Peter Yarrow, "Puff, The Magic Dragon" and Marijuana?

 

Peter Yarrow, a member of the popular 1960s activist folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has just died, leading me to take another look at him and his song, "Puff, The Magic Dragon." 

Yarrow co-wrote what became a universally loved children's song with his Cornell University classmate Lenny Lipton in 1959. Despite calling their dragon "Puff" and setting the tune in what sounds like the marijuana-producing region of Honalei, Hawaii, both authors repeatedly denied the song was inspired by marijuana until the day they died. 

In the video above, recorded January 18, 2016 at Paste Studios in NYC, Yarrow strums the chords to "Puff" singing along with an intro claiming that rumors the song contains marijuana references are "spurious." At the time he and Lipton wrote the song at Cornell, he says/sings, "There were no drugs at all. Weed had not come from the West Coast to be with us there. The worst thing we did was go on a panty raid, or have beer in the dorms, or a girl," he added, laughing. 

Ginsberg at a LeMar protest in 1963.

I wondered if this was true. The Beats had access to grass in the 1950s in New York. Allen Ginsberg wrote in his 1966 “Bringdown” manifesto: "I must begin by explaining something that I have already said in public for many years: that I occasionally use marijuana in preference to alcohol, and have for several decades." Jack Kerouac's “On the Road” was written in 1957, and I think by then Lester Young had turned Kerouac onto “tea.” 

I checked with pot historian Michael Aldrich, who wrote the first-ever PhD dissertation on marijuana and co-founded the pro-legalization group LeMar along with Ginsberg in New York in the early 70s. "I believe it’s possible that there was little or no pot available at Cornell in mid-60s," Aldrich said, adding that when he was at SUNY Buffalo from 1966-1970 "it was difficult to get raw marijuana."

He adds, however, "Hash from New York was often available including Nepalese temple balls. The first issue of Marijuana Review (a magazine that published availability and pricing of cannabis at the time) doesn’t list Cornell, but Buffalo reportedly had “icepack and gold, $24 an ounce. Influx of several keys expected soon @ $125. Some Lebanese hash available, $15 per gram.”

Michael's wife and longtime activist partner Michelle recalled meeting Yarrow and calling him to ask about "Puff" for a drug songs report the couple was working on for the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. "He said it is a children’s song….nothing else," she said. "I believe him…we categorically classified it as conjectural."

Michelle Aldrich first met Yarrow in San Antonio in 1965, when he played a concert at Trinity University. "Later that night at the San Antonio airport, which was the only place at night to get coffee, I sat next to him at the counter and he bought me tea and sang me a song. Special..." she said. Michael agrees that "they originally intended Puff the Magic Dragon as merely a children’s song. On the other hand they sang plenty of Dylan songs with dope references," he mused. 

Lipton, who died in 2023, said he drew inspiration from Ogden Nash's poem "Custard the Dragon," which seems to have little in common with "Puff" except that Custard was a girl's pet.  That one wasn't "magic" though. Lipton traces the rumor about a marijuana connection to a column by Dorothy Killgallen, who was generally a pretty reliable source. 

Looking up Hanalei, I found that many see a dragon with its head dipping into the water in the cliffs above the beach on the island of Kaui. In a children's book based on the song that he and Yarrow published, Lipton denies any connection to the region. However, in the cover artwork, the dragon looks pretty stoned to me, with his heavy-lidded eyes.  

 

Peter, Paul and Mary were so prominent they performed Bob Dylan's “Blowin’ in the Wind” at the 1963 March on Washington at which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The group went on to march at Selma, perform at countless demonstrations, and have lots of hit songs. 

After recording their last No. 1 hit, a 1969 cover of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” the trio split up, and in 1970 Yarrow pleaded guilty to taking "improper and immoral" liberties with a 14-year-old girl. He resumed his career after serving three months in jail, and was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1981. 

“It was an era of real indiscretion and mistakes by categorically male performers. I was one of them. I got nailed. I was wrong. I’m sorry for it,” Yarrow, who considered himself a recovering alcoholic, said. “I fully support the current movements demanding equal rights for all and refusing to allow continued abuse and injury - most particularly of a sexual nature, of which I am, with great sorrow, guilty,” he told The New York Times in 2019 after being uninvited from a festival over the incident. Rolling Stone reports that since laws about sexual abuse have changed, other young teens and their parents have accused Yarrow of similar behavior. 

It all makes Yarrow's admission of "panty raids" and sneaking girls into his dorm in the 2016 video rather creepy. Why is that more acceptable than having a little Puff of Marijuana? 

P.S. I wrote some alternative lyrics to "Puff" after the feds raided Oaksterdam University in 2012, not knowing it was the 50th anniversary of the song: 

A puff of marijuana, it makes you feel so fine
We don’t believe the ones who say
That it should be a crime
A puff of marijuana it helps us feel so good
We think it’s time that cannabis
Is finally understood 

Ogden wrote a memo, the policy was clear
Then James M. Cole he wrote one more
And now we live in fear
Our heads are bent in sorrow
We don’t like Uncle Sam
The feds are fools, they smashed our school
In the land called Oaksterdam 

Goodness lives forever, repression only fades
Soon the science will prevail
and end this foul charade
One day it will happen
The people will endure
And prosecutors everywhere
Will cease their fearsome roar

Obama, keep your promise
Leave our state laws be
Have compassion, do what's right
And set our people free
Together we will travel
To a more enlightened shore
Where medicine is here for all
And the sick will weep no more