![]() ![]() McCartney dropped by the session and was captured on tape saying “Mellow Yellow” and doing some cheering. He was rumored to be the whispering voice saying “quite rightly,” but that was Donovan. Paul McCartney appears somewhere on this track, but it’s not clear where. Donovan had a small part in coming up with the lyrics for “ Yellow Submarine“, and McCartney played bass guitar (uncredited) on portions of Donovan’s Mellow Yellow album. Paul McCartney can be heard as one of the background revellers on this track, but the “quite rightly” whispering answering lines in the chorus is not McCartney but rather Donovan himself. This definition was re-affirmed in an interview with NME magazine: “it’s about being cool, laid-back, and also the electrical bananas that were appearing on the scene – which were ladies’ vibrators.” According to The Rolling Stone Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll, he admitted later the song made reference to a vibrator an “electrical banana” as mentioned in the lyrics. According to Donovan’s notes, accompanying the album Donovan’s Greatest Hits, the rumour that one could get high from smoking dried banana skins was started by Country Joe McDonald in 1966, and Donovan heard the rumour three weeks before “Mellow Yellow” was released as a single. The song was rumoured to be about smoking dried banana skins, which was believed to be a hallucinogenic drug in the 1960s, though this aspect of bananas has since been debunked. 1.) Outside the US, “Mellow Yellow” peaked at No. (Both Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys and Winchester Cathedral by The New Vaudeville Band kept it from hitting No. The now 72-year-old Donovan continues producing new music and performing live.“ Mellow Yellow” is a song 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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