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Mellow Yellow

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Mellow Yellow. Early '67. Twas a great time to be alive--there are many fond memories here. While The Beatles' super single Penny Lane b/w Strawberry Fields Forever were whetting our appitite for Sgt. Pepper's L.H.C.B., I was digging The Supremes Sing H-D-H and the Mellow Yellow album. Mr. Leich had just come from the mountain top with his last album Sunshine Superman, only to burst on the scene with his second Mickie Most production. While some of the songs had a darker quality to them (Writer In The Sun, Sand and Foam and Young Girl Blues) there were some head-reeling tunes here as well. Sunny South Kensington (which is a street in Echo Park district) is a beat poem lovers' dream while the forboading Sand and Foam dealt with the paranoia of waiting on a shipment of crystal from Mexico. It wasn't long afterwards that Donovan renounced the drug world altogether and called upon the youth of the world to do likewise. But dispite the moody atmosphere of Young Girl Blues, M.Y. has some great upbeat moments. Bleak City Woman dives deep in the well of jazz and blues while House Of Jasch (another song in honor of Bert) has some hilarious word play. The Observation has Danny Thompson working the bass with some of Don's best beat poetry. Then there's Museum, a statement about indecision with a twist. Herman's Hermits (another one of Mickey Most's groups) almost had a hit with this one. If "Girl Child Linda" was the focus of Sunshine Superman, "Hampstead Incident" is Mellow Yellow's. One can hear the humble beginnings of these two songs in his earlier composition "Sunny Goodge Street" from 1965. Folk, jazz and blues mixed with just enough wit and wisdom is what made Donovan so easy to listen to and reveals just why we love him in the first place. The Epic label seemed a brighter yellow with his recordings than with the likes of Dave Clark and the Yardbirds. Not that these were bad bands (very good bands, they were, they just weren't Donovan). Within a year, Donovan took to writing excellent works for children and lighter songs that were easier to understand, but not nearly as intriguing. This re-issue is graced with bonus tracks, a few which I do remember--"Preachin' Love" in particular became a concert staple and an early incarnation of Superlungs My Supergirl. With music and production this good, one wonders why Most didn't mix these first two Epic albums in stereo, although Sunshine Superman and Season of the Witch both appeared in a true mix for both ears on the Greatest Hits album.

It's a shame that "Mellow Yellow" is only available as an obscure import, or as a two-fer with the stylistically different "Wear Your Love Like Heaven", for it remains perhaps his greatest work, eclipsed perhaps only by "Sunshine Superman" with which it shares the most similarity. Donovan was at the absolute peak of his powers in late 1966 when he went into a London studio to record the ten tracks on this album. Having
re-invented himself and pioneered a new brand of psychedelia on "Sunshine Superman", the artist felt at ease to create an effortless set of poems set to music, ranging from acoustic folk (the mesmerising "Sand And Foam" and "Young Girl Blues") to epic baroque ("Hampstead Incident"), swing jazz experiments ("The Observation", "House Of Jansch"), drugged out Swinging London pop ("Mellow Yellow", "Museum", "Sunny South Kensington") and
a hearbreaking balladic paen to writer's block ("Writer In The Sun").

The lyrics are among the most incisive and edgy in the songwriter's entire career, capturing the moment when he was temporarily banned from recording in the USA due to contractual entanglements. Many of the songs have a depressed, resigned feel to them, capturing a sense of ennui that is only occasionally brightened by the singer's still optimistic view that things will change (and change they did). The music is colored by similar instrumentation to that of "Sunshine Superman", with flutes, string quartets, vibes, clarinets and other additions mixing jazz, folk and classical music with ease. The major difference between the two works is the absence of the Indian influence of sitars and tablas--save on the closing "Sunny South Kensington" (which is as perfect an encapsulation of late '66 UK pop as can be found)--which makes the album a bit less psychedelic than its predecessor but no less richly textured. The preoccupation with medeival and magical imagery is here refined from a straightforward storytelling (as on "Legend Of A Girl Child Linda" from "Superman") to a more subtle lyrical touch mixed in with modern-day themes ("Sand And Foam", "Hampstead Incident"). The musical climaxes are no less dramatic, and the only misstep appears to be the singer's fascination with disposable 20s jazz themes on "The Observation" and "Bleak City Woman".

In short, "Mellow Yellow" is an essential purchase, not only as a snapshot of the experimental, pioneering phase of UK pop in late '66/early '67, but as a consistently strong and timeless work in its own right. A domestic remaster (perhaps with bonus tracks of outtakes and the concurrent single "Epistle To Dippy"/"Preachin' Love", which fits right in with the style of the record) is sorely needed.

"Mellow Yellow" was Donovans's second electric album, and his second produced by Micky Most. To call the album electric is probably a little misguiding, as many tracks are almost pure acoustic recordings; but compared to Donovan first two albums these songs are arranged with a great variety of instruments. Though Donovan is covering quite many different styles ( blues, jazz, folk, classical and pop ) the album works very well as a whole; a fact that arranger John Cameron deserves credit for. His arrangements are both tasteful and varied, creating the atmosphere that makes an album.

The list of guest musician features both classical players and well-known studio musicians like John Paul Jones, Harold McNair and Phil Seamen.

The extremely catchy title-track is well-known to everybody who was there in the sixties, and it still has the charm, so no wonder it made it to number one in the charts back then.

Other highlights are the moving "Young Girl Blues", the catchy "Museum" and the complex "Hampstead Incident".

The charming "Sunny South Kensington" works as a reminder of Donovan's first electic hit "Sunshine Superman" and has some amusing Dylan inspired lyrics.

No less than 10 bonus-track, make the CD-reissue quite a scoop. The two single hits "Epistle to Dippy" and "There is a Mountain" would be stand-out on any Donovan album, and here in particular they work extremely well, being recording during some of the same sessions. I always thought that "There is a Mountain" had the same optimistic feel as Traffic's "You Can All Join In"; both quite typical of the hippie way of thinking in the late 1960's.

The demos are mostly Donovan alone with his guitar, before the final arrangements. The swinging jazzy B-side "Preachin` Love" is another gem.

A CD that can only be highly recommended!

In a review of an import version of "Mellow Yellow" a year or so ago I wished for a proper remastering with bonus tracks to be released; this has finally happened and so here is the updated review, which is nothing but superlative. "Mellow Yellow" followed up on the quality of the previous masterpiece "Sunshine Superman" and is nearly its equal; although the Indian influence is mostly absent (save for the closing "Sunny South Kensington", which turns out to have been from the "Sunshine" sessions"), the sophisticated jazz/folk/classical arrangements are just as exquisite and particularly noteworthy tracks include the title cut, "Young Girl Blues", "Sand And Foam", "Hampstead Incident" and "Writer In The Sun". The sound quality, as on "Sunshine Superman", is now rich and full, and the bonus cuts fit perfectly with the tone of the album; of particular interest is the jazzy version of "Superlungs" and the alternate "Epistle To Dippy", both of which should have made the album in place of say, "Bleak City Woman". But now you get all the tracks, and can program them in any way you please; the liner notes are informative and this is now the definitive version of the album, one that has stood the test of time very well; Donovan's vocals here are especially resonant and beautiful.

So many people think of Donovan as either a Dylan impersonator or a hippy embarassment. I have always believed that Donovan's music (not his lyrics) is vastly superior to Dylan (who has an uncanny knack of surfing the zeitgeist). A wealth of wonderful music on this disc.

Just as Sunshine Superman was named after Donovan's big hit single, so Mellow Yellow took its name from the follow-up single recorded in August 1966, and which similarly was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic, tuning in and turning on to the flowery drug-hazed zeitgeist of 1966 and 1967. Released in America a mere five months after the album Sunshine Superman, Mellow Yellow is of quite remarkably consistently high quality, with some beautifully realized songs and arrangements. I have always felt that the endlessly comparing of Donovan and Bob Dylan were far wide of the mark, and the jazz influences throughout most of Mellow Yellow surely give the lie to any such comparison, though I suppose a Venn diagram would intersect at Mellow Yellow and Rainy Day Women # 12 and 35.

Unlike Sunshine Superman, which was partly recorded in Los Angeles and featured sitars and other exotic instruments, the Mellow Yellow sessions were exclusively cast in London and were all arranged by John Cameron (apart from John Paul Jones for the single Mellow Yellow). They have a distinctly British feel to them, and are none the worse for that. Two of the tracks are purely unaccompanied Donovan on vocal and guitar, Young Girl Blues and Sand And Foam, and both are exquisite songs. Young Girl Blues dates from January 1966 and is of low-fi quality, though its atmospheric performance compensates for its technical shortcomings. It was probably originally a demo as the song was also recorded about that time by both Marianne Faithfull and Julie Felix. Sand And Foam was inspired by a holiday in Mexico around May-June 1966 and is wonderfully evocative.

The rest of the album was recorded in November 1966, with the John Cameron Quartet and other jazz musicians, apart from Sunny South Kensington. This had been recorded on the same day as Sunshine Superman, on 19 December 1965, and had been intended to be its B-side. For some reason it ended up instead as the B-side in the US to Mellow Yellow, and closed the Mellow Yellow album.

This album was not released in the UK. Six of the tracks turned up on the delayed British version of Sunshine Superman (The Observation, Writer In The Sun, Hampstead Incident, Sand And Foam, Young Girl Blues). Sand And Foam later doubled as the B-side to There Is A Mountain, the rest appear to have remained unheard by his native audience until a 1993 CD release.

This expanded re-issue presents the original Mellow Yellow album in mono, and a further 10 bonus tracks. These feature the US-only single, Epistle To Dippy (plus an alternative version); its B-side Preachin' Love (also the UK B-side of Mellow Yellow); the hit single There Is A Mountain; and two outtakes, Good Time and a second unreleased attempt at Superlungs. These are all stereo apart from Preachin' Love. The album closes with the original unaccompanied mono demos for four of the songs on the album. These show that the jazz inflections on some of the songs were there from the outset.

As I've said in other reviews, there is more to Donovan than just the hits. This album demonstrates that.
"Museum" is a standout.
Lots of good "extras."
Recommended.

Remasters can be a dubious affair: they range from a clear grab for your money, where the remaster sounds basically like the original, and only a teensy weensy bit has been changed to satisfy the legality of the product - to the kind where the whole issue is moot because you need special equipment to hear the bells and whistles. Most of the time, you're better off saving your dollars for something new, rather than indulging your nostalgia in the hopes that this time around, somehow, what wasn't broke to begin with will be magically fixed. The bonus tracks that are added as bait are frequently the most troublesome aspect of the remastered editions. Almost always they confirm what you suspected: that there was very good reason why they didn't make it onto the original CD or vinyl; the artist knew what he/she was doing and modestly chose not to present his/her lesser efforts, but now, especially if said artist is dead, the exploitation knows no limits. Occasionally, the bonus tracks have the creepy effect of making you think that the band you loved perhaps wasn't all that great and all that good stuff was really due to side musicians and brilliant studio engineers.
So I hope that all these caveats give strength to my recommendation of this issue of Mellow Yellow, because I'm recommending it for the wonderful bonus tracks. Mellow Yellow is an excellent album, although not my favorite Donovan album: as another reviewer pointed out, the title track is misleading: it presents Donovan as the pop hitter of the day, without much depth; the rest of the album must have come as a terrible disappointment to the teenyboppers of the time, who expected more of the same. Instead, the songs go into fabulous, then uncharted territory, and it is ironic that this musician, who was plagued by accusations of folkie imitation for most of his career, on this album completely obliterated that erroneous image and broke new ground (for which he never got credit) by venturing into jazzy arrangements, upright bass, winds, and the clavinet (harpsichord) that gives the songs a new dimension instead of being just a gimmick. The songs are relaxed and cool, and the lyrics are a wonderfully "hip" document of a bygone era: "Sunny South Kensington" list a whole slew of people who were "making the scene" in swinging London of the sixties, even throwing in French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, then riding the crest of his popularity as the ultra-cool nihilistic gangster in Goddard's "Breathless." The two simply produced (but hardly simple) acoustic songs, "Sand and Foam" and "Young Girl Blues" bring the listener to attention as they clash unexpectedly, but perfectly, with the jazzy groove around them. "Young Girl Blues" qualifies as one of the most poignant descriptions of a lonely girl hoping to make it in the hurly-burly of the "scene," a girl whose friends are "all models," although when the party is over, she retreats to the solitude of her crummy apartment - one can just imagine the leaky faucets and peeling paint.
The mastering is fine, but here, as well, you occasionally wonder if anyone did anything at all. While the wind and brass instruments that on the original blew out the top dynamics and began to distort are pristine now, "Young Girl Blues" still suffers from the same bottom-heavy boom on the acoustic guitar; before I even listened to it I was sure it was going to be the most obvious remastering result: a lighter tone, clearer bottom. But no, it's the same only louder, so it actually sounds even worse than before. What's more, the song always started out with a very slight "weaving" as if it were dipping out of tune, rather like a cassette tape that's loosened and doesn't wind correctly, although this is actually due to the resonance of the lower strings on a powerful acoustic hollow-body.
So back to those bonus tracks: they constitute nearly an album - let's say an EP - in themselves, and are totally worth the price of the admission. The tracks that you know from other albums are here reproduced in crisp, lovely formats; "superlungs" is a stunningly modern arrangement - almost trance-like - of a song that would later become much plainer on a generally plain LP for some reason; the alternative version of "Epistle to Dippy" is seriously different and a joy; and the acoustic demos of the songs are sheer beauty. If you're new to the album and aren't sold on the jazzy arrangements, these demos will show you the songs' brilliant core and, simultaneously, show you just how talented a composer Donovan was. The harmonies come to the fore, the chords are gorgeous, the vocal command is absolute. (Donovan stops singing and restarts on a dime, producing masterful effects just with silences.) If you know the album by heart, you might wind up, like me, listening to just the bonus tracks, over and over again. Buy it, and, as they used to say, dig it, man!

Had heard of the album as a teen, back in the 1960s.Never listened to it until now.The headline Mellow Yellow-an indoctrinal pop single, recieved airplay everywhere. The album as a whole is a compilation of lightly phrased if ornate jazz structures. Very refreshing, creative. Somebody was actually thinking back then.There is a second set of recordings of some songs,less ornate,like sketches.Either way,refreshing artistic achievement lives on today.

Donovan's fourth album, originally released in 1967, was his second with producer Mickie Most and arranger John Cameron, and though it featured the flower-power light-psych title anthem, it also reached back past the previous "Sunshine Superman" LP to Donovan's folk and jazz roots. When released, its original ten tracks comprised Donovan's most eclectic collection to date, ranging from the solo folk tunes "Sand and Foam" and "Young Girl Blues," to the ornate arrangement of "Hampstead Incident," the bohemian jazz of "Bleak City Woman" and "The Observation," and the swinging, name-checking pop of "Sunny South Kensington."

Much of this material was written during a tumultuous period in 1966 that saw Donovan separating from (and then being sued by) his initial management team, embargoed from releasing new material in the UK, and unable to promote his work in the US. Melancholy, lethargy and the pain of personal and professional setbacks permeate the lyrics. The dispirited artist stoked his artistic muse in Greece and Mexico, and spent downtime preparing material with his producer and arranger. Once back in the studio the sessions produced sophisticated, eclectic material in short order.

EMI's reissue doubles the original ten tracks with bonuses that include the single sides "Epistle to Dippy" (in both it's original electric-guitar version and a violin-based alternative), the island-styled zen koan "There is a Mountain," a second run at "Superlungs" that prominently features brass and guitar, and a quartet of songwriter demos that demonstrate the integral nature of John Cameron's arrangements for the album. This is a superb helping of Donovan's mix of folk, jazz, blues, pop and light psych, remastered in its original mono, with stereo for bonus tracks 13 and 15-20. [©2006 hyperbolium dot com]