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Peter Yarrow, 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.”
Peter, Paul and Mary rode the folk-pop tsunami of the early 1960s, scoring six Top 10 singles that culminated with their sole chart-topper, the 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 debut studio album to spend seven weeks atop the Billboard 200 and go double-platinum.
His 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…
