Music of the Day, 22 October 2023

let's get psychedelic

I’ve been focusing a lot on the 1970s lately… not intentionally, but it isn’t hard to understand why. My teen years almost completely overlapped the decade, so in terms of my cognitive development, my memory was quite good and I was able to attend to and comprehend most of the music I listened to. Those skills enabled me to introspect about music and its effects on me, etc. So when I think back to those days, I can create a more accurate and complete context for what a song meant to me when I was first hearing it.

Elsewhere here I’ve mentioned how much influence my maternal aunts and uncles¹ had on my early music experiences. When I stayed at my grandparents’ house, many of them were still living there, so I heard a lot of the music they liked. Extrapolating from what I remember, they must have liked the psychedelic stuff of the 1960s a lot. Thus, I think I can credit them with my enduring interest in unusual and complex music, including but not limited to progressive rock.

Donovan was a very popular musician in my early years, but I didn’t grok what that meant at all. I liked his songs that I heard on the radio, so hearing them frequently was all that mattered to me. “Mellow Yellow” was probably one of my favorite songs back then (it was released in 1967 on an album of the same name)… and it may have been on that basis that one of my aunts or uncles gave me his 1968 album, The Hurdy Gurdy Man.

Recalling all that this morning, I checked my music library; not surprisingly, I don’t have the album in my digital collection. So I found it online and gave it a listen, and wow, did it spark a kaleidoscope of memories and feelings.

I’ll spare you all of that and go directly to my favorite track off this album. “Jennifer Juniper” is a light, trippy number that features my favorite woodwinds: flute, oboe, and bassoon.

I’m sure I didn’t understand most of the lyrics beyond the title when I was a kid; it was the instruments that drew me in. And I was almost certainly familiar with the song before owning the album; I don’t think I would have gotten past the first track otherwise. The distorted vocals of “Hurdy Gurdy Man” likely disturbed me back then; they certainly did at first when I listened to the song today.

Probably the only time I really thought of Donovan between my childhood days and today was in 1979, when Coca-Cola unleashed the abomination known as Mello Yello soda on the country. Prior to tasting and not liking it, I disliked it for riffing on and disrespecting what I considered Donovan’s best song.

My vague memories of Donovan’s music prior to listening to The Hurdy Gurdy Man today was of a soft voice and wildly varied musical stylings. Just this album affirmed that, but they also led me to wonder how and why he came to be so popular. His music seems so singular, even for the 1960s.

Reading several Wikipedia articles about him and his work, I learned that he was connected to a lot of the musical legends of the day. “Jennifer Juniper” was written about the girl he was seeing, Jenny Boyd… who is Pattie Boyd’s sister. Yes, that Pattie Boyd. Donovan taught John Lennon a finger-picking technique that he used on several Beatles songs. Donovan was also friends with Joan Baez, Brian Jones, and the Beatles. The musicians who performed on his albums comprise a who’s who and include: Allan Holdsworth; Jimmy Page; John Bonham; John Paul Jones; Jeff Beck; Rod Stewart; John McLaughlin; Shawn Phillips; Paul McCartney; and John Cameron.

So I now have a new and much deeper respect for the Scottish mostly-folk singer I adored as a child, and will be exploring his discography on YouTube as the mood strikes.

1. Six in total: three of each flavor, with the aunts all being older than the uncles (my mom was the eldest). The youngest uncle is seven years older than I am.