Lyrics for Mellow Yellow as interpreted by pink_angel016

Mellow Yellow Lyrics
I'm just mad about Saffron,
A-Saffron's mad about me.
I'm a-just mad about Saffron,
She's just mad about me.
They call me mellow yellow.
They call me mellow yellow.
They call me mellow yellow.

I'm just mad about Fourteen,
A-Fourteen's mad about me.
I'm a-just a-mad about a-Fourteen,
She's just mad about me.
They call me mellow yellow.
They call me mellow yellow.
They call me mellow yellow.

Born high forever to fly,
Wind-a velocity nil.
Born high forever to fly,
If you want your cup I will fill.
They call me mellow yellow.
They call me mellow yellow.
They call me mellow yellow.
He's so mellow, mellow fellow.

Electrical banana
Is gonna be a sudden craze.
Electrical banana
Is bound to be the very next phase.
They call it mellow yellow.
They call me mellow yellow.
They call me mellow yellow.

You, ah, Saffron, yeah,
I'm just mad about her.
I'm a-just a-mad about a-Saffron,
She's just mad about me.
They call me mellow yellow.
They call me mellow yellow.
They call me mellow yellow.

Oh so mellow, oh so mellow, oh so mellow.



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Oroborous
01-08-2009

 Rated  0 
I always heard its about liver disease. (when your liver shuts down you turn yellow because your body can't filter the toxins)

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1 Reply  ·  General Comment
Schrei
07-11-2009

 Rated  0 
I was reading up on Donovan a while ago, and apparently, according to his autobiography, Mellow Yellow actually refers to a yellow vibrator.

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1 Reply  ·  General Comment
Schrei
07-14-2009

 Rated  +1 
Also, I'm listening to the Donovan In Concert album of 1968 and he sings "I'm just mad about 14-year-old girls." It amuses me.

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General Comment
FenMH
01-20-2010

 Rated  0 
smoking banana peels??

i can't believe how many people will believe absolutely anything.
YOU CANNOT GET HIGH FROM SMOKING BANANA PEELS!!!
it seriously annoys me that so many people believe such ridiculously stupid things. i don't even know where this idea comes from. people are so not only uneducated but MISedudated about drugs, and other things, too, of course.
ya know what's great though? when people tell you that they got high smoking banana peels. it always leaves one wondering whether these people seriously think that they got high doing it (placebo effect? getting so much of a thrill just at the idea of getting high? i know some kids that would absolutely react that way.) or whether these people, not knowing that getting high this way is not actually possible, and therefore being unaware of the way they'll embarrass themselves, make up a story about getting high smoking banana peels so to impress others.

just felt like saying all that 'cause i am really so sick of hearing that about the banana peels.
i have no idea what this song is really about. if it is about banana peels then... well... who knows.
what is yellow and mellow?
5mg valiums are yellow. and they are mellow. but i doubt that the song is about those.

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General Comment
chriscornell
02-11-2010

 Rated  0 
I was forced to listen to this song with my parents who will have been married for 50 years later this year. They were told at an early age it was about drugs. This led me to research and I will not tell them what I found out, lol. Electric Banana is a vibrator and Saffron is a 14 yr old love interest. Who knows if it's true. Musicians do write fictional songs. Fiction is more prevalent in music than novels or screenplays. Also, musician's often purposely leave their music's meaning unknown to give the listener a chance to make the song personal to themselves. Pearl Jam, for example, said they purposely did this. The songs they wrote did have a meaning to them, but like poetry, if was vague, hidden or general enough for the listener to make the song personal and meaningful to themselves. Just my thoughts. Thanks for reading if you did and maybe it helped someone.

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Song Meaning
nienna
03-29-2010

 Rated  +1 
Oh dear, my little girl is called Saffron, I've been nicknaming her Mellow Yellow... I didn't know what this song was about though, maybe I should keep the meaning from her until she's much older :)

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General Comment
funkspiel
05-02-2010

 Rated  0 
Always loved the tune, concerned about 14, though.

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My Opinion
dryheat
09-27-2010

 Rated  0 
Hi Folks:
Strangely enough, I happen to know what the song is about. Yes, it has a drug related lyric, but it's
about Desoxyn, sold in a yellow tablet form of methamphetamine, and available by prescription at your local pharmacy. Back in the day, let's just say I had occasion to offer such products for sale.

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Song Meaning
LVMan777
02-13-2011

 Rated  0 
People....druggies....get a grip!
This song is about sex!
"Electric banana" was a yellow vibrator!
"They call it mellow yellow" because the girls "get off" or have an orgasm with it.
"Saffron" is his 14 year old girlfriend!

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General Comment
idebbi
04-12-2012

 Rated  0 
don't know how old you guys were or where you were in the late 60's and early 70's....but i was in the haight asbury at the time.....in those days people were smoking and eating just about anything they thought of in search of a bigger, better high...daffodil bulbs can get you high...but they're also poisonous, as several people unfortunately discovered before that fad passed........the spice saffron was said to be an exquisite high....but terribly expensive...one of the most expensive spices in the world (it's the pollen of crocus flowers....currently it's about $137 per oz) so you had to be very rich to smoke it....for a while the popular experimental high was drying banana peels and grinding them ...and smoking them....it was supposed to produce a very mellow high...(as opposed to things like shrooms or acid)......the people i knew who tried them were not particularly impressed, but this song came out just a little while after that fad went thru the community....ground dried banana peels were called mellow yellow....

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General Comment
ramblingboy
05-06-2012

 Rated  0 
In his autobiography Donovan writes that "saffron" refers to when he lived in St. Ives for a summer and had no money, he and his best friend Gypsy Dave would go to the bakery in the morning and ask for day old saffron cakes. I don't know where 14 comes from but he references it in "Superlungs" as well while referring to a girl who gets high. It may be a throw back to a lover in St. Ives again when he first started playing music and was smoking a lot of pot (he was only 15 or 16 at the time).

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General Comment
johnf49
05-12-2012

 Rated  0 
This site has a pretty high level of discourse compared to many others. You see these same disagreements about Mellow Yellow everywhere. I'd like to suggest that a song's "meaning" can be several things at once and all of them can be true in their way. If Donovan says in his autobiography that he wrote it about a vibrator,then that indeed must be true.
But no one at that time knew about that, and virtually no one would have guessed such an interpretation. So it becomes equally true that the song's meaning also includes what people thought it meant at the time. I can vouch that the Banana Peel Rumor was a very big thing in late 1966, as people here have reported, and that most people thought that was what the song was about. So there shouldn't be any argument between these two interpretations.
"It was just '66 and early '67.That's all there was" - Peter Fonda in The Limey (1999)

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General Comment




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