SPOOKYSONGS

Season of the Witch – Donovan

Go to your favorite streaming service and type in “Halloween songs”. Without fail, turning up in every playlist is “Season of the Witch”, one of the all-time classic Halloween songs. Released by Scottish folk singer Donavan in the fall of 1966, it sets the perfect mood for the season.

Perhaps it’s fitting that Donovan wrote this song, seeing how Halloween got its start as a Scottish (well, Celtic) festival called Samhain. The opening guitar and bass-lines (which might be played by Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, respectively) set a perfect late-afternoon just-before-sunset mood… the perfect time for trick-or-treaters? Is our narrator losing his mind staring out the window? Or watching kids in costumes?

When I look out my window /
Many sights to see /
And when I look in my window /
So many different people to be

Now, I know it’s probably some meta-commentary on the turmoil of the 60s and god-knows-how-much-drugs Donovan was taking. But this is a Halloween site, so I’m going to assume it’s about Halloween. In the chorus he tells us “You have to pick up every stitch!” Perhaps to make a costume?

“This year I’m going as a hunk!”

Later in the song, he warns us that “beatniks are out to make it rich!” Now, having not been around in 1966, I have no idea why everyone ragged on the beatniks (although Donovan was a beatnik). We saw the same thing in Bob McFadden’s The Mummy. My main takeaway about beatniks is that they were not welcome on Halloween, I guess.

And of course – the title of the song itself – The Season of the Witch. It could be no other time of the year than the harvest season! When the veil between worlds is a little thinner. When Spirit Halloween comes to town, the leaves change colors, and every store has a little bit of Halloween. When those dirty beatniks are out to make it rich.

What I always felt was so cool about this song was the feel of it. When that bassline kicks in, you are transported instantly to the mid-60s. It has probably soundtracked hundreds of films and TV shows about that era. If “All Along the Watchtower” came to soundtrack Vietnam, “Season of the Witch” surely soundtracks the everyday chaos of those times. Or Donovan was singing about pot or something.

While never released as a single, the song is one of Donovan’s most popular. The album that this song appears on, Sunshine Superman, produced the #1 title song, then he also hit big with “Mellow Yellow” and “Hurdy Gurdy Man”. Once the 60s folk scene waned, so did Donovan, and he kinda just faded away from the music biz, steadily releasing music here and there. He still tours to this day!

He also has seemingly become a witch himself:

What a sight to see

Lana Del Rey did a really moody cover of the song (which is the style at the time). This one is perfect for that time just after Trick or Treating, when there’s just a couple weird big kids wandering around and you’re not sure when it’s okay to blow out the pumpkins…