Nowadays, it’s pretty rare for a song to get banned from the radio, but back during the ’60s, the practice wasn’t all that uncommon. The reasons usually had to do with a track being too suggestive, or political, or because it might have been hiding references to drugs…even though that oftentimes wasn’t even the case, as with a particularly cheerful one-hit wonder from the Summer of Love: “Yellow Balloon.”
Penned by songwriter Gary Zekley, “Yellow Balloon” was first recorded by Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean (while Jan Berry was recovering from a car accident). Zekley wasn’t a big fan of Torrence’s take on the tune, so he recorded his own version featuring himself on vocals, Mike Post on guitar, Tim Gordon on drums, and Mike Rubini on harpsichord, according to American Songwriter.
Zekley’s rendition of “Yellow Balloon” was a much bigger hit, peaking at #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in May of 1967 (the Jan & Dean recording only made it to #111).
Helping to boost the popularity of “Yellow Balloon” was the surprising controversy surrounding the tune. The year before, in 1966, Donovan‘s classic hit “Mellow Yellow” was banned by some radio stations because people believed the song was about smoking banana peels to get high (referred to byAtlas Obscura as the “greatest drug hoax of all time”). Despite the fact that “Mellow Yellow” wasn’t actually about smoking anything, when “Yellow Balloon” came out, some radio stations assumed it, too, was about drugs, and banned it just to be safe. (Naturally, that just made people want to hear it even more.)
All these years later, the scandal seems more ridiculous than ever, of course, especially considering that the lyrics are about as kid-friendly as you can get:
“I never felt this way before / It’s a feeling that I can’t explain / There’s one thing that I know for sure / I can tell you’re feeling it too / ‘Cause when I’m walking with you in the rain / It’s like a yellow balloon / It’s like a yellow balloon / On a rainy afternoon / And that’s a yellow balloon”
“Yellow Balloon” got so popular, in fact, that requests started pouring in for live performances. Alas, there was no real band behind the song, as the musicians who played on the track were simply colleagues of Zekler who happened to be available at the time. In an attempt to capitalize on the offers, Canterbury Records exec Ken Handler asked Don Grady to step in as the drummer.
Don Grady was a ’60s sitcom star
While Grady was already well-known, it wasn’t for music: He played Robbie Douglas on the classic sitcomMy Three Sons. While playing with The Yellow Balloon band, he wore a disguise and used a pseudonym (but word still got out).
The Yellow Balloon went on to record one self-titled album, but parted ways after that. Grady’s career in music wasn’t over, however; he composed the theme for The Phil Donahue Show, scored the 1991 film Switch and released two solo albums, according to Music Minds.
Related: 1961 One-Hit Wonder Written by a 14-Year-Old Singer Was One of John Lennon’s Favorite Love Songs