Peter Yarrow dead: Peter, Paul and Mary star who wrote Puff The Magic Dragon dies at 86

After battling bladder cancer, Peter Yarrow passed away.

The singer-songwriter – best known as one-third of folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary – passed away earlier this week, aged 86, after being diagnosed with cancer four years ago, it’s been announced. As reported by AP, Yarrow, who co-wrote the song Puff the Magic Dragon, died Tuesday in New York, publicist Ken Sunshine said.

Our fearless dragon has reached the end of his magnificent life and is exhausted. 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”, his daughter Bethany said in a statement.

Yarrow, who had supported Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential bid, met the Minnesota senator’s niece, Mary Beth McCarthy, at a campaign event. The following year, the couple wed. They had two children before divorcing. In addition to his ex-wife and daughter, he is survived by a son, Christopher, and a granddaughter, Valentina.

Yarrow and bandmates Paul Stookey and Mary Travers recorded six Billboard Top 10 singles, two No. 1 albums, and won five Grammys in the US during their distinguished career that spanned the 1960s. When the trio’s 1962 debut album debuted at the top of the country’s music charts, it quickly became a hit.

In songs like Day Is Done and Blowin’ in the Wind by Bob Dylan, the trio sang out against war and injustice. However, Yarrow’s collaboration with college friend Leonard Lipton led to the group’s best-known song Puff the Magic Dragon, which he had written while attending Cornell. Jackie Paper, a young boy who travels endlessly with his make-believe dragon friend until he grows old and leaves a sobbing, heartbroken Puff behind, is the story of the 1963 film, which is published in 1963.

Some listeners have argued that the song contains marijuana references, which is at the heart of a famous scene from the movie Meet the Parents, in which Robert De Niro’s character, Ben Stiller, mocks his future father-in-law (played by Robert De Niro), suggests that “puff” refers to marijuana smoke. However, Yarrow continued, it reflected the loss of innocence as a child.

The trio split up the following year to pursue solo careers after recording a cover of John Denver’s 1969 album Leaving on a Jet Plane, which was their final US release and reached a top of the UK. The trio reunited and remained together until Travers’ passing in 2009 after an eight-year break to pursue solo endeavors. Upon her passing, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform both separately and together.

Yarrow admitted to taking offensive liberties with a 14-year-old girl who had asked for autographs in his hotel room in 1970, the same year the trio first dissolved. When he answered the door and let them in, the pair discovered him naked. President Jimmy Carter pardoned Yarrow in 1981 after serving three months in prison. Over the decades, he apologized repeatedly.

After being disqualified from a festival for the sentence, he told The New York Times in 2019 that he “fully supports the current movements demanding equal rights for all and refusing to tolerate continued abuse and injury, especially of a sexual nature. I am so sorry for this.”

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Source: Mirror