Peter Yarrow dead: Singer and songwriter dies after cancer battle (Image: GETTY)
Peter Yarrow has died after battling bladder cancer.
A five-time Grammy winner who co-founded the hitmaking folk-pop trio Peter, Paul & Mary and co-wrote its memorable “Puff the Magic Dragon,” died Tuesday of bladder cancer at his New York City home. He was 86.
His daughter Bethany announced the news via reps.
“Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life,” she wrote. “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.”
The singer and song-writer was diagnosed with bladder cancer four years ago.
Yarrow was the lead vocalist on Puff, The Magic Dragon, The Great Mandella and Day Is Done, songs which he co-wrote with Noel Paul Stookey.
Stookey is the last surviving group member, as Mary Travers died in 2009.
In a candid statement, he said: “Being an only child, growing up without siblings may have afforded me the full attention of my parents, but with the formation of Peter, Paul and Mary, I suddenly had a brother named Peter Yarrow. He was best man at my wedding and I at his.
He was a loving ‘uncle’ to my three daughters. And, while his comfort in the city and my love of the country tended to keep us apart geographically, our different perspectives were celebrated often in our friendship and our music.
I was five months older than Peter – who became my creative, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical younger brother – yet at the same time, I 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.
Politically astute and emotionally vulnerable, perhaps Peter was both of the brothers I never had — and I shall deeply miss both of him.”