Peter Yarrow brings music, message of peace to Raue Center
Folk singer and songwriter Peter Yarrow remembers 1963's March on Washington like it was yesterday.
Yarrow and his musical partners Noel (Paul) Stookey and Mary Travers - the trio known as Peter, Paul and Mary - performed “If I Had a Hammer” and “Blowin' in the Wind” before an estimated 300,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial.
Yarrow stood in the hot sun, listening to Martin Luther King Jr. make his “I Have a Dream” speech.
“Mary took my hand and said, 'We are watching history being made,'” Yarrow recalled.
“It really was an epiphany for all of us, in which we realized that ordinary humans - not rich, powerful, famous people - but just people, can change the course of history,” he said.
Yarrow, now 78, is still performing around the world, and he's bringing his musical message - one of human rights, peace and equality - to Crystal Lake's Raue Center for the Arts on Thursday, April 13.
He refers to his shows as a “cross between a party, a peace march and a concert.”
There is plenty of audience involvement, as everyone is invited to sing along. And children are often called up on stage to sing one of Peter, Paul and Mary's biggest hits, “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” which Yarrow co-wrote with Leonard Lipton.
“It's a great honor to Lenny and to me that this song is still known by even very young people who come to my concert. Children who are 3 or 4 years old come onstage and sing it with me,” he said.
Yarrow is finding that many people in his audiences are fearful in today's often volatile political atmosphere.
“It gives me a sense that it may be the most important time I have ever done concerts,” Yarrow said. “People are reaching out to me today in a way that is reminiscent of people who reached out to Peter, Paul and Mary in the time of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement of the '60s. People are worried, troubled, frightened.
“What we are facing in the U.S. is a crisis of empathy, of caring and of our moral perspectives,” Yarrow continued. “What we need in this period of time is to reach out across the dividing line to those who voted differently from us and assert the fact that we can agree to disagree on our political choices. Basically as Americans, with few exceptions, we are people of good intent who want the best for our country.”
Peter, Paul and Mary rose to the top of the charts in the 1960s with folk hits such as “Lemon Tree,” “Blowin' in the Wind,” “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” The group became a musical phenomenon, filling stadiums, performing for royalty and getting involved with political causes.
Travers died in 2009. Yarrow still performs at times with Paul Stookey. But the group's music has lived on through several generations.
“Peter, Paul and Mary ceased to exist when Mary passed,” Yarrow said. “But our music, even though it's not at the top of the Hit Parade, is in the hearts of people. The music never left.”
One of the group's most-analyzed songs was “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”
“The song is about the innocence of childhood that we mourn,” Yarrow said. “The sweet innocence of those kinds of feelings. But we have to grow up and do our part in trying to heal the world. We can't remain children anymore.”
Yarrow published a best-selling “Puff, the Magic Dragon” children's book with a musical CD, along with four other children's books and three children's songbook collections.
He also co-founded Operation Respect, a not-for-profit educational program and its “Don't Laugh at Me” anti-bullying program for classrooms. It is currently used in 22,000 schools.
But it's his music, and the music of Peter, Paul and Mary, that continues to be at the forefront of Yarrow's legacy.
“I don't care what they say about me,” he said. “What I'd like them to say about their lives and themselves is that they have music as a tool to help them create community and create a sensibility of caring. Then I will feel my legacy, or all of my intentions of what I am trying to do, have been fulfilled.”
Peter Yarrow
Location: Raue Center for the Arts, 26 N. Williams St., Crystal Lake, (815) 356-9212 or
Showtime: 7 p.m. Thursday, April 13
Tickets: $32-$38