Peter Yarrow, from Folk Legends Peter, Paul & Mary, dies aged 86

Peter Yarrow, one-third of the 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary – who helped popularize Bob Dylan as the voice of a generation – co-writer of the song “Puff, the Magic Dragon” and a prominent social activist, died Tuesday morning in his home in New York City “with his family by his side,” a rep confirms Black. Yarrow had been battling cancer for four years; he was 86.

Peter, Paul and Mary were a leading light of the thriving folk music scene of the early 1960s, famously centered around the nightclubs and cafes of New York’s Greenwich Village. Yarrow had begun singing while a student at Cornell University and performed in New York and at the Newport Folk Festival, where he was spotted by manager Albert Grossman, who had a vision of “an updated version of the Weavers,” the legendary folk group with Pete Seeger. Singers Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers were soon recruited and using Stookey’s middle name, Peter, Paul and Mary were born.

The trio signed a contract with Warner Bros. Records and quickly achieved success with their first singles, “The Lemon Tree” and “If I Had a Hammer,” winning two Grammy Awards in 1962. But it was their cover of Dylan’s “Blowin’ in” the Wind,” released in June 1963, which they performed while standing next to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the historic March on Washington in August, truly made them a cultural force, not to mention superstars.

(Not coincidentally, Dylan was also managed by Grossman, although the new Dylan biography, “A Complete Unknown”, does not dramatize how much the trio popularized his music in the early 60s, Yarrow’s character appears in the film, played by Nick Pupo, seen engaged in debate as a founding board member of the Newport Folk Festival.)

The trio would score many hits over the following years—including with the Yarrow co-written “Puff the Magic Dragon”—but would remain indelibly associated with those early years. Later in his life, Yarrow would focus intensively on social activism, often speaking out against the war in Vietnam and on other issues.

The group’s initial run ended in 1970 when they broke up and pursued solo careers. In addition to his own albums, Yarrow had a No. 1 hit as a songwriter with “Torn Between Two Lovers”, recorded by Mary MacGregor, which topped the Hot 100 for two weeks in 1976.

Peter, Paul and Mary first reunited in 1972 to perform to benefit George McGovern’s presidential campaign. They reunited in 1978 for an anti-nuclear concert. They then resumed touring regularly, often playing dozens of shows a year, which continued until Travers’ death in 2009.

In an interview for “The American Radio Show” podcast, Yarrow looked back on the trio’s early success. “The first album we did had songs on it like ‘If I Had a Hammer,’ ‘Lemon Tree,’ ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ And that album had a lot of success and was near the top of the charts. The second album had ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ on it. The music had shifted from popular music to music that had become the soundtrack to the change that was taking place in America, and our music was for many people a bridge to, for example, Bob Dylan’s music.

“‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ was just a children’s song. But I had no idea it would be so successful. When we sang ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ Bob Dylan was unheard of. He had recorded a demo of that song , but it was. The same for ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ and ‘In the Early Morning Rain.’ songs that really came to us, that touched our hearts. You can’t reduce the success of ’60s music to a formula that involves arrangements and musical presentation to find the songs, and go to the core of the songs and then create something that we really wanted to share.”

Røllike was remembered on Tuesday by family and cohorts. His daughter Bethany said: “Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the final chapter of his magnificent life. The world knows Peter Yarrow, the iconic folk activist, but the man behind the legend is as generous, creative, passionate, playful and wise as his lyrics suggest. Driven by a deep belief that a more compassionate and respectful world is possible, my father lived a cause-driven life full of love and purpose.He always believed with all his heart that singing together could change the world Stop Believing in Magical Dragons Hope Dies When We Stop Worrying He Was a Dying Progressive But his passion and music touched people of all ages and political stripes around the world.”

His longtime bandmate, Noel Paul Stookey (“Paul” of Peter, Paul and Mary), stated: “Being an only child, growing up without siblings, may have given me my parents’ undivided attention, but with the formation of Peter, Paul and Mary, I suddenly had a brother named Peter Yarrow. He was best man at my wedding. He was a loving ‘uncle’ to my three daughters. And while his comfort in the city and my love for the country tended to last us from geographically, our different perspectives were often celebrated in our friendship and our music.I was five months older than Peter – who became my creative, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical little brother – but at the same time I grew to appreciate and love him mature wisdom and inspirational guidance he shared with me like an older brother. Politically astute and emotionally vulnerable, Peter was both of the brothers I never had… and I will miss him both deeply.”

Yarrow’s legacy was tarnished by a conviction for taking indecent liberties with a child – a 14-year-old girl – in the late 1970s. The incident resurfaced when reporters pointed out that President Jimmy Carter had pardoned Yarrow the day before Ronald Reagan took office. Wrote Washington Post in a 2021 article examining the aftermath, the paper wrote that “this Carter pardon—perhaps the only one in American history to wipe out a conviction for a sex crime against a child—avoided scrutiny when it happened. It became given just hours before the American hostages in Iran were freed, grabbing headlines for weeks.… Yarrow’s crime was mostly forgotten after he served less than three months in prison,” with the remainder of his one- to three-year sentence suspended.

Another woman filed suit in 2021, claiming she had been raped by Yarrow in 1969 when she was a minor. The Post reported that she settled down with Yarrow soon after.

Stookey and Yarrow performed together as a duo in the late 2010s, up through as recently as last summer. ONE review of a common appearance in Minneapolis in 2017 said, “Any concerns I had that the duo would be incomplete without Mary disappeared soon after these two nearly octogenarians took the stage. Their two guitars and still near-perfect vocals made for an incredible and passionate night of music. .. Expecting only a night of nostalgia with these 1960s protest singers, those in attendance got much more: It was a night of revitalization for peace and the causes of peace and a better world.” Included in the Peter and Paul reunion shows was a new song by Stookey’s called “Work Together”, described as “rejecting calls to put the election behind us and work together on the Trump agenda… Ever the rebel, Peter Yarrow insisted that take a knee in protest at the concert – even though it was expected to be difficult for a man of his age.”

In one April 2024 interview with the Duluth Reader ahead of a tour stop there, Yarrow talked about music and its relationship to social movements, past and present.

Folk music “still exists, it still has a place,” he said last year, “but it’s a much smaller place compared to pop music. And pop music is very much a wasteland. It’s not like that with certain artists. I mean, Lady Gaga has a hell of a conscience; Alicia Keys sings about it and she walks the walk, as does Taylor Swift, a beacon of feminism for teenage girls: Don’t allow the oppression you feel from young men your age to become a reflection of your confidence, your essence or self-esteem. Because you are powerful, you are the voice and you can meet them on mutual ground instead of just reacting to the male-dominated culture that we have inherited.” Yarrow even compared Swift’s lyrics to “Peter Paul and Mary! Except she’s not singing for peaceniks, she’s singing for young women who hopefully won’t be oppressed by a culture of male dominance that has brought us to where we are today.”

He continued: “I mean, it’s the oppressed people of the world – you know the biblical call, ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’. Look who’s getting stronger now – the women. Can you imagine what’s happened to women with the ‘Fussemarchen’ etc etc. I mean, my God, women show up and say ‘I don’t want that!’ And the oppressed! The LGBTQ emerged and the black community with Black Lives Matter – the first national gathering of a movement that completely covered America, where the people, instead of saying ‘where are the people in the streets now, where these terrible atrocities have taken place?’ People were in the streets. And the students who have been organized…

“We are talking about marginalized people getting their due. Now, as the Trump reality grows in its metastatic fashion, we also have the amalgamation of those who have been oppressed to feel their strength. And unfortunately, we don’t have music to accompany it the way we had in the civil rights and Vietnam War movements. But nevertheless, these movements are underway.”

Of his recent shows, Yarrow said: “It’s really a remarkable phenomenon because the kind of warmth and enthusiasm and care that was once just expected and taken for granted is revived among people when they sing together songs like ‘Puff the Magic Dragon ‘ or ‘Leavin’ on a jet.’ It’s phenomenally moving because it sort of asserts the spirit that bound us together so strongly decades ago and is still in our culture and in our hearts and in our DNA so restorative to people. no we still believe in something. the truth is not a moving target. we have to understand that the dangerous slide of culture and politics into this polarized, hate-filled perspective is not something that must necessarily subjugate us.”

After Yarrow’s death was announced, his daughter Bethany called for donations to her father’s cause: “To honor my father and his legacy. In lieu of flowers or any other gift, please consider making a contribution to his non-profit , Operation Respect , an anti-bullying program that has been implemented in over 22,000 schools internationally, helping to create the next generation of empathetic, caring and respectful citizens, would bring him great joy and peace to know that his life’s work will continue.”

He is survived by his wife Marybeth, son Christopher, Bethany and granddaughter Valentina.

A memorial service will be announced at a later date.