Peter Yarrow has died after battling bladder cancer.
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 is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life. 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 couple married the following year. 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.
During their career spanning the 1960s, Yarrow and bandmates Paul Stookey and Mary Travers released six Billboard Top 10 singles, two Number 1 albums and won five Grammys in the US. The trio became an overnight sensation when their eponymous first album in 1962 topped the charts in the country.
The trio sang out against war and injustice in songs like Day is Done and Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind. The group are best remembered for the song Puff the Magic Dragon though, which Yarrow had written during his Cornell years with college friend Leonard Lipton. Released in 1963, it tells the tale of Jackie Paper, a young boy who embarks on countless adventures with his make-believe dragon friend until he outgrows such childhood fantasies and leaves a sobbing, heartbroken Puff behind.
Some listeners have insisted they heard drug references in the song, a contention at the heart of a famous scene in the film Meet the Parents, when Ben Stiller's character angers his future father-in-law (played by Robert De Niro) by suggesting that "puff" refers to marijuana smoke. Yarrow maintained it reflected the loss of childhood innocence though.
After recording a cover of John Denver's Leaving on a Jet Plane in 1969 - which was their last Number 1 in the US, and peaked at Number 2 in the UK - the trio split up the following year to pursue solo careers. After an eight-year hiatus to pursue solo careers, the trio reunited and remained together until Travers' death in 2009. Upon her passing, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform both separately and together.
In 1970, the same year that the trio initially disbanded, Yarrow had pleaded guilty to taking indecent liberties with a 14-year-old girl who had come to his hotel room with her older sister to ask for autographs. The pair found him naked when he answered the door and let them in. Yarrow, who resumed his career after serving three months in jail, was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1981. Over the decades, he apologized repeatedly.
"I fully support the current movements demanding equal rights for all and refusing to allow continued abuse and injury — most particularly of a sexual nature, of which I am, with great sorrow, guilty," he told The New York Times in 2019 after being disinvited from a festival over the sentence.
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