Mellow Yellow coffeeshop Mellow Yellow coffeeshop Mellow Yellow was the oldest cannabis coffee shop in Amsterdam, prior to its closure at the start of 2017. The coffee shop was founded in 1972 by Wernard Bruinin in Weesperzijde, Amsterdam, on the premises of a former bakery. The shop is named after "Mellow Yellow", a song by Donovan which describes the singer trying to become intoxicated through smoking the peel of banana. The intent of the shop is to sell cannabis, despite this being illegal at the time of its creation. Sales were originally disguised by drug dealers seated at the bar posing as customers.
Mellow Yellow (album) previously illustrated his infatuation with an ability to define the mid-sixties pop music scene. On "Mellow Yellow" this is still evident in "Sunny South Kensington", "Museum" (originally recorded for the "Sunshine Superman album" and rerecorded for "Mellow Yellow") and the title track, but is also tempered with world-weary observations of that scene ("Young Girl Blues"). The contractual problems that prevented the release of Donovan's music in the UK led him to write such songs as the resigned "Writer in the Sun", where he contemplates the possibility of his own forced retirement from the music industry at the age of 20.