Review: Donovan - Fairytale (1965)

Tracks: 1) Colours; 2) To Try For The Sun; 3) Sunny Goodge Street; 4) Oh Deed I Do; 5) Circus Of Sour; 6) Summer Day Reflection Song; 7) Candy Man; 8) Jersey Thursday; 9) Belated Forgiveness Plea; 10) Ballad Of A Crystal Man; 11) The Little Tin Soldier; 12) Ballad Of Geraldine; 13*) Universal Soldier; 14*) Ballad Of A Crystal Man; 15*) The War Drags On; 16*) Do You Hear Me Now; 17*) Turquoise; 18*) Hey Gyp.

REVIEW

In between May and October 1965, when Donovan’s first two albums were correspondingly released, the world has gone on to become an entirely different entity — at least, as long as popular music trends were concerned — and there are hints on Fairytale, the proverbial sophomore effort, that Donovan was ready to move on along with the world, too. But only hints, because the artist’s major debt to Dylan and to his Greenwich Village idols has not been properly paid off yet. I am not sure of exactly how many of these songs come from Donovan’s backlog and how many were actually written in the summer of ’65, but sometimes the record does give the kind of impression that he was just trying to fully offload his acoustic folk cart and close up that account before moving on to the next stage.

Possibly the biggest thing that happened to him at the time was meeting and befriending Shawn Phillips, a Texas-born guitar player who got somehow hung up in London on his way to India, soaking in the influences of the contemporary folk, jazz, and R&B scenes over in the UK. The 22-year old Phillips was already quite an accomplished player, singer, and com­poser of his own material — impressive enough to be signed to his own contract in London, though his records never really took off commercially — and for a while, he would complement Donovan’s little backing band with his own 12-string guitar playing, as well as occasionally providing him with a song or two of his own making (such as ‘The Little Tin Soldier’ on this album). This means a slightly fuller sound than before, at least on some of the tracks, and more openness to musical ideas beyond pure folk, although that kind of influence would arguably be seen much better once 1965 gave way to 1966, when ‘Sunshine Superman’ would replace ‘Catch The Wind’ as Donovan’s greeting card.

Before the album, though, there was The Universal Soldier EP, which currently lives on as a set of bonus tracks usually appended to Fairytale: released on August 15, three months after the first US combat unit’s arrival in Vietnam and two days before the start of Operation Starlite, it was (possibly) the first ever commercially released mini-album by any UK artist explicitly and completely devoted to anti-war matters. Donovan himself only wrote one song on it (‘The Ballad Of A Crystal Man’), as the title track was a faithful cover of the Buffy Ste. Marie original and the other two were equally faithful covers of two of Donovan’s biggest UK influences, Bert Jansch and Mick Softly. It’s not a particularly great collection, but it probably mattered a lot to Mr. Leitch, whose debut album might already have wobbled under the weight of accusations of «fruitiness» — making it necessary to outbalance the naturalistic sentimentality with a bit of a tougher stance on the truly relevant issues of today. And it certainly could have been worse.

‘The Universal Soldier’, while perhaps a bit naïve like most anthems are by definition, was still a major lyrical triumph for Buffy back in 1964, though I can see why her version never became a hit, unlike Donovan’s — well, partially, of course, because Buffy was a non-trendy Native American lady where Donovan was a trendy Scottish gentleman, but also because, one must admit, Donovan played a better guitar and because his pretty vocal tone was generally less irritating on the ears than Buffy’s high-pitched crackling vibrato. In all fairness, the song does work better when the message is delivered calmly than hysterically — one of Donovan’s big virtues: regardless of whether he is trying to seduce you with a kiddie fantasy or guilt-trip you with a grand social statement, there is always a cool and humble vibe to it. At worst, it’ll send you off to dreamland, but it will never annoy you. Whatever be the real reasons here, I’m pretty sure it was Donovan’s delivery of the line "this is not the way we put an end to war" that made more people sit up and take note than Buffy’s. (Fun fact: Jan Berry of Jan & Dean’s fame was so irritated by the success of the song that he wrote ‘The Universal Coward’ in response, which, despite having exactly the opposite political message of The Beach Boys’ ‘Student Demonstration Time’ half a decade later, proves exactly the same thing — namely, that golden-haired Californian boys fare much better with girls, cars, surf­boards and even transcendental meditation than they do with political ideology.)

The other two covers do not improve in any way on the originals, which weren’t all that great in the first place: Softley’s ‘The War Drags On’ is way too Dylanesque, actually borrowing the chords from Bob’s ‘Masters Of War’ to truly drive its point home, and Bert Jansch’s ‘Do You Hear Me Now?’ should clearly be heard in Bert’s own version — Bert is a better guitar player and a fairly similar singer to Donovan anyway. This leaves us with the sole original, ‘Ballad Of A Crystal Man’, which would later be re-recorded for Fairytale in a slightly longer variant and with extra cello embellishments; a damn good song, that one, completely free of Dylanisms (the vocal melody is more Celtic in provenance than Appalachian, I think) and somehow managing to deliver the message of the aforementioned ‘Masters Of War’ in an entirely different poetic language. There is, in fact, a funny lyrical connection here to the Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’ (incidentally, a song written precisely when both John and Paul were in their «Donovan phase» in India) — "seagull, I don’t want your wings, I don’t want your freedom in a lie" almost feels like an anticipated retort to "blackbird... take these broken wings and learn to fly... you were only waiting for this moment to be free". In this lyrical pseudo-contest that never took place but might as well have, Donovan emerges as a clear winner — able to peer beneath the abstract concept of «freedom», abused to death by those who avoid the practice of strict definitions for vague ideas.

Even so, the EP as such still feels like Donovan paying off his dues to the protest movement: had he wanted to, he could have easily spread all of these songs across his second LP, yet — with the exception of the re-recorded ‘Ballad’, probably because he had all the royalties to that one for himself — he still preferred to segregate them. After all, the LP is called Fairytale, not Mushroom Cloud or anything like that, and the opening song on it is ‘Colours’ — yes, that same old "yellow is the colour of my true love’s hair" that had already been released as a single. (Note that the American release did open with ‘Universal Soldier’ instead, which gave the entire album a totally different flavor — not because Hickory Records cared so much about social issues, but simply because the song was riding up the charts at the moment. If you can make money on anti-war protest, who’s to stop you from making money on anti-war protest?).

But lightweight or not, I think there’s quite a bit of songwriting growth on Fairytale. This time, only 4 out of 12 songs are straightforward covers or arrangements of traditional numbers; and of the originals, many have gone on to become solid Donovan classics — well, as solid as a Donovan song can get, anyway. ‘To Try For The Sun’, for instance, pursues the same anthemic-inspirational goals as ‘Catch The Wind’, but with a little less pathos and a little more originality; at the very least, you cannot straightforwardly brush it off as a Dylan rip-off. It’s got a fairly standard Donovan picking pattern, and its lyrical message may be straight up naïve hippie glorification (some people want to interpret the song in terms of a homosexual relationship, which is perfectly allowable by the lyrics — "and who’s going to be the one to say it was no good what we done?" — but since Donovan himself is not gay, I don’t think it was written with that kind of theme in mind), yet I like how he’s managed to find a way to deliver the starry-eyed idealism humbly and quietly. A refrain like "I dare a man to say I’m too young / For I’m going to try for the sun" could very easily turn to cringe, but Donovan sings it just the right way — not ironically, by no means no, but... inobtrusively, shall we say.

Also, ‘To Try For The Sun’ is pretty much the only potential «anthem» on the album (well, that and the fuller re-recording of ‘Ballad Of A Crystal Man’, mayhaps); the rest of the songs are even more reclusive and introspective, swinging between old-timey medieval folk imitations and modern existentialist broodings. Two typical examples of the former are ‘Belated Forgiveness Plea’ — featuring Donovan as a pilgrim returning to the ruins of his ideal paradise ("the seagulls they have gone") to the waltzy strumming of a rather uninspiring tune; and ‘Ballad Of Geraldine’ — featuring a tragic tale of unwanted pregnancy and the usual male betrayal that is, for some reason, set to the melody of Dylan’s ‘Boots Of Spanish Leather’ (which is in itself, admittedly, set to the melody of ‘Blackjack Davy’). These are just two passable genre exercises that can be scrapped without much remorse.

More interesting is the more modernistic stuff: ‘Jersey Thursday’, for instance, a succinct two-minute musical portrait of the beaches of Jersey Island (not even sure if Donovan himself ever went there — a pretty long way from Glasgow) whose "gulls whool wheeling spinning" directly link it to ‘Belated Forgiveness Plea’; apparently, as long as the «seagulls ’round the seashore» checkbox is checked, life still has something worth living for, even if in this rather cold and morose setting, Donovan’s "on Jersey Thursday..." refrain almost takes on the vibe of "gloomy Sunday", if you know what I mean. Even better is ‘The Summer Day Reflection Song’, two more short minutes of a somewhat hypnotic tune — it’s got a pretty fast tempo but it still feels frozen in the moment, what with Donovan’s intentionally «emotionless» delivery. It is never clear what the song is truly about, but I like to imagine that it is about the final conscious moments of a heat stroke victim, and that the true intended full title was ‘The Summer Day Reflection Song (Remember To Stay Hydrated)’. Shawn Phillips is integral to the tune’s atmosphere, contributing a mix of jazzy and raga chords to match the free-flow psychedelic feel of Donovan’s "cat’s a-smilin’ in the sun" lyrical stream.

It all leads toward the most critically celebrated number on the record: ‘Sunny Goodge Street’, a song that begins as a rambling ode to yet another location — a quaint old subway station in the very heart of London — and then begins to meander all around the place, taking its lyrical inspiration from the beatniks and its musical core from contemporary jazz (hence the "listenin’ to sounds of Mingus mellow fantastic" reference). It’s still Donovan, so there’s a lot of sentimentality and tenderness and idealism here, but you might argue that the corny goody-two-shoes vibes are pretty well cauterized with the post-bop tempos and the cello-meets-flute baroque-pop touches. The instrumental section, when Skip Alan subtly winds up the tempo and the flute crosses paths with Phillips’ Django Reinhardt-influenced electric guitar soloing, may not be grandly original in the overall sense, but it is still a major achievement for Donovan, who does here something very different from Dylan — you could say that ‘Sunny Goodge Street’ is the true start of the man carving his own path, since this kind of lightly jazzified folk-pop would pretty much become his staple food over the second half of the 1960s.

It is also quite telling that I mainly remember the Donovan originals from Fairytale rather than the covers. Bert Jansch’s ‘Oh Deed I Do’ and Paul Bernath’s ‘Circus Of Sour’ are fairly run-of-the-mill folk ballads; ‘Candy Man’ follows in the steps of ‘You’re Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond’ (= Donovan paying tribute to Americana without having been requested by Americana to do anything of the sort); and Shawn Phillips’ own ‘Little Tin Soldier’, well... let’s just say that, for all of the praise heaped on Shawn by the-ones-who-know, this is hardly ever going to be a true cornerstone of his legacy. This rather monotonous ballad is really only craving attention due to its intriguing lyrical tale of a silent romance between a one-legged tin soldier and a glass case ballerina... not nearly as intriguing, though, when you realize it is merely a (slightly altered) retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Steadfast Tin Soldier tale. Unfortunately, poor old Hans never got any credits, so a lot of people must have ended up thinking that Shawn Phillips (or Donovan himself, for that matter) had a really weird imagination — instead of placing themselves in the cultural context of a 19th century Danish writer. (Not that Andersen didn’t have a pretty weird imagination himself, but at least he probably actually played with real tin soldiers in his early childhood, while Phillips and Donovan most probably did not).

Anyway, screw the covers but do not disregard the originals — Fairytale is an important album not just for Donovan’s own evolution, but for the progress of the UK folk-pop scene in general. For instance, you can easily see the influence stuff like this must have had on the young Nick Drake (who, incidentally, was just buying his first acoustic guitar back in 1965), not to mention lots and lots of more minor figures on the same scene. And at the same time, you can easily see why Donovan managed to become so much more popular with this style than Nick ever could — not just because of the occasional rousing pseudo-extrovert anthem like ‘Catch The Wind’, but simply because along with the shyness and reclusiveness there comes a certain warmth and friendliness in everything he does. Unlike any given Nick Drake album, Fairytale is an LP that is not afraid of people — Donovan likes to be near people, at the very least, if not necessarily in close contact with them, and his reclusiveness never takes on a misanthropic nature. In this, he is somewhat close to Dylan, except that for Dylan, people are usually his test subjects — weird little four-limbed butterflies that he likes to pin down and study for his own amusement — while for Donovan, people are these amazing creatures who come in colours of reds and golds and yellows and make the world a better place. Unless they turn into universal soldiers and start shooting everybody, but that’s nothing that cannot really be cured with a few concerts like The Big TNT Show. Oh, and seagulls. Lots of seagulls everywhere.

So let’s just wind this up with a few lines from ‘Turquoise’, Donovan’s last single from 1965 and one of the prettiest songs he wrote that year: "Your smile beams like sunlight on a gull’s wing" — oh Jesus H. Christ, not again! "Take my hand and hold it as you would a flower" — precisely, as long as people take the same care of Donovan as they would of a flower he’s going to be all right with them. "Ride easy your fairy stallion you have mounted" — not sure if he’s giving jockey advice to Perseus or hinting to his lover that he typically prefers the missionary position. "Take care who you love, my precious, he might not know" — I think he’s projecting his own insecurity here on his imaginary ideal partner. Like any good romantic Chinese, French, or German poet, Donovan sure likes his idealistic constructs — and I must say he got pretty decent with making them believable by the end of 1965.

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