Puff: Still Not a Drug Song [Peter Yarrow]

Puff: Still Not a Drug Song

http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2009/12/Music/Puff-Still-Not-a-Drug-Song

Peter Yarrow at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck

by Sparrow
November 30, 2009

Peter Yarrow is best known as one third of the "folk supergroup"
Peter, Paul, and Mary, whose numerous Top 40 hits include "If I Had a
Hammer," "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and "I Dig Rock and Roll Music."
Yarrow wrote "Puff the Magic Dragon," based on a poem by his friend
Leonard Lipton. Harry Belafonte invited Peter, Paul, and Mary to the
Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march, and to the 1963 March on
Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the "I Have a
Dream" speech. Yarrow went on to a solo career and a lifetime of
activism, beginning with the anti-Vietnam War movement, including
environmental causes and the defense of Soviet Jewry. In 2000, Yarrow
founded Operation Respect, an organization that promotes cooperation
and harmony in elementary schools. I spoke to Yarrow soon after he
had organized the memorial service for Mary Travers, his former
singing partner, at Riverside Church in Manhattan.

At 71, Yarrow has not slowed down. He will appear at Oblong Books in
Rhinebeck, on December 5 at 2 pm, to give a free concert and sign
copies of his new children's book, Day Is Done, which is accompanied
by a three-song CD sung by Yarrow and his daughter, Bethany. The book
is based on a hit song Yarrow wrote in 1968, with the infectious
refrain: "And if you take my hand, my son / All will be well when the
day is done."

Oblong Books & Records is at 6422 Montgomery Street in Rhinebeck.
(845) 876-0500; www.oblongbooks.com.
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"Day Is Done" effortlessly makes the transition from song to
children's book. How did you compose that tune?

The song was originally written in `68, which was the height of the
antiwar movement. In `69, I organized a march on Washington, for
peace. I was the co-organizer with a friend of mine called Cora
Weiss. We had a half a million people there. That was the first song
I sang at the march, to open it. The event started the night before,
with the "March Against Death." There was a procession that went all
night, where people put the names of the war dead in coffins, and the
coffins were borne to the Pentagon. And the next day, we had the
"Celebration of Life." And I organized that part, putting together
all the performers: John Denver, Pete Seeger, Mitch Miller, Earl
Scruggs and Lester Flatt, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra string
quartet, the cast of "Hair"­where theater became reality!

Mitch Miller, the strange goateed MC of the "Sing Along With Mitch"
show, performed at an antiwar demonstration?

Yes, he did. I wanted to make it very broad-based. I wanted to say,
"It's not just folksingers here!" So it was a very interesting
admixture. And I started the celebration with "Day Is Done," which
was a hit at the time, and it was widely thought of as a peace song.

Did you plan to become a folksinger?

No, I went to the High School of Music and Art [in New York City] as
an art student. Then I started out as a physics major at Cornell, and
ended up with a degree in experimental psychology. But in the
meantime, I sensed the world's consciousness was going to grow, and I
took a class, English 355-6, that was popularly called "Romp `N
Stomp." It was there that I realized how central folk music could be
to that transformation.

"Romp `N Stomp" was a music course?

It was ballads, folklore, taught by the renowned professor Harold Thompson.

Did you have formal musical training?

Well, I studied the violin for a couple of years when I was very young.

Watching Peter, Paul, and Mary on YouTube, I'm impressed how precise
the harmonies are, how musically sophisticated the group is.

Yes, but all our harmonies were "head arrangements." That means we'd
make them up ourselves rather than have them written for us.

Were the harmonies difficult to work out?

Extraordinarily so. Sometimes we would take over a week to work out
an arrangement.

Is it true that Bob Dylan was going to join Peter, Paul, and Mary,
at one point?

Absolutely untrue.

I read that somewhere.

Who knows? People have written that "Puff" is about drugs! They can
write whatever they want­and they do!

But the character Little Jackie Paper seems to refer to rolling
papers, and sealing wax is supposedly a drug reference.
I would call the assertion that sealing wax is related to the
paraphernalia of junkies­I'd call that sloppy research.

Did Peter, Paul, and Mary always have a bass player?

Yes.

The same bass player always?

No. In the very beginning, we had Eddie DeHaas. Then [manager] Albert
Grossman said we needed someone in the studio who would be like a
fourth voice. So the person we used was Bill Lee, who was Spike Lee's father.

Listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary, I've started to feel that your
harmonies become a metaphor for human cooperation.

You've stumbled onto something that's fundamental to my life. Other
vocal groups look straight out at the audience; Peter, Paul and Mary
looked at each other, and always did. We became the model of the way
people could be: totally open, virtually naked before each other. And
we celebrated that. You didn't see that intensity of closeness in
other groups.

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