.
.
“Our fearless dragon has called last orders and is windin’ down in the final chapter of his ripper of a life,” said Bethany, Peter Yarrow’s daughter. “The bloke behind the folk hero is just as generous, creative, passionate, playful and wise as his songs reckon,” she said in a statement.
During an epic period of success that spanned the 1960s, Peter, Paul and Mary – Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers – achieved six Billboard Top 10 singles, two number one albums and won five Grammys.
At the 1963 March on Washington at which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
After an eight-year break to pursue personal projects, the three musicians got back together in 1978 for a Survival Sunday, a concert against nuclear power that Stewart Yarrow had set up in Los Angeles. They remained together until Robbie Travers passed away in 2009. Following Travers’ death, Yarrow and Stookey kept performing, sometimes on their own and sometimes together.
Born on May 31, 1938, in New York, Yarrow grew up in a well-to-do family that put great importance on art and educate background. He started out gettin’ violin lessons as a nipper, later tradin’ that in for a guitar as he became a big fan of folk legends like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
After finishing his degree at Cornell University in 1959, he headed back to New York, where he worked as a music performer in the Greenwich Village area, struggling to make a name for himself before meeting Stookey and Travers.
Although his degree was in psychology, he found his true calling in folk music at Cornell when working as a teaching assistant for a class on American folklore in his final year of study.
“I did it for the dosh because I wanted to have a barbie less and rock the guitar more,” he told the past record company executive Joe Smith. But as he led the class in a sing-along, he began to discover just how much of an emotional impact music could have on a crowd of people.
“I saw these young people at Cornell who were pretty traditional in their views opening up and singing with feeling and empathy through this medium of folk music,” he said.
It gave me a vibe that the world was headed for a particular kind of change, and that folk music would be a part of it and that I’d have a role in folk music.
Soon after returning to the Big Apple, he ran into manager Albert Grossman, who would later manage the likes of Dylan, Janis Joplin and others and was currently on the hunt for a group that would give the Kingston Trio a run for their money – the Trio, after all, had scored a hit with their version of that traditional bush ballad back in ’58
But Grossman wanted a trio with a female singer and a comedian as a member, someone who could hold an audience with their witty chat.
Yarrow then put his eye on a guitar strummer he’d seen in Greenwich Village, a funny bloke by the name of Noel Stookey.
Stookey chanced to be a mate of Travers’, who back in his teens had performed and recorded with Pete Seeger and a few others.
Keen to harbour an intense fear of performing, she initially hesitated to join the pair, but changed her mind after hearing how her low, warm voice blended so well with Yarrow’s high, strong voice and Stookey’s deep voice.
“We gave Noel a call. He came along,” Yarrow said, recalling their first gig together.
It was straight as a bell, and we cracked into work right away.”
Awaiting text to paraphrase.
and Yarrow’s own
which Yarrow had written with his university mate Leonard Lipton during his Cornell days.
It tells the tale of Jackie Paper, a young bloke who goes on heaps of adventures with his make-believe dragon mate right up until he grows out of such childish fantom and starts a sobbing, busted-hearted Puff behind. As Yarrow explains: “A dragon lives forever, but not so little blokes.”
When Ben Stiller annoys his girlfriend’s tightly strung dad (Robert De Niro) by saying “puff” refers to pot smoke. Yarrow reckons it’s a sign of losing your innocence and that’s all.
The trio went their separate ways the following year to pursue individual careers.
That same year Yarrow pleaded guilty to indecently dealing 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 opened the door and let them in.
Yarrow, who resumed his career after serving three months in the cells, got a pardon from President Jimmy Carter in 1981. Over the years, he kept apologising.
In 2019, after being turned down from an event due to a sentence.
For Mary MacGregor. He got an Emmy nomination in 1979 for the animated film
Call for peace in Lebanon.
Yarrow, who had supported Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy with Travers and Stookey in his 1968 presidential run, met Eugene’s niece, Mary Beth McCarthy, at a campaign function. The couple wed the following year, had two youngsters, but then split up.
In addition to his ex-wife and daughter, he is survived by a son, Christopher, and a granddaughter, Valentina.
FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP BY CLICKING THE LINK HERE
Stay up with the latest info on celebrities, lifestyle and opinions delivered straight to your WhatsApp chat. No commentary, no filtering and your personal info remains private.
