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Legendary folk rocker Donovan -- responsible for such Sixties hits as "Mellow Yellow" and "Sunshine Superman" -- recently completed a new album to be released by the end of the year. The singer-songwriter recorded the tentatively titled Beatnik Cafe at Hollywood's Capitol Studios with veteran bassist Danny Thompson and drummer Jim Keltner.
"We only played the tracks three times," Donovan says. "There were no rehearsals. There were no arrangements. It's got a folk element, but it's also got a very new age, spiritual vibe going for it. It's a very beautiful, uplifting record." Donovan and producer John Chelew (Blind Boys of Alabama) financed the album, and Chelew will be shopping the record in the coming weeks.
Donovan's daughters Oriole and Astrella are already planning his next album. "They're working on a project called 'Superheroes,'" he says, "contacting artists that are influenced by me or in touch with my music, and I their music. It's not just finding anybody who wants to do a Donovan song; it's actually looking for a true collaboration -- and not necessarily with younger [artists]. Tony Bennett's on the list, because Tony and I have a link through jazz."
So far the Charlatans U.K. have reworked "Seasons of the Witch" for the album, and Donovan has worked with Future Sound of London on a dance-minded version of "Cosmic Wheels." According to Donovan, No Doubt and Oasis' Noel Gallagher are among the others artists who will be invited to participate.
Donovan is also among the interview subjects for Turn! Turn! Turn!, Richie Unterberger's new study of the folk rock revolution, and he sees the movement's greatest achievement as bringing humanitarian ideas to forefront of American culture.
"What the folk song singers and the blues song singers were singing about in the Forties and Fifties," Donovan says now, "from Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger and the Weavers and then onto Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, and Bob Dylan, were unions, the brotherhood of man, the coming together of the working man. It was considered Communism, then it was Socialism, but it was really the rights of man, civil rights, which was an extraordinary strong part of the folk tradition -- and then anti-war protests [became the focus] because of the nuclear threat. Coffee houses, art schools, jazz clubs, folk clubs were the breeding grounds for these ideas."
COLIN DEVENISH
(August 29, 2002)