Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Music Live: Donovan Trips Out Easy at Deepak Homebase
Posted by Henry Stewart on Wed, May 2, 2012 at 2:55 PM
The evening began with a short Donovan set; he played seven songs, solo on acoustic guitar, the best of which was the simple and pretty "Sleep" from 1996's Rick Rubin-produced Sutras (which, with his accent, I thought he called "Citrus"); he also nailed "Mellow Yellow," his closer, getting the audience of 100 or so well-off-looking, mostly white people (including John Sebastian!) to clap and sing the chorus so he could whisper the quite rightlies.
Donovan mostly stuck to the hits—he was celebrating his induction, after all, as well as the recent release of The Essential Donovan. He played "Catch the Wind," "Sunshine Superman," and "There is a Mountain," but he had a little trouble singing them. Perhaps he has lost his upper range to age and hasn't modulated his arrangements, or perhaps he just didn't really care. Later in the evening, he played a few measures of George Harrison's "Something"—or, at least, he tried to. "I'm making it up, by the way," he said. "I don't know the chords." Who cares? You know what he means! Plus, he's Donovan! And he was here less to perform than he was to hang out and celebrate the old days.
He and Deepak shared stories about The Beatles (whom Donovan also impersonated) for most of the evening: how Donovan taught them fingerpicking and descending bass notes, which led to "Dear Prudence," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," and "Blackbird"; how he helped Paul by writing a verse for "Yellow Submarine" (the "sky of blue" one, of which Paul said, "that'll do"); how he watched a policeman park Paul's car for him after the Beatle had left it half on a sidewalk, with the doors open and the radio blasting; and how he took George to see the Maharishi in Holland in 1989, where the three of them meditated together for 20 minutes.
These kind of bold-name anecdotes, interspersed with neo-Hindu philosophy, made up most of the conversation; the two also unfortunately slipped into some Baby Boomer self-congratulation, like when they spoke, for example, of how back then (unlike today!) people wrote lyrics that had meaning, which the audience applauded heartily. (Groan!) They did give young people a little credit, though: after Donovan's soundcheck that afternoon, he went down to a cafe with his friend, the poet George Wallace, to talk about Charlie Chaplin and socialism. From there, he witnessed the Occupy march coming down Broadway, and was impressed by its "great rush of enthusiasm." "If you're gonna do it again," he said (meaning protest? The 60s?), "do it often."
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