It’s strange how some pop songs become more popular as they age. Take Anthony Newley’s 1965 “Feeling Good,” which lives on in versions by Nina Simone and Muse, among others. Or Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” from the 1984 album “Various Positions,” which has crossed over to many audiences, thanks to cover versions by John Cale, Jeff Buckley, and Rufus Wainwright, and its appearance on soundtracks from “The West Wing” to “Shrek.”
The newest entry in the category is Donovan’s “Season of the Witch,” which was released in this country in 1966 and, forty-six years later, is turning up all over. Donovan sang it last month, at his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with John Mellencamp. It has also been playing on a trailer for “ParaNorman,” an animated film coming out in August. Last week, it surfaced in “Dark Shadows,” in what Anthony Lane, in his review, identifies as the most evocative scene in the film—although that scene, in itself, constitutes a mini-revival, as the movie is set in 1972. The song has played on soundtracks before, including those of “To Die For,” “The Simpsons,” and, of course, George Romero’s “Season of the Witch.” Luna performed it in “I Shot Andy Warhol.” Microsoft used it in a commercial. And Donovan’s song, too, has earned many covers. Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, and Stephen Stills included an eleven-minute version on the “Super Sessions” album. Hole performed it on “MTV Unplugged.”
“Sunshine Superman,” the album on which “Season of the Witch” appeared, is often described as an archetypal psychedelic recording, and the song’s lyrics are suitably trippy, featuring what may be the only knitting reference in rock and roll (“you’ve got to pick up every stitch”). Donovan, in his autobiography, wrote that the song “proved to be prophetic in the months to come. There is a line in it that goes ‘Some cat looking over his shoulder at me’ … Soon these bad cats would come calling at my door.” He was referring to his arrest for possession of cannabis—the first high-profile London drug bust of the sixties—which prevented him from travelling to the United States, where he was due to perform at the Monterey Pop Festival, in June, 1967. Sadly, for Donovan, the summer of love was over before it began.