60's Icon Donovan Dazzles with His Metaphysical Music

A great cheer rose from the sold-out house at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts on Nov. 23 when Donovan, the Scottish-born troubadour who was once called "the British Bob Dylan," started to play Buffy Saint-Marie's anti-war tune, "The Universal Soldier." Donovan plaintively explained, "It's an old song but it looks like we're still in the same story." For a moment, the protest movement that raged against the Viet Nam War seemed to have been awakened from its deep sleep.

San Francisco is the first city on Donovan's national tour that marks the 40th anniversary since the release of his song, "The Hurdy Gurdy Man." Yes, that right, forty years. Donovan, backed by a crackerjack San Francisco band and three string players, performed for about two hours with one 20-minute intermission. He did the big hits, "Sunshine Superman," "Wear Your Love Like Heaven," "Colours," "First There Is A Mountain," "Atlantis," Epistle To Dippy," and the song that made him a folk singing star when he was 18, "Catch the Wind." He also played lesser-known but skillfully-delivered numbers, such as, "World, Slow Down," "The Divine Daze of Deathless Delight," and "Cosmic Wheels." Donovan introduced a new song, "Local Boy Does Good," dedicated to the late Brian Jones, the self-destructive but brilliant little boy lost of The Rolling Stones, who died in a swimming pool accident in 1969. "He was a rebel romantic," Donovan sang. "With a death-wish dream." Donovan is clearly delighted to be strutting his songs before an audience, striking the pose of a larkish thespian on a West End stage-almost a bit over the top-a blend of Baba Ram Dass and a breathy, nasal James Mason with an exaggerated Scottish brogue.

By the end of the show, a dozen or so people in the audience had to get up and dance and the sixties were alive again. Donovan closed with one of the coolest, paranoiac rock anthems of all time, "Season of The Witch," and led a spirited sing-along with the infectiously frivolous
"Mellow Yellow." Myles O'Reilly, the owner of O'Reilly's Irish Pub & Restaurant in North
Beach and The Holy Grail in Polk Gulch, provided an off-beat introduction that included bringing a stack of 45 rpm records from his formative years in Ireland onto the stage and reading the titles aloud to the crowd, which showed its bemused approval.

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay." His e-mail is bruce@brucebellingham.com