Hampstead Incident

"Standing by the Everyman, digging the rigging on my sail. Rain fell to sounds of harpsichords, to the spell of fairy tale. The heath was hung in magic mists, enchanted dripping glades. I'll taste a taste until my mind drifts from this scene and fades in the night time." Donovan's Hampstead Incident is an addition to our London songs featuring the Everyman in Hampstead. I wonder if he was popping in to see a Godard feature in the grand tradition? Seeing as the Mellow Yellow LP appeared in what was it 1966 then perhaps he would have been going to see Pierrot Le Fou for the first time. Appropriately Jean-Paul Belmondo appears in another of Donovan's London songs of the time, Sunny South Kensington. Indeed the Mellow Yellow LP has quite a suite of London songs. There's Museum, of course. And Young Girl Blues. Zouzou did a fantastic French language version of that, which I really love. Many many years later Donovan and Zouzou would do a lovely little duet ...