Peter Yarrow, who is best known for his role in the folk music group Peter, Paul and Mary, passed away on Tuesday, Jan. 7, following a four-year battle with bladder cancer. He was 86.
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Yarrow’s daughter, Bethany, confirmed the news in a statement.
“Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life,” the statement read. “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.”
According to The Guardian, Peter, Paul and Mary were among the most well-known music groups in the 1960s. The folk group had six U.S. top 10 singles and one No. 1, a cover of John Denver’s hit track “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”
Yarrow took on the role of lead vocals in the group’s songs “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” “The Great Mandella,” and “Day is Done.” He either wrote or co-wrote songs with bandmate Noel Paul Stookey.
The group split up in 1970, but reunited in 1978 until bandmate Mary Travers passed away in 2009. Yarrow and Stookey continued playing music, creating the band Peter and Noel Paul.
Stookey is the last surviving member of both groups.
Noel Paul Stookey Calls Peter Yarrow His ‘Creative, Irrepressible, Spontaneous, and Musical Younger Brother’
In a statement to The New York Times, Stookey had nothing but praise for Yarrow following the news of his death.
He called Yarrow his “creative, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical younger brother” whom he “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,” Stookey said. “Perhaps Peter was both of the brothers I never had and I shall deeply miss both of him.”
Stookey previously reflected on Peter and Paul without Travers in a 2016 interview with Cape Cod Times.
“We are missing Mary–both figuratively and literally,” Stookey said at the time. “I don’t mean to be sexist, she was such a rock-solid feminist with a mind of her own… But she was our tender mercy.”
Stookey also stated that Travers wasn’t a “techie” as she aged. She wasn’t a fan of cell phones.
“Do you remember when the phone was a little black box that sat on my desk and I never had to ask where it was?” Stookey recalled Travers stating.
Travers died on September 16, 2009. She was diagnosed with leukemia, which went into remission in 2005 after a bone marrow transplant. However, she died from complications from the transplant and other treatments. She was 72.