Entertainment, TV, Television - Marine Corps Times

Just call him ‘Mellow Yellow’

Donovan likes to say he’s not selling out, he’s selling in.

The Scottish ’60s icon has songs in six TV commercials, including three using his 1965 hit, “Catch the Wind.”

His “Hurdy Gurdy Man” is featured in three films, and a rarely heard verse by George Harrison is being nationally televised on “The Donovan Concert, Live in L.A.,” airing this summer on PBS stations.

But if Donovan (born Donovan Leitch) is selling anything, it’s transcendental meditation. He’s been practicing it since visiting the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India in 1968 with The Beatles.

This PBS special began as an attempt to promote the meditationwith film director David Lynch, whose foundation is working with the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, to bring it into classrooms.

Joni Ravenna, a producer of three Judy Garland PBS specials, and Bob Roth, of the Lynch Foundation, turned it into a Donovan concert filmed at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood with an introduction by Lynch when PBS didn’t go for the meditation lecture idea.

For Donovan, this is another comeback after leaving the limelight in the 1970s to raise his family in Joshua Tree, the Southern California desert community made famous as a U2 album title and the recording home of Queens of the Stone Age.

The singer-songwriter, who moved from Joshua Tree to Dublin, Ireland, in the 1980s, released an autobiography in 2005. He’s recorded a multimedia album, titled “Ritual Groove,” that’s waiting for videos to be applied to it.

But he said in a recent interview his phone never stopped ringing.

Question. Is this a concerted return to public life?

Answer. It’s quite concerted because of the extraordinary amount of requests for our music for films, television series and commercials the last five years. I think I must be the most heard singer-songwriter of my generation in the last six months. I’ve had six major movies with my music in it the last six months.

Q. What’s your new CD like?

A. I describe it as a soundtrack to a movie not yet made. As a matter of fact, it is a movie soundtrack and at least five directors have expressed interest in doing scenes. It’s very much a new media platform project. I’m hoping David (Lynch) will pick one of the scenes. David and I have been meditating for a long while.

Q. Have you been doing TM continuously since India?

A. Yes, I’ve been meditating, trying other forms and finding TM to be the most instant and important. Many other forms of meditation require longer periods and often retreat from life. With TM, you remain in life.

Q. You sound optimistic about the future.

A. Well, it’s what the people want always. If people don’t care, nothing happens, but when they start caring, governments have to start caring. Optimistic? How else can one be?

Glance: Donovan songs

• “Mellow Yellow” (featuring whispering by Paul McCartney): Used in a Gap commercial.

• “Sunshine Superman”: Used in Magners Irish Cider commercials in the United Kingdom.

• “Catch the Wind”: Used in Volvo, Target and GE Ecomagination wind power commercials.

• “Happiness Runs”: Used in Delta Airlines and Cheerios commercials.

• “Wear Your Love Like Heaven”: Used in old commercials for Heaven Scent perfume and Love’s Baby Soft cosmetics.

• “Hurdy Gurdy Man”: Used in the films “Zodiac” (2007), “Bobby” (2006), “L.I.E.” (2001).

• “Colours”: Used in “The Rules of Attraction” (2002).

• “Jennifer Juniper”: Used in “Election” (1999).

• “Season of the Witch”: Used in the film of that name by George Romero (1973). That also was the original title of Martin Scorcese’s “Mean Streets.”

• “First There Is a Mountain”: Used as the basis for the Allman Brothers’ legendary 33-minute recording, “Mountain Jam.”

• “A Day in the Life”: Donovan was included in the recording of that final song on The Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.”