularly exciting or immediate, but rather comforting, mystical, slothly, and lavish. Occasionally a harpsichord, trumpet, violin, or saxophone tints the album toward baroque or jazz-pop, beautifying each track’s backdrop. He was no stranger to making friends in the industry, to the extent that Mellow Yellow features the likes of Paul McCartney, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones, who admittedly lean on simpler musical approaches than on their own respective LPs.
The imagery of tea lemon circles, crystal balls, and power rings paints a pastel world of peace, drenched in the acid thoughts of someone who wants to show you how he wants life to be. There’s a certain innocence in his fairytale-esque ideas, something that would be even more prevalent on his follow-up release, A Gift from a Flower to a Garden, (whose 2nd disc was written as children’s music.) When the lyrics are sad in nature, they’ll concern something abstract like the growing pains of a girl that realizes that socialite culture is shallow (“Young Girl Blues”) or the misanthropy of the busy worker (“The Observation.”) Though he proposes no direct solutions, there is an undertone that these people would be happier if they zoomed out and looked at the bigger picture of their situations. Donovan certainly believed people would be happier if they tried psychedelic drugs and allowed them to change their perspective on life.
An even more effective way of characterizing his trippy mentality are the catchy eclecticisms in his upbeat lines, such as “There she stood in drag, just-a lookin' cool in astrakhan. She’s lookin' a little wiped out, she said I looked like Peter Pan” from “Museum.” The lyrics to “Museum” paint an incredibly vivid image of an idealized, if not indulgent and snobbish, world. Comparisons to Dylan fall entirely flat because Donovan’s head isn’t just in the clouds, it’s in an alternate reality.
To the wrong audience, these words may come off as alienating, pretentious, or at worst: downright rubbish jabber. The music might register as feeble, ineffective, and unchallenging. Donovan isn’t a poor man’s anything and to those with mainly concrete struggles, his ideas could seem insulting. With that said, it’s important to step back for a second, let go, and open your mind to a world where Donovan's juvenile joys and concerns are taken for what they really are: optimistic and good-natured. It’s no wonder so many hippies were playing this record and no wonder why a culture filled with them allowed him to have so many hits. Real life isn't anything like Mellow Yellow, but honestly, I wish it were.
