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."
Shades of yellow and named after the fruit. The color "lemon" is a representation of the color of the outer skin of a lemon. The first recorded use of "lemon" as a color name in English was in 1598. Maximum yellow was a Crayola crayon color from 1926 to 1944. The color mellow yellow is displayed at right. "Mellow yellow" was first used as a color name in English in 1948 when it was formulated as one of the colors on the Plochere color list. The source of this color is the "Plochere Color System", a color system formulated in 1948 that is