Sunshine Superman by Donovan: enjoyable 60s pop rock album whose title track features Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones
Donovan is best known for poppy hits such as the bouncy Mellow Yellow, but he began his career in the early 1960s as a guitar-strumming folkie.
Donovan
Epic
Donovan is best known for poppy hits such as the bouncy Mellow Yellow, but he began his career in the early 1960s as a guitar-strumming folkie. The British press even compared him favourably to Bob Dylan, which reportedly niggled the American.
Donovan, who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, first made a name for himself in 1965 with the whimsical folk single Catch the Wind, which went to number four. Sunshine Superman, which featured the groovy, guitar-based Season of the Witch, was released in the US the next year. It marked a departure for the singer-songwriter as some of the tracks featured a rockier sound, courtesy of British hit-maker Mickie Most. Sunshine Superman established Donovan as a kind of psychedelic folk artist, and he successfully rode the wave of psychedelia to the end of the1960s.
Although Donovan managed to maintain a wholesome image throughout his career, he could not avoid being caught up in the drug-oriented rock scene of London in the Swinging Sixties. He was the first British pop star to be busted by the police for drug possession, in 1966, when the authorities were ramping up their arrests of the country's rock aristocracy.