New York, United States:
Peter Yarrow — one third of the beloved people trio Peter, Paul and Mary, whose anthems epitomized the Nineteen Sixties protest motion — died Tuesday in New York. He was 86 years previous.
His longtime publicist informed AFP in a press release that Yarrow, the songwriter behind hits like “Puff the Magic Dragon,” had been battling bladder most cancers for 4 years.
“Our fearless dragon is drained and has entered the final chapter of his magnificent life,” Yarrow’s daughter Bethany stated within the assertion.
“The world is aware of Peter Yarrow the enduring people activist, however the human being behind the legend is each bit as beneficiant, artistic, passionate, playful, and sensible as his lyrics counsel,” she continued. “He at all times believed, together with his entire coronary heart, that singing collectively might change the world.”
Yarrow and his band mates Mary Travers and Noel “Paul” Stookey burst onto the American people music scene in 1961 with an influential type punctuated by wealthy three-part harmonies and progressive activist politics.
Born Could 31, 1938 in Manhattan to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, Yarrow studied portray earlier than turning to singing and guitar as a scholar at Cornell College.
After graduating he moved to New York and have become a daily on Greenwich Village’s burgeoning people scene.
The band blended people roots and industrial success: their self-titled 1962 debut reigned over the US charts and bought greater than two million copies.
Their rendition of “Blowin’ within the Wind” turned a preferred interpretation of fellow people singer Bob Dylan’s anti-war anthem; Peter, Paul and Mary carried out the music on the 1963 civil rights March on Washington, cementing its place within the people activist canon.
Their model of the progressive protest music “If I Had a Hammer” — written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays — earned the trio two of their 5 Grammy wins.
Their different hits included “Day Is Carried out” and “The Nice Mandala.” The band additionally coated John Denver’s “Leavin’ on a Jet Airplane” to chart-topping success.
‘Politically astute and emotionally weak’
However they broke up in 1970, shortly after the music’s launch, partly to pursue solo work and partly as a result of Yarrow was accused of creating sexual advances towards a 14-year-old lady who got here to his dressing room whereas looking for an autograph together with her teenage sister.
Yarrow served three months of a jail sentence after pleading responsible to taking “indecent liberties” with the kid.
The artist was controversially pardoned in 1981 by then-president Jimmy Carter.
The incident trailed him, nonetheless: in 2019, because the #MeToo motion gained traction, he was as a consequence of carry out at a New York arts competition, however the set was canceled as a consequence of protests.
In a press release on the time, Yarrow voiced regret: “I don’t search to reduce or excuse what I’ve performed and I can not adequately specific my apologies and sorrow for the ache and harm I’ve brought about.”
Neither he nor his band mates achieved the celebrity as solo artists as they did collectively, and reunited for one-off exhibits earlier than touring recurrently all through the late twentieth century, till Travers was recognized with most cancers from which she finally died.
The group performed their closing efficiency collectively in Could 2009 in New Jersey.
In a press release, the final dwelling band mate, Stookey, known as Yarrow his his “artistic, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical youthful brother — but on the identical time, I grew to be thankful for, and to like, the mature-beyond-his-years knowledge and provoking steerage he shared with me like an older brother.”
“Politically astute and emotionally weak, maybe Peter was each of the brothers I by no means had,” Stookey stated. “I shall deeply miss each of him.”
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