Peter Yarrow Dies: Peter, Paul & Mary Singer-Songwriter Was 86
Peter Yarrow, a five-time Grammy winner who co-founded the hitmaking folk-pop trio Peter, Paul & Mary and co-wrote its memorable “Puff the Magic Dragon,” died Tuesday of bladder cancer at his New York City home. He was 86.
His daughter Bethany announced the news via reps. “Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life,” she wrote. “The world knows Peter Yarrow the iconic folk activist, but the human being behind the legend is every bit as generous, creative, passionate, playful, and wise as his lyrics suggest.” Read a statement from bandmate Paul Stookey below.
More from Deadline
Born on May 31, 1938, in Brooklyn, Yarrow teamed with Stookey and Mary Travers as Peter, Paul and Mary and rode the folk-pop tsunami of the early 1960s. The group scored six Top 10 singles that culminated with their sole chart-topper, the young John Denver-penned “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” in 1969.
The trio broke out in 1962 with its take on the Pete Seeger-Lee Hays standard “If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song),” which drove their eponymous Warner Bros. Records debut studio album to spend seven weeks atop the Billboard 200 and go double-platinum. The single won a pair of Grammys, and the group was nominated for Best New Artist, losing to Robert Goulet.
The group followed that with its 1963 sophomore LP (Moving), which spent eight weeks at No. 2, foiled from the summit by Vaughn Meader’s comedy smash The First Family. The disc featured “Puff the Magic Dragon,” Yarrow’s heart-tugging tune based a Leonard Lipton poem that also reached No. 2 in the U.S. Nominated for a Best Recording for Children Grammy, the lilting track laments the titular mythical creature’s loss of his young human friend as the boy grows up but often was accused of being flecked with drug references in the pre-hippie early 1960s. Yarrow and Lipton always denied the notion.
Later in 1963, the group scored another No. 2 hit with “Blowin’ in the Wind,” written by a then-rising Greenwich Village contemporary named Bob Dylan. Culled from the LP In the Wind, which spent five weeks at No. 1, the song won two more Grammys and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
In the Wind also spawned another Top 10 single with “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” also penned by Dylan. The original of that and “Blowin’ in the Wind” appeared on the Minnesota native’s breakout 1963 LP The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Yarrow is portrayed by Nick Pupo in the awards-season Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.
The 1964 live album Peter, Paul & Mary in Concert continued the group’s chart success, reaching No. 4 and going gold while scoring two more Grammy noms. The trio’s next studio set, 1965’s A Song Will Rise, also earned a Grammy nom and hit No. 8. But it would be their last Top 10 album, though five of their next six made the Top 20 and continued to pile up Grammy noms; the group would score 16 of those during their career — including at least one every year from 1962-69 — winning five times.
Peter, Paul and Mary was deeply committed to the Civil Rights Movement, and they performed at the historic 1963 March on Washington led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and again at the Selma-to-Montgomery March in 1965. The group’s members also were active in the anti-war protests later in the decade. Yarrow produced peace concerts in New York’s Madison Square Garden and Shea Stadium and helped organize the 1969 protest march that drew an estimated half-million people to Washington, D.C., to rally against the Vietnam War.
Peter, Paul and Mary’s singles continued to chart through the mid-’60s, but they couldn’t replicate their Top 10 success until the Summer of Love, when the decidedly more rocking “I Dig Rock and Roll Music” hit No. 9. The 1967 tune penned by Stookey, James Mason and Dave Dixon name-checked 1960s rock acts and was a mild dig at the vocal style of Los Angeles-based folk-rock rivals The Mamas and the Papas.
Peter, Paul & Mary would enjoy their biggest hit single as the decade ebbed. “Leaving on a Jet Plane” debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1969 and reached No. 1 by Christmas. Its anguished narrator laments having to leave someone dear with the lyric: “I’m leaving on a jet plane/don’t know when I’ll be back again/oh babe, I hate to go.” Many at the time interpreted the song as being sung by a GI on his way to fight in Vietnam.
The track also was the group’s lone Top 10 hit in the UK, reaching No. 2 in early 1970. It had three Top 20 albums there.
But it would be the group’s swan-song hit as Yarrow, Stookey and Travers split just months after their lone chart-topper to pursue solo careers. They left a legacy of folk-pop classics that also included takes on such classic songs as “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Lemon Tree,” “Tell It on the Mountain,” “This Land Is Your Land” and Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
But there was another reason for the split: Yarrow was convicted in 1970 of molesting a 14-year-old girl who had come to his dressing room seeking an autograph. He served only a few months of a one- to three-year prison sentence and was pardoned by “Rock ‘n’ Roll President” Jimmy Carter at the end of his term in 1981.
RELATED: Jimmy Carter Dies: Longest-Living U.S. President Won Nobel Peace Prize For Advancing Human Rights
Peter, Paul and Mary reunited several times for political events over the years and did a summer tour together in 1978. That year Warner Bros issued the LP Reunion to moderate success. But the tour led to a more lasting PP&M reunion in 1981 that continued into the 1990s. The trio was featured in a number of documentaries and TV movies including 2014’s 50 Years with Peter, Paul & Mary and 2012’s Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation and appeared on PBS’ Great Performances in 1996. They also were the celebrities on a 1963 episode of game show What’s My Line? and guest-hosted back-to-back episodes of The Midnight Special in 1974.
Travers was diagnosed with leukemia in 2004 and died five years later at 72.
Along with his music career, Yarrow was committed to a number of causes ranging from equal rights, peace and the environment to gender equality, homelessness, hospice care, public broadcasting and education. He also produced three TV movies based on “Puff the Magic Dragon” from 1978-82 and voiced the father character in two of them.
Yarrow is survived by his wife Marybeth, son Christopher, daughter Bethany and granddaughter Valentina. A memorial service is TBA. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests making a contribution to Yarrow’s anti-bully not-for-profit group Operation Respect.
Former bandmate Stookey said in a statement:
“Being an only child, growing up without siblings may have afforded me the full attention of my parents, but with the formation of Peter, Paul and Mary, I suddenly had a brother named Peter Yarrow. He was best man at my wedding and I at his.
He was a loving ‘uncle’ to my three daughters. And, while his comfort in the city and my love of the country tended to keep us apart geographically, our different perspectives were celebrated often in our friendship and our music.
I was five months older than Peter – who became my creative, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical younger brother – yet at the same time, I grew to be grateful for, and to love, the mature-beyond-his-years wisdom and inspiring guidance he shared with me like an older brother.
Politically astute and emotionally vulnerable, perhaps Peter was both of the brothers I never had — and I shall deeply miss both of him.
MORE TO COME…
Best of Deadline
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
