Mellow Yellow 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. 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. 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."
Yellow Submarine (song) intended as a nonsense song for children, "Yellow Submarine" received various social and political interpretations at the time; music journalist Peter Doggett wrote that the "culturally empty" song "became a kind of Rorschach test for radical minds." The song's chorus was reappropriated by schoolchildren, sports fans, and striking workers in their own chants. At a Mobe protest in San Francisco, a yellow papier-mâché submarine made its way through the crowd, which "Time" magazine interpreted as a "symbol of the psychedelic set's desire for escape". A reviewer for the "P.O. Frisco" wrote in 1966, "the Yellow Submarine may suggest, in the