Open Road
Studio album by Donovan
Released 1970
Recorded October 1969 - 1970 at Morgan Studios, London
Genre Celtic Rock
Length 42:37
Label Epic
Producer Donovan Leitch
Professional ratings
Allmusic 3/5 stars
George Starostin 12
Open Road is the eighth studio album, and ninth album overall, from Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan.
History
After splitting with Mickie Most during the Barabajagal sessions, Donovan decided to move back to the UK against the wishes of his management, who most likely objected due to the heavy taxation in the country and the distance from the American market. There he began recording and producing the tracks that would form his next studio album. Donovan's production was much rougher and more organic than Mickie Most's cleanly polished production on Donovan's hits of the 1960s.
During these sessions, Donovan assembled the band Open Road with drummer John Carr, keyboardist Mike O'Neil, and bass and guitar player Mike Thomson. The band played a style that was dubbed celtic rock by Donovan. Many of the songs on Open Road ponder the negative side of industrialization and the lost peacefulness of a previous time. While some of this had been touched on in Donovan's previous work, this is the first album where the topic is expounded at length.
After the release of this album, Donovan left Open Road to focus on his family and finish recording his next album, H.M.S. Donovan. After losing Donovan and subsequently Mike O'Neil, Mike Thompson and John Carr reformed Open Road with Barry Husband on guitar and vocals and Simon Lanzon on keyboards. They recorded and released one more album in 1971 (Windy Daze) before disbanding. Open Road subsequently became part of Donovan's canon, and the band Open Road was largely forgotten.
Review by William Ruhlmann of Allmusic:
Although it was a disappointing seller and signaled the start of Donovan's commercial decline, Open Road could have been a new beginning for the singer. Stripping down to a Celtic rock format that managed to be hard and direct, yet still folkish, Donovan turned out a series of excellent songs, notably the minor hit "Riki Tiki Tavi," that seemed to show him moving toward a roots-oriented sound of considerable appeal. Unfortunately, he was derailed by record company hassles and perhaps his own burnout, and Open Road turned out to be a sidestep rather than a step forward.
Review on Donovan Unofficial website:
After the Barabajagal sessions and after splitting with Mickie Most, Donovan decided to go back to the UK to record his next album, in spite of his manager, who was against this decision because of the high taxes of the country and the distance from the American market. During these sessions, Donovan assembled the band Open Road with drummer John Carr, keyboardist Mike O'Neil and bass and guitar player Mike Thomson. Donovan produced the album himself.
The Open Road album was the first recording to be named as "Celtic Rock", a term dubbed by Donovan himself to refer the style of the group, which had been brewing in the previous albums, Barabajagal and The Hurdy Gurdy Man.
This is one of the most underrated Donovan's albums, even when it's one of the best Celtic Rock albums ever made. This was probably because of the high critical lyrics. Especially songs like Poke At The Pope, that made catholic believers step back from Donovan. The album was even outlawed in the USA, theoretically due to some copyright problems, but presumably due to this song. After the years, it's also one of the most wanted albums by fans.
In the summer of 1970, Donovan and the Open Road band (Mike Thomson and John Carr) went on tour. First, they spent a few weeks in the Greek islands, filming a precious little movie called There Is An Ocean, that would later appear in the Try For The Sun: The Journey Of Donovan Box Set. The idea of the tour was to stay touring around the world for a whole year, and avoid taxes by not living anywhere. Thus, Donovan would make more money in a year than any other artist before. But he started to fall in a deeper and deeper depression due a feeling of isolation and some love troubles that included the long separation from Linda, his great love. A few weeks later he asked the band to leave and continued touring solo, but when the tour arrived to Japan he couldn't stand it anymore and went back to England, breaking the super-tour and the taxes plan. His father and his manager tried to persuade him of doing such a thing but the decision was made. After returning to England and spending a few days resting in his cottage, Donovan met Linda Lawrence. They would never split up again.
After leaving the tour, Mike O'Neil, Mike Thompson and John Carr reformed the Open Road band with Barry Husband on guitar and vocals and Simon Lanzon on keyboards. They recorded and released one more album in 1971 (Windy Daze) before disbanding.
Riki Tiki Tavi is the mongoose from Kipling's Jungle Book.
Season Of Farewell was written for Enid, mother of Donovan's first two children, as an open farewell letter.
The cover picture was taken by Donovan's old friend Gypsy Dave. It shows, from left to right, John Carr, Donovan and Mike Thomson. The album art was designed by Sidney Maurer.
Review by George Starostin:
The overlooked pop masterpiece. Bubblegum, ancient folk, and crispy satire all in one.
Being the quintessential Sixties elf-symbol and all, it's no wonder people pretty much stopped paying attention to Donovan in the post-Altamont period, and, just as in the case of so many artists, happened to do him a lot of injustice. Talent doesn't just go away together with the social vibes and ideals. And Open Road is good proof, as it is nothing less than another near-stellar charming pop offering from Mr Leitch. Exactly the kind of charming pop offering, in fact, that you can always find rated rather high on this site.
I haven't done much research here, but I seem to remember hearing something about Open Road actually being the name of Donovan's new "band" and the album thus being self-titled, suggesting a radically new beginning here at the start of the new decade. In all senses, this looks a bit too far-fetched: not only are all the songs written by Donovan as usual, but even some of the "band"'s members are old-time Donovan regulars (the trustworthy Mike O'Neill on keyboards), and stylistically it's not that much of a departure from anything. Well, maybe not quite; what I mean to say is that the hand of Donovan is recognizable on every one of these tracks, but certainly there's a lot of attempts to branch out, cover a lot of different ground, be it complex or simple.
The result is that Open Road is one of, if not the most diverse-sounding of Donovan's albums. Mainstream pop, roots-rock, rock'n'roll, tricksier artsy forms, and, of course, his trusty folk roots, everything makes an appearance. It's natural that you probably won't like everything on here, and yet it's highly unnatural that I do happen to like everything. I know Donovan's limitations - naivete, lack of substance (or, rather, that which we normally take for "substance", because, to tell the truth, substance comes in many ways), not-too-bright melodies - and I've learned to cope with them all right. But each and every song on here carries some kind of ultra-positive or ultra-fun charge with it, and when it's so different every time, do you really expect me to... well, you know.
It's a bit weird that the main single from the record, and one of Donovan's last hits (and a pretty minor one at that), was 'Riki Tiki Tavi' - a one hundred percent novelty pop tune which uses the metaphor of Kipling's mongoose to complain about the evils of social-darwinism or something like that. For some reason, it's also set to a naggin' ska beat with Donovan occasionally trying out his Jamaican accent (maybe he got his West and East Indies mixed up, you think?). It's certainly inoffensive, and the repetitive chorus hook ('Riki Tiki Tavi, mongoose is gone! Riki Tiki Tavi, mongoose is gone!'), although it's hammering itself inside your head in a rather crude way, is hilarious. But it functions far better in the overall kaleidoscopic space of the album than as a single. People could have easily made the decision that Donovan had finally gone from "psychedelically batty" to just batty, and I'd bet you anything most of them did.
Whereas in the context of the album, it's just one of the funny pieces. In fact, I cannot exclude that the second side of Abbey Road had been a serious influence here - and how would people ever feel had the Beatles decided to issue, say, 'Polythene Pam' as a single? Now, if it were up to me, my choice would certainly lie with 'Changes'. Nothing less than a perfect three-minute pop song with a positive, ardently optimistic message, great melody lines, and instant memorability. Maybe a bit lightweight, since Donovan never really tried to go the "power pop" route, but hey, there's something to be said about quietly sounding guitars as well. In fact, too much bombast would only destroy the song, naive and innocent as it is already.
Not that there ain't any bombast on the record. On a few tracks, Donovan tries denser production and revved-up emotions, as well as somewhat more complex song structures and chord changes. 'Curry Land' and 'Roots Of Oak', in particular, are his tribute to the pretentious art-rock movement, and although in terms of sophistication they're closer to the Moody Blues/Barclay James Harvest level than to Yes/Genesis, both attempts succeed because of his still workin' pop sensibilities. In 'Curry Land', the transition between quiet piano-led dramatic verses and the all-out pomp of the chorus (actually, a bit of orchestration couldn't hurt here) gets me every time. And the slow vocal crescendo on 'Roots Of Oak', despite using these really simple means, plunges you into the damp ominous atmosphere of a dreary mistletoe-covered Druidic forest nevertheless. Oh, and there's also the defiantly titled 'Celtic Rock' itself, where Donovan actually tries imitating real tribal chanting of the ancient Celtic tribes itself - and it sounds a bit obnoxious ("Look! Look how hard I'm trying to prove my origins to you! This is Celtic! Celtic! Spells C-E-L-T-I-C!"), but Mike O'Neill's frantic piano pumping saves the song (well, actually, it's more a sonic experiment than an actual song) from collapsing anyway.
And then there's the old Donovan, simple, charming, moderately catchy, and always irresistably cool. Or maybe irresistably UNcool. This stuff wasn't cool in 1970, the year of Black Sabbath. But 'People Used To' is a great pop song regardless of Black Sabbath, excellent to sing along to ('people tell me that it's so - I don't know-wow-wow' is a terrific hook, despite hardly looking so on paper). 'Season Of Farewell' is softer and squishier than jello and sweeter than bubblegum, but makes great use of a grumbly harder-rocking mid-section to counterbalance the sweetness, and, to hell with it, it's hardly sappier than 'Here There And Everywhere'. 'Song For John' is Donovan doing country with his music-hall-bred vocals (the only explanation I can offer for the number sounding so drastically differently from the Flying Burrito Brothers despite being essentially the same stuff. Well, there's no slide guitar in there, too). Charming as usual. 'Joe Bean's Theme' is sort of like a reject from the A Gift era - perfectly fine by me, just one more piece of mosaics that may not seem to fit in at first, but wait until you get used to it. 'Jasmine fills the air' indeed.
A couple tunes, for no apparent immediate reason, offer a few innocent jabs at Catholicism ('Clara Clairvoyant' and especially 'Poke At The Pope', of course) - unsurprisingly, they have the "grittiest" (by Donovan's own standards) sound on the album, and they're also the most melodically unassuming ones, but don't really manage to spoil the impression that much. There's a little bit of rock'n'roll at the end of 'Poke At The Pope' which comes on at just about the right moment, when you just can't get on without at least a tiny bit of ass-kicking. This helps you get in tune for the closing anthem 'New Year's Resolution' - another proof of Donovan's talent, because few people can make a song with a chorus like 'get on your bike and do what you like' (two most overabused cliches of the hippie era joined into one of the lamest rhymes imaginable!) sound so utterly believable and convincing.
My apologies for going through this on an almost song-by-song basis, but that was necessary. Trying to evaluate a record like this from a bird's flight will inevitably lead to underrating it, the same way people tend to underrate everything starting from McCartney's Ram and ending with Dylan's Selfportrait (funny, all three albums were actually released within the scope of one year! Coincidence? Not necessarily so): albums whose parts, upon immediate consumption, work better than their wholes upon further reflection. In these cases, to hell with reflection, I say. Get on your bike and do what you like. Put the heart forward and the (un)healthy scepticism back.
LP track listing
All tracks written by Donovan Leitch
Side One
1. "Changes" Ð 2:56
2. "Song for John" Ð 2:43
3. "Curry Land" Ð 4:38
4. "Joe Bean's Theme" Ð 2:52
5. "People Used To" Ð 4:09
6. "Celtic Rock" Ð 3:37
Side two
7. "Riki Tiki Tavi" Ð 2:55
8. "Clara Clairvoyant" Ð 2:57
9. "Roots of Oak" Ð 4:53
10. "Season of Farewell" Ð 3:25
11. "Poke at the Pope" Ð 2:47
12. "New Year's Resovolution" Ð 4:45
Personnel
* Donovan Leitch - guitar, harp, vocals
* Mike Thomson - bass, guitar, vocals
* Mike O'Neill - piano, vocals
* John Carr - drums, vocals