Mellow Yellow

"Electrical banana
Is gonna be a sudden craze
Electrical banana
Is bound to be the very next phase
They call it mellow yellow
(Quite rightly)
They call me mellow yellow
(Quite rightly)" - Donovan

In the summer of love (1967) one of the grooviest cats was Donovan. His paean to the hallucinogenic powers of smoked banana peels (note to younger readers: I am NOT making this stuff up!) enticed this young thrill-seeker to try it out. This was the way I heard it:

peel a banana

scrape the inside of the peel

bake these scrapings in a low oven until crumbly

smoke the residue in a pipe

get high

Not very likely.

Although, an awful lot of people tried this. Some will even admit to it.

Then the Coca Cola company made a soda pop with that name. It had a pretty good dosage of caffeine, but was about as good as those peels were for consciousness-expansion. The "Mellow Yellow" craze of the sixties became a national brand in the seventies. But Donovan himself has been making a comeback lately. Quite rightly.