DONOVAN: A Gift From a Flower to a Garden

Original released as 2-LP box on Epic 

B2N 171 (stereo); L2N 6071 (mono)

(US, December 1967)

Rock music's first two-LP box set, "A Gift from a Flower to a Garden" overcomes its original shortcomings and stands out as a prime artifact of the flower-power era that produced it. The music still seems a bit fey, and overall more spacy than the average Moody Blues album of this era, but the sheer range of subjects and influences make this a surprisingly rewarding work. Essentially two albums recorded simultaneously in the summer of 1967, the electric tracks include Jack Bruce among the session players. The acoustic tracks represent an attempt by Donovan to get back to his old sound and depart from the heavily electric singles ("Sunshine Superman," etc.) and albums he'd been doing - it is folkier and bluesier (in an English folk sense) than much of his recent work. My copy of the original issue was found many years later in a dark basement, in New York.

The beauty of this album is that it creates a magical world of its own, a gentle world filled with love, flowers, trees, babies, tinkers, crabs, starfishes, magpies and other assorted creatures: some might find all this quaint and naive hippy-dippy nonsense, but then on the other end of the stick there are those who feed on starry-eyed idealism daily and who will find it touching, uplifting and absolutely breathtaking. I am among the latter and thus consider "A Gift From a Flower to a Garden" the most positive album ever-I have yet to find an album that manages to convey such a quantity of happiness and pure optimism as this wonderful, wonderful double LP. His stripped-down folkiness is particularly enchanting with its earthy, natural simplicity and is bound to put a smile on your face. The first half is the "electric" album and features fuller arrangements with drums and bass and organ, as well as Donovan's guitar. I get the impression that Donovan knocked this off quickly and his heart lay with the acoustic half of the album. So while the songs on the first half are good (often very good), they're very slight and nowhere near as inventive or serious as the songs that appeared on "Sunshine Superman" or "Mellow Yellow". The "acoustic" half is different story. This half of the album is absolute perfection - probably Donovan's best work. A collection of songs concerned with magpies, starfish, gypsies, singing dancing monkeys, naturalist's wives all accompanied by taped selections of birds singing and waves crashing. Listening to this half of the album makes me want to move to the countryside - the most magical, peaceful album ever recorded. (in RateYourMusic)