Donovan Comes, Singing Songs of Love Quiz

Answer: Superman

"I'll pick up your hand and slowly blow your little mind
'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine"

A lyric that could only have become a hit in that exact moment in time - after the rise of a widespread youth drug culture and before second wave feminism.

"Sunshine Superman" was Donovan's only number one hit on the American Billboard Hot 100; the single came out in the summer of 1966 in the US, and late in that same year in the UK.

Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, who later had a bit of fame in the music business, were among the recording personnel.

Answer: to hear from Andy in Vietnam fighting

1969's "To Susan on the West Coast Waiting" was on the way to becoming a small US hit, until some DJ flipped the record and played the B side. "Atlantis" became a much bigger hit.

Answer: Song of the Naturalist's Wife

"Song of the Naturalist's Wife" was on the "For Little Ones" record of 1967's double album "Gift from a Flower to a Garden".

As a younger baby boomer, I had the privilege of growing up listening to my older siblings' music, and this one was a formative album for me, especially that second record. Donovan was clearly enjoying himself playing with language and sound.

Answer: Atlantis

As with several other Donovan recordings, contract complications led to "Atlantis" being released in different ways and at different times in different places. It was a hit in much of Europe and eventually in the US, but didn't do more than all right in the UK.

As mentioned in Qu 2, it was the B side to the single in the US, because it really didn't look like much of a radio hit. It must have fit with the zeitgeist, though, because a lot of people loved it.

Personally, I find it just a bit much.

Answer: catch the wind

"Catch the Wind" was Donovan's first hit song, getting into the top ten in the UK and doing all right in the US (number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100). As so often with his music, rights issues complicated availability - the version on the "Greatest Hits" album is not the same as the single.

The cover of this song by the Canadian band Irish Descendants is breathtakingly beautiful.

Answer: Mellow Yellow

Fifty some odd years later, "Mellow Yellow" is probably the one Donovan song that those who weren't even born when he was on the charts have heard of.

It was a good sized hit in 1967, and, no, the rumour that it was about getting high from smoking banana skins is not true (and neither is the rumour; don't try it). The actual inspiration for the song, according to Donovan in various interviews in "Rolling Stone" and "NME", refers to the "electrical banana", but that's all I'm going to tell you here.

Answer: The Magpie

"The magpie is a most illustrious bird
Dwells in a diamond tree
One brings sorrow and one brings joy
Sorrow and joy for me"

The nursery rhyme dates from at least the mid 18th century, and there are a lot of versions. The basis of them all is counting magpies or some other corvids to tell the future:

"One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret,
Never to be told"

or

"One for sorrow,
Two for mirth.
Three for a funeral,
Four for a birth.
Five for heaven.
Six for hell.
Seven for the Devil, his own self"

I live in a city where the black billed magpie is so common as to have become our mascot - at any given time you can pretty much count on being able to see enough to tell any future with!

Answer: Linda

"Legend of a Girl Child Linda" from 1966's "Sunshine Superman" album is really quite something - more than six minutes of beautifully orchestrated Arthurian imagery. Just let the lyrics wash over you, though - if you pay too close attention, it doesn't actually make much sense.

The song was written for Linda Lawrence, who at that point in their relationship was living in California, trying to escape the pressures of being a pop star's girlfriend (she had previously been in a relationship with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and they had a child together). Eventually they did marry, and the marriage has lasted to the time of this quiz being written, some fifty years later.

Answer: have some wine

"A goat skinned tambourine
What sights that has seen
Blazing eyes of dancers
Daughters of tinker queens
Break cheese with me
Won't you break bread and have some wine?"

Another song from 1967's "Gift from a Flower to a Garden", with, again, rich poetical lyrics evoking some undefined, but colourful, past. He really was the perfect poet of the flower power counterculture.

Answer: Season of the Witch

From the "Sunshine Superman" album, probably written in collaboration with Shawn Phillips, this song highlights a different aspect of the counterculture - paranoia and unease. In an interview many years later with "Mojo" magazine, Donovan says "There was a feeling, even then, that all was not perfect in the Garden of Eden. Dealers were moving into bohemia and hard drugs were on the fringes." His arrest for possession of marijuana came around this time, and by 1967 he was advising his fans against drug use.