Mellow Yellow/Wear Your Love Like Heaven

Performer: Donovan
Engineer: Trevor Michael
Producer: Mickie Most; Mickie Most
Distributor: Gotham Distributing Corp.

Notes: 2 LPs on 1 CD: MELLOW YELLOW (1967)/WEAR YOUR LOVE LIKE HEAVEN (1967). Personnel includes: Donovan (vocals, guitar); Eric Leese (guitar); Mike O'Neill (piano, organ, harpsichord); Harold McNair (flute); Mike Carr (vibraphone); Cliff Barton, Jack Bruce (bass); Keith Webb (drums); John Carr (congas, bongos). Recorded at CBS Studios, London, England. Originally released on Epic (24239) and Epic (26349). Includes liner notes by Vicki Marshall. 2 LPs on 1 CD: MELLOW YELLOW (1967)/ WEAR YOUR LOVE LIKE HEAVEN (1967). Personnel: Donovan (vocals, whistling, guitar); Eric Leese (electric guitar); Harold McNair (flute); Mike O'Neil (piano, harpsichord, organ); Mike Carr (vibraphone); Cliff Barton, Jack Bruce (electric bass); Keith Webb (drums); John Candy Carr (congas, bongos). Illustrator: Mick Taylor . This is a peculiar two-fer CD marrying MELLOW YELLOW (a US-only mishmash of singles, outtakes, and old album tracks) with WEAR YOUR LOVE LIKE HEAVEN, originally the first half of an entirely different double-LP called A GIFT FROM A FLOWER TO A GARDEN. (Confused yet?) Taken together like this, these two albums are Donovan at his hippie-era peak, blending fanciful psychedelia like the two title tracks--two of his finest singles ever--and the downright giddy "Oh Gosh" with earthier material like "House of Jansch" (a tribute to the Pentangle's Bert Jansch, a longtime friend), the witty Swinging London tribute "Sunny South Kensington," and the downright bleak "Writer in the Sun." Donovan's albums are notoriously spotty, but these two are his most consistently entertaining, with very few weak songs and some excellent psych-pop arrangements by a pre-Led Zeppelin John Paul Jones.

Uncut (p.122) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[A]sk yourself if Drake's cello dronescapes would have been possible without the innovations laid down here..."

He began as a Guthrie/Dylan-style folkie, but soon Donovan Leitch adopted a more psychedelic flower-power stance. His knack for sunny, wistful pop songs produced a batch of giant 1960s hits. His fragile manchild voice and image made him a hippie pinup boy, but there was a deep wellspring of emotion behind songs like "Catch the Wind" and "Colours." By the '70s, Donovan had largely dropped off the radar, but he made a resounding comeback in the '90s with the spare, affecting, Rick Rubin-produced SUTRAS.

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