Donovan’s Sunshine Superman at 60

By Harvey Kubernik

Sunshine Superman is the third studio LP by singer-songwriter Donovan. On August 26, 1966, it was released in the United States on Epic Records.

Donovan and his record producer Mickie Most began the album at the EMI studios at Abbey Road with arranger John Cameron, guitarist Jimmy Page, and Shawn Phillips on sitar.

The landmark album featured Donovan’s hit single “Sunshine Superman,” issued in July ’66.

In early April 1966 Donovan came to Hollywood and was booked for a well-received week-long residency at The Trip nightclub on Sunset Strip. While in town, Donovan played the Hollywood Bowl and recorded at Columbia Studios on Sunset, and cut “Season of the Witch,” “The Trip,” a tune about the venue he headlined, and “Superlungs.”

Session players on those dates included Bobby Ray on bass, drummer “Fast” Eddie Hoh, and Lenny Maitlin on Hammond organ. Additional musicians on “The Fat Angel,” “Ferris Wheel,” and “Three King Fishers” were Shawn Phillips, “Candy” John Carr on bongos, and electric violinist Peter Pilifian. On “Celeste,” the MFQ’s Cyrus Faryar is heard on the bouzouki instrument. Other songs cut in Hollywood are “Young Girl Blues,” “Museum,” and “Epistle to Dippy.”

“Mickie Most was bar none the most versatile and successful British record producer of the sixties. George Martin had the Beatles, I had the Rolling Stones, Shel Talmy had the Who and the Kinks—all self-contained acts,” underlined Andrew Loog Oldham in a 2008 interview with me.

In 1973, Loog Oldham produced Donovan’s Cosmic Wheels.

“Mickie spotted great talent—Herman’s Hermits, the Animals—and he matched them with great songs, again and again and again. In August of ’64 Mickie had three in the top 10. He could smell a hit off your wrist.

“Mickie Most and Peter Noone. These two guys had a great run together and nailed down that American affection for British song and vaudeville. Mickie Most was a great song sniffer, one of the best. ‘I’m into Something Good’ and ‘There’s a Kind of Hush’ are great records. And then there was his run with Donovan.”

Donovan sound checking at the Hollywood Bowl, April 2, 1966. (Photo by Henry Diltz / Courtesy Gary Strobl)

Donovan was the first recording artist Clive Davis signed to the Epic label after he was appointed vice president and general manager of Columbia Records in 1965, and later president during 1966.

“I signed Donovan to Epic in 1966,” offered Davis in a 2008 interview we conducted. “I was in the business side of it for a year. I was working with Andy Williams, the young Barbra Streisand, and Bob Dylan.

“I was observing. I was seeing the business change. I was seeing music change, but I was waiting for the A&R staff to lead into these changes that were showing evidence in becoming important in music.

“In June 1967, I really came to the Monterey International Pop Festival not knowing what to expect, but seeing a revolution before my eyes. I was very aware that contemporary music was changing.”

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Death Trip: Iggy and the Stooges 1972-74 by Michael S. Begnal (Reaktion Books)

Review by Duncan Fallowell

Its author was born in 1966, so he wasn’t there. An obsession comes from a desire to reach the unattainable. Much scholarship is driven by this and Begnal is scholarly. Since he can’t experience the Stooges directly he zooms in on the album that followed the London concert, Raw Power, with a forensic examination of how each track came into being. Every reference is immaculately noted. His commitment revs up to an amphetamine squeal.

Begnal’s analysis is a labour of love; and in its way an extraordinary act of performance in itself. However I do feel that it is based on an underlying misjudgement, namely that Raw Power represents the Stooges career high-point simply because it is the first Punk album. Maybe it is the first Punk album. Others have said so. But Punk, for all its seering verve, was a return to snappy little numbers. Begnal’s book duly demonstrates Raw Power’s ancestry in the trad rock catalogue of short songs.

What had happened to the Dionysiac, the long-groove, the unique and special in the Stooges? David Bowie had come into Iggy’s life. Bowie, the genius of rock lieder – and of packaging. Bowie produced Raw Power and packaged Iggy. Perhaps he also gave the album its naff title. When Raw Power was released I remember feeling let down. I gave it a positive review (which Begnal quotes) but more in loyalty and hope than conviction. The promise of Fun House, of King’s Cross, had not been realised.

Dionysiac outburst flared briefly in the Sex Pistols later, then died. As for the book’s title Death Trip – Iggy is still living, comfortably, near Miami. And what of long groove/wall of sound? With the arrival of the 12-inch single, it merged with Disco, Funk and computer electronics, leading to Dance, Trance, Techno, Rave, Drone, and when all that turned into mere knob-twiddling clichés, it slipped over to the classical world where it had always had a sibling, from Corelli to Morton Feldman, and became a fruitful new form among the conservatoire set. You may sometimes hear it, not always shorn of its elemental terrors and drive, on BBC Radio 3’s wonderful New Music Show.

Lenny Bruce: 60 Years On

By Harvey Kubernik

Viewing the uncensored Def Comedy Jam broadcasts on HBO from three decades ago and also seeing the popularity of ribald comedians this century headlining theaters, arenas and stadiums, I’m reminded of the obscenity arrests, trials, and prosecution of comic, storyteller, and freedom of speech advocate Lenny Bruce endured in the sixties for all of them with his stage and recorded routines about race, religion, hypocrisy, politics and sex. He reshaped stand-up comedy. Bruce is the counterculture prophet whose unfiltered style opened up new frontiers in self-expression.

May I recommend reading Steven Armstrong’s July 4, 2026 story in The Telegraph on how Netflix became the home of ‘cancelled’ comedians.

Over half a century ago, critic Ralph J Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle and a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine, said, “So many taboos have been lifted, and so many comics have rushed through the doors Lenny opened. He utterly changed the world of comedy.”

In 2003, a court case conviction from 40 years earlier was overturned with a posthumous pardon by New York governor George Pataki, who exonerated Bruce in a statement saying, “a declaration of New York’s commitment to upholding the First Amendment.”

“Lenny Bruce started as a comedian, turned into a prophet, and ended as a martyr,” suggested author and former Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally in a 2026 email. McNally in 2025 penned The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties.

“Although he used street language, he was never truly obscene. Instead, he pursued a mission to expose fraud, particularly as it manifested in daily sexual and religious life. Unfortunately for him, one of his favorite topics was the Roman Catholic church. A considerable number of district attorneys in America were of that faith, and they took offense because Lenny was indeed blasphemous. They suspended the First Amendment as it applied to him and crucified him with an endless succession of obscenity trials. Broken, he overdosed and died. But his heritage of seeing the lie in daily life affected an entire generation,” summarized McNally.

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