They call him Mellow Yellow

Posted by Mark Silva at 6:30 am CDT

"I'm just mad about Sappho… and Sappho's mad about me.''

Well, those may not be the precise lyrics for Mellow Yellow, but they may as well have been last night, when Donovan Leitch pulled out a handmade guitar and finger-picked and sang in a voice unaltered by decades some 40-year-old classics for an intimate audience at the Greek Embassy in Washington, where the Scottish balladeer was showing one dozen of his signature "Sappho-graphs,'' ultra-high contrast black and white photographs of women, with no shades of gray, in various suggestive poses.

And he may have been here to display his artwork celebrating the Greek poet, Sappho, whose own lines survive only in fragments. But he well knew that he could not get away without singing his own most famous lines, from Mellow Yellow.

And "Donovan,'' as a generation of flower-children knew him – or simply "Don'' to his brother-in-law Stewart, who travels with a singer from the Sixties who happily has entered his own 60s and accompanies the old star with finger-cymbals, maracas and a tambourine – did not get away without telling your own Swamp correspondent "a true story'' on the side. It was Country Joe McDonald, Donovan confessed, who had tried smoking bananas.

Donovan Leitch, with brother-in-law Stewart. Photo by Mark Silva

Donovan, who brought out the Mellow Yellow album on Columbia Records in 1967, said he had not known until several years ago that McDonald, best known as front man in Country Joe and the Fish, was only somewhat miffed about his fellow singer's success with the banana-bliss song because he himself had tried smoking peels before that jingle came out.

"That's a true story,'' Donovan told us, as he prepared, dressed in brown leather boots with sandal toes, black pinstripe pants and a long-sleeved black shirt, to step into the spotlight in the embassy hall, where even the ambassador, Alexandros Mallias, who would appear to be a contemporary of we children of the Sixties who spun Donovan's albums in our teens, confessed: "Donovan has been an inspiration, at least to my generation.''

Donovan recalled his own first journey through the Greek islands in a sailboat. He was 26. It was 1970, he recalled, "and I felt a little bit disillusioned, and I said to myself, 'Greece, that will fix it.'''

He brought some books of Greek poetry, some cameras and a guitar, though certainly not the hand-crafted six-string acoustic that he pulled out last night, a green-topped model with a white stag painted on it that Donovan designed and had built by Danny Farrington of California, a luscious guitar with a deep bass that echoes the lowest range of a singer who has an uncannily well-preserved voice, complete with excessive tremolo.

Donovan, who makes his home in Ireland now and makes art with the inspiration of the Greek poet Sappho, had the guitar built by a Californian. Photo by Silva.

He opened with Try and Catch the Wind.

Then Jennifer Juniper.

And Riki Tiki Tavi – "Mongoose is gone… won't be comin' around to give me your snakes no more, man.'' – Donovan's rolling voice filled out with the finger cymbals and tambourine of brother-in-law Stewart.

But he quickly admitted, with wife Linda standing on the sidelines of the embassy performance: "I don't think I'm going to be able to get out of this room without singing…''

"I'm just mad about Saffron,'' he sang, "Saffron's mad about me.''

And sure enough, the business-suited audience who filled the embassy hall on this mid-week celebration of a decade long gone started swaying and singing the chorus, "They call me Mellow Yellow.''

"Elek-trik-al banana, is gonna be a sudden craze... Elek-trik-al banana, is bound to be the very next phase.... They call me Mellow Yellow.''

Donovan encouraged his chorus to add some percussion with a long slow, "jazz clap.''

"They call me Mellow Yellow:'' The stately diplomatic outpost of the Greek government, adorned with a dozen Sappho-graphs encircling the hall where the artist sang, rocked in rhythm to the guy who created the song that Country Joe McDonald only wished he had written but apparently was too busy actually smoking bananas at the time.

Donovan closed with the fragmented lyrics of Sappho strung to a composition of his own.

But Mellow Yellow still is stuck in our heads, as it has been for 40 years now.

With thanks to Mr. Leitch, brother-in-law Stewart, wife Linda and the government of Greece.

Mellow Yellow, Columbia Records, 1967