![]() ![]() Search for: Follow This, That, and the Other on WordPress. They call me mellow yellow They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly) They call me mellow yellow Born-a high forever to fly A-wind-a velocity nil Born-a high forever to fly If you want, your cup I will fill They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly) They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly) They call me mellow yellow So mellow yellow. So it’s about being cool, laid-back, and also the electrical bananas that were appearing on the scene, which were ladies’ vibrators.” ‘They call me Mellow Yellow, I’m the guy who can calm you down.’ John Lennon and I used to look in the back of newspapers and pull out funny things and they’d end up in songs. Asked what the song was actually about, Donovan said, “Quite a few things. Most of these interpretations concerned drugs, but there were even rumors that the song was about abortion. ![]() According to Donovan’s notes accompanying the album Donovan’s Greatest Hits, the rumor that one could get high from smoking dried banana skins was started by Country Joe McDonald in 1966, and Donovan heard the rumor three weeks before “Mellow Yellow” was released as a single.ĭonovan set out to capture the mellow vibe of the ’60s with this song, adding what he called “cool, groovy phrases.” These phrases were interpreted in ways he never imagined, as people came up with lots of ideas as to what the song meant. This was supposed to release the banana’s hallucinogenic qualities, but that aspect of banana skins has since been debunked. Back in the 60s, it was believed that dried banana skins could be turned into a hallucinogenic drug by scraping the fibers off of a banana skin and cooking them over a low fire. According to Wikipedia, the song was rumored to be about smoking dried banana skins. It reached number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966. The now 72-year-old Donovan continues producing new music and performing live.“Mellow Yellow” was written and recorded by Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. In fact, Donovan traveled along with The Beatles on their well-known 1968 trip to an ashram in Rishikesh, India, to study transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.Īfterwards, Donovan contributed to a number of The Beatles' most memorable songs, such as “Julia,” “Yellow Submarine,” as well as numerous tracks on the White Album. Outside of his own career, Donovan’s artistic brilliance, industry accolades, and counterculture lifestyle heavily influenced The Beatles' famous period of psychedelic/spiritual exploration. The singles “Sunshine Superman” and “Mellow Yellow” reached number one and two, respectively, on U.S. His music wasn’t strictly rock or pop, but it worked in those realms at a time when psychedelia overtook all with its exotic, borderless approach. Oncoct a fusion of styles before the phrase “world music” was coined to describe such potpourris. Donovan’s work during this time period is described as: Prior to Donovan’s psychedelic foray, he produced a rather successful career as a folk musician, as evidenced by the two albums released in 1965, What’s Bin Did and What’s Bin Had – renamed Catch the Wind in the United States – and Fairytale.Īlthough hints of Donovan’s pension for genre-bending experimentation are heard in Fairytale’s “Sunny Goodge Street”, his career achieved catharsis with and after the release of Sunshine Superman in 1966. ![]() ![]() Donovan charted a dozen Top 40 hits during his career including some of the era’s most memorable numbers such as “Mellow Yellow”, “Sunshine Superman”, and “Season of the Witch”. His 2002 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame solidifies Donovan’s ingenuity as “singlehandedly initiat the psychedelic revolution…” by blending folk, blues, jazz, classical, Latin and Indian elements. Scottish singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Donovan Leitch, is one of the most influential figures in the Sixties' explosion of musical creativity. ![]()
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