''Open Road'' is the eighth studio album, and ninth overall, from British singer-songwriter
Donovan and the debut album from the short-lived band Open Road. While his previous work was composed by his playing solo on acoustic guitar and then recorded with a shifting cast of
session musicians, ''Open Road'' was Donovan's effort toward writing and recording music as a member of a band.
History
After working with producer
Mickie Most on the string of successful albums, Donovan parted ways with Most upon completion of the ''
Barabajagal
''Barabajagal'' is the seventh studio album and eighth album overall from British singer-songwriter Donovan. It was released in the United States on 11 August 1969 ( Epic Records BN 26481 (stereo)), but was not released in the United Kingdom be ...
'' sessions. He moved back to the UK against the wishes of his management, who objected due to Britain's heavy taxation and its distance from the American market.
For the first two months of 1970, Donovan booked time at London's newly renovated
Morgan Studios
Morgan Studios (founded as Morgan Sound Studios) was an independent recording studio in Willesden in northwest London. Founded in 1967, the studio was the location for recordings by such notable artists as Jethro Tull, the Kinks, Paul McCartney, ...
and began recording and producing the tracks that would form his next album. He made demos of around 20 new songs with just vocals and acoustic guitar, including solo versions of "Changes" and "People Used To", before assembling his new band.
Dubbed "Open Road", the band was Donovan's frequent collaborator "Candy" John Carr on drums, and bassist/guitarist Mike Thompson, who'd been a bandmate of Carr's in a group called Dada Lives and briefly in an early version of the band Amber.
Donovan also hired engineers Robin Black and Mike Bobak, the latter of whom would work on several of Donovan's following albums. The sessions marked Donovan's first time playing electric guitar extensively in the studio, and he also took up producing the record himself.
The trio were joined by former
Nero and the Gladiators
Nero & the Gladiators were a British instrumental rock and roll band in the early 1960s. The group was led by keyboard player Mike O'Neill as "Nero", and had two minor hits in the UK, " Entry of the Gladiators" and "In the Hall of the Mountain ...
/
Heads Hands & Feet
Heads Hands & Feet was a British rock and country rock band. It was formed in 1969 after the breakup of Poet and the One Man Band, which included some of the same members (see ''Members'' below).
Music and performances
Heads Hands & Feet reco ...
keyboardist Mike O'Neill for some of the album's songs, and O'Neill stayed on to play a few gigs with Open Road, but O'Neill is nonetheless not regarded as a core member of Open Road.
[
Donovan's intention was for Open Road to be the band he'd tour with indefinitely, primarily by sea on his own ]yacht
A yacht is a sailing or power vessel used for pleasure, cruising, or racing. There is no standard definition, though the term generally applies to vessels with a cabin intended for overnight use. To be termed a , as opposed to a , such a pleasu ...
. The plan was to leave Britain for one year, in part to avoid the exorbitant tax that the British government was levying on pop stars. The band met up on the Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...
isle of Crete
Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, ...
to prepare the ship, rehearse material, and document their time there for the film '' There is an Ocean'', which went unreleased until 2005 when it surfaced as a DVD in the box set '' Try for the Sun: The Journey of Donovan''.
The group ended up flying from Greece to France, to the Soviet Union, and then Japan, never fully embarking on their sea voyage. They also played a concert in Viareggio, Italy that was broadcast on Italian television. Donovan cut the tour short, returning to the UK to focus on his family and record his next album, 1971's '' H.M.S. Donovan'', on which John Carr and Mike Thompson also appeared. The last gig that Donovan did with Open Road was at the third annual Isle of Wight Festival
The Isle of Wight Festival is a British music festival which takes place annually in Newport on the Isle of Wight, England. It was originally a counterculture event held from 1968 to 1970.
The 1970 event was by far the largest of these early ...
on 30 August 1970. Subsequently, Thompson and Carr continued to perform as Open Road, reassembling the group that same year with former Dada Lives bandmate Barry Husband on guitar and vocals, and church organ
Carol Williams performing at the United States Military Academy West Point Cadet Chapel.">West_Point_Cadet_Chapel.html" ;"title="United States Military Academy West Point Cadet Chapel">United States Military Academy West Point Cadet Chapel.
...
ist Simon Lanzon on keyboards. They recorded and released the 1971 album ''Windy Daze'', followed by a non-album single "Swamp Fever" b/w "Lost and Found" and a full tour, during which personal differences emerged, leading Husband and Lanzon to leave the group.[ Reduced to the original duo, Open Road recorded one more album before disbanding. This second album was not released until 2021, when it appeared as a bonus disc on a CD reissue of ''Windy Daze'', and has no known title (the tape boxes were labeled simply "The Open Road").][
]
Songs
Many of the songs on ''Open Road'' ponder the negative side of industrialization and the lost peacefulness of a previous time. While Donovan had touched on this some of his previous work, ''Open Road'' was his first album to expound on the topic at length, though the versions recorded for the album scaled back on some of his more politically charged lyrics. The lyrics printed on the inner gatefold
A gatefold cover or gatefold LP is a form of packaging for LP records that became popular in the mid-1960s. A gatefold cover, when folded, is the same size as a standard LP cover (i.e., a 12½ inch, or 32.7 centimetre square). The larger gatefo ...
sleeve include some not sung on the actual record, like the first verse of "Celtic Rock":
Ye sons of Britain
Who once were free
Ye now are slaves to factory
Those who walk the path of mole
Expect in time to kill thy soul
The album's sole single, "Riki Tiki Tavi" (b/w "Roots of Oak," also on the album), uses the mongoose
A mongoose is a small terrestrial carnivorous mammal belonging to the family Herpestidae. This family is currently split into two subfamilies, the Herpestinae and the Mungotinae. The Herpestinae comprises 23 living species that are native to so ...
from Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
...
's story
Story or stories may refer to:
Common uses
* Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events)
** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting
* Story (American English), or storey (British ...
in ''The Jungle Book
''The Jungle Book'' (1894) is a collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, w ...
'' as a metaphor for how people wait for institutions ("i.e.: the church, i.e.: the government, i.e.: school") to exterminate social ills. An earlier version of the song also preached abstinence from psychedelic drugs
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary states of consciousness (known as psychedelic experiences or "trips").Pollan, Michael (2018). ''How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of ...
, stating, "Laboratory synthetic stimuli, only goes to fog up your third eye
The third eye (also called the mind's eye or inner eye) is a mystical invisible eye, usually depicted as located on the forehead, which provides perception beyond ordinary sight. In Hinduism, the third eye refers to the ajna (or brow) chakra. In ...
." The song, "Poke at the Pope" decries religious faith, particularly Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
. "Song for John" was one of Donovan's epistles written for his friends, this one dedicated to fellow songwriter John Sebastian
John Benson Sebastian (born March 17, 1944) is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist and harmonicist who founded the rock band The Lovin' Spoonful. He made an impromptu appearance at the Woodstock festival in 1969[Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...]
who, fresh from his break with The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developmen ...
, was recording his first solo album in the studio below Donovan, as the two musicians saw themselves transitioning out of the 1960s and heading into new directions with their music. McCartney also loaned Donovan a guitar for some of the recording of ''Open Road''.
In addition to his mix of folk and rock, Donovan and his band explored a number of musical styles on the album. "Riki Tiki Tavi" takes Kipling's Indian setting and riffs it off of a reggae
Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...
beat. Brazilian guitarist Antonio Carlos Jobim
Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language-speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top 400 most popular ma ...
inspired the title of "Joe Bean's Theme", which alternates between a bossa nova rhythm and psychedelic pop
Psychedelic pop (or acid pop) is pop music that contains musical characteristics associated with psychedelic music. Developing in the late 1960s, elements included "trippy" features such as fuzz guitars, tape manipulation, backwards recording, ...
melodies. And the album's allegorically fantasy-themed song "Celtic Rock" coined the name of a new musical subgenre.
Releases and reception
''Open Road'' was released on vinyl LP in the US on Epic in July 1970, and then in the UK on Dawn Records
Dawn Records was a subsidiary of Pye Records. Active from 1969 to 1975, it was established as Pye's 'underground and progressive' label rivalling the EMI and Phonogram equivalents, Harvest and Vertigo.
The most successful act on the label wa ...
in September. The album's cover features a photo, taken by Donovan's best friend "Gypsy Dave
Gyp Mills (born David John Mills, 9 July 1946 – 18 June 2019), " Mills, of Donovan flanked by his two bandmates with their names typewritten in small print beneath each person. Some versions of the record featured neither Donovan's name nor the album title on the front, highlighting the name "Open Road" on the back, both as the album's title and as the name of the band featured on it. Other versions highlighted either "Donovan" or "Open Road" on the front.
''Open Road'' was Donovan's third-highest charting album in the U.S., reaching No. 17 within two weeks of its release and peaking at No. 16. In the U.K. the album reached No. 30.
In August 2000, the German label Repertoire Records
Repertoire Records is a German record label from Hamburg, Germany, specialising in reissues of classic pop and rock albums originally issued in the 1960s and 1970s. The chairman is Thomas Neelsen.
See also
* List of record labels
File:Alvin ...
reissued ''Open Road'' for the first time on CD.
Track listing
All tracks by Donovan Leitch.
Side One
#"Changes" – 2:56
#"Song for John" – 2:43
#"Curry Land" 4:38
#"Joe Bean's Theme" – 2:52
#"People Used To" – 4:09
#"Celtic Rock" – 3:37
Side two
#"Riki Tiki Tavi" – 2:55
#"Clara Clairvoyant" – 2:57
#"Roots of Oak" – 4:53
#"Season of Farewell" – 3:25
#"Poke at the Pope" – 2:47
#"New Year's Resovolution" – 4:45
Running lengths for some tracks on the iTunes download album differ, mostly due to the removal of seaside sound effects at the end of several tracks.
Personnel
* Donovan Leitch – guitar, mouth harp, vocals
*Mike Thomson – guitar, bass guitar, vocals
*John Carr – drums, vocals
;Additional personnel
*Mike O'Neill – piano, vocals
*Robin Black – engineer
*Mike Bobak – engineer
Tributes
* For the 1992 Donovan tribute album ''Island of Circles
''Island of Circles'' is a tribute album to singer-songwriter Donovan that was released on June 26, 1992, by Nettwerk. The title song "Island of Circles" is provided by Donovan himself. Along with Donovan's contemporaneous box set collection '' T ...
'', the band When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water
When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water was an American experimental music, experimental psychedelic rock, psychedelic rock music, rock band from New York City active from 1986 to 1996. Their three albums and several EPs consist of exper ...
performed "Riki Tiki Tavi" and Black Sox covered "Changes".
* Celtic folk musician Jack Montgomery recorded a version of "Roots of Oak" with his own lyrics on his 2004 album ''Everywhere I Look''.
References
External links
''Open Road''
on Donovan unofficial site
{{Authority control
Donovan albums
1970 albums
Epic Records albums
Albums recorded at Morgan Sound Studios