Donovan Compared 1 of His Songs to The Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’
Donovan said The Beatles‘ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was like a painting or a movie. In addition, he compared it to one of his own tracks. Notably, Donovan’s song was a bigger hit than the Fab Four’s.
Donovan on ‘Wear Your Love Like Heaven’ and The Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’
During a 2016 interview with Songfacts, Donovan was asked where the imagery from his trippy track “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” originated. He responded by comparing it to The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
“You’d just have to think of John’s ‘Picture yourself on a boat on a river’ — you’re actually in a movie or you’re in a painting,” Donovan said. “‘Tangerine trees and marmalade skies’ — he’s painting. So, ‘Wear Your Love Like Heaven’ was really a paint-ily song — watching a sunset go down.”
Donovan said he, The Beatles, and many other singers from the 1960s were visual artists
Donovan compared many songwriters from the 1960s counterculture to painters. “You can see in many of the British singer-songwriters that we were able to make images,” he opined. “John Lennon and George Harrison were artists, Paul also makes sketches, Pete Townshend went to art school, I kind of went to art school — for a little bit, in a college. Joni Mitchell is an artist, of course. Bob Dylan can paint.
“So we were in art school or close to painting in a big way,” he continued. “So ‘Wear Your Love Like Heaven’ is very, very paint-ily. When we put the painter’s brush down and we picked up the guitar, a lot of the songwriters started ‘painting’ songs.”
How ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and ‘Wear Your Love Like Heaven’ performed
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was never a single, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The tune appeared on The Beatles’ psychedelic masterpiece Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The record topped the Billboard 200 for 15 weeks, remaining on the chart for 233 weeks. While it wasn’t a single, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” became a standard, inspiring covers by Elton John, Miley Cyrus, The Flaming Lips, Billy Joel, William Shatner, and others.
On the other hand, “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” was a single. It was a modest success. The tune peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, staying on the chart for seven weeks. The track gained more attention when it appeared in a drug trip sequence from “Weekend at Burnsie’s,” an episode of The Simpsons.
The tune appeared on the album A Gift from a Flower to a Garden. That record is a double album, including one disc of psychedelic rock and another disc of children’s songs. A Gift from a Flower to a Garden peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on the chart for a total of 22 weeks.
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” are both beautiful paintings that captured the late 1960s.
