In 2005, the track was remastered by EMI Records for the Mellow Yellow album re-issue. 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 lines in the chorus is not McCartney, but rather Donovan himself. And that's what the song's about.' 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.' 'Really, you know the 'electric banana' was right in there and gave it away. Donovan stated, 'I was reading a newspaper and on the back there was an ad for a yellow dildo called the mellow yellow,' he said. 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.Īccording 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. 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.

Donovan mellow yellow