Peter Yarrow on Gordon Lightfoot

Peter Yarrow, of bestselling folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary, passed away on January 7, 2025. Yarrow spoke to me in 2016 for the Gordon Lightfoot biography, explaining his interest in Lightfoot’s songwriting and particularly his songs “Early Morning Rain” and “For Lovin’ Me,” both of which Peter, Paul & Mary covered. His was one of the most thoughtful interviews given to me for the book.

I first asked Yarrow about “For Lovin’ Me,” which beccame a huge hit for the trio in 1965. Here’s what he said:

I was singing lead on that song and I know what was in my heart when I was singing. I was feeling and identifying with what I felt were Gordon’s intentions… there’s a sadness there. There was an emotional identification both in the traveling person who was going and coming, the singer, and somehow a sense of remorse about this behaviour pattern. And, at the same time, there was a sense of acknowledgement of the pain of relationships that break up and unrequited love that’s a part of all that. It’s a wrenching song for me. I didn’t identify with the sense that he was unaware of the pains of the relationship being transitory. He was never gloating over the fact that, once he returned, he would break this person’s heart again. He was caught in despair about it all. A despair about himself as well, being incapable of coming to terms with it in a way that would be rewarding and constructive in his love and the others he’s touching.

I mentioned that over the years the song has been criticized for being macho or boasting or having a chauvinistic point of view. Lightfoot himself condemned the song and stopped performing it. Yarrow replied: 

It’s an honest look at the dilemmas of life, rather than a Pollyanna view of relationships. We all have feet of clay, we’re all struggling. That kind of examination was very much part of what was the 1960s, and brought people into an awareness of understanding of their own internal dynamics as human beings and as a society. Another vision of what life might be like. But there are songs like “For Lovin’ Me” that propel a person into another kind of thinking about how to view these dimensions, and from that they grow. But, in the political sphere, that was most poetically and powerfully epitomized by “Masters of War” and “Hard Rain’s-a Gonna Fall” and “The Ship Comes In” … these weren’t simple messages. And then there was “Early Morning Rain” … I didn’t sing the lead on that … but there were several things… there’s a wistfulness and sadness about a way of life that was going away that had a certain kind of dirt under the nails. “You can’t jump a plane like you can a freight train…” With the advents of these new technologies and the changes as a result … they were leaving people without being rooted in simple things. “But I’m stuck here on the ground…”, like “500 Miles” … vulnerability and not having the wherewithal of the dynamics of the times. There’s also the wonderment that it is complex … “hear the might engines roar, see the silver bird on high.” This is not somebody who’s cursing the phenomenon, but standing in of awe it and then reflecting, which makes you think that maybe not everything is hunky dory. It’s like somebody saying, “the economy is doing great, but the difference between the haves and the have-nots is becoming unbearable.” I’m sure that was not in his intention, but there is that sense that even though as we are seeing this remarkable evolution and advances, there’s a sense that many aren’t allowed to participate because of whatever life has brought them. There’s a sadness inherent in Gordon’s work that’s profound. I think that it’s a complex sadness. You can feel it musically, as well as in the direct translation of his words. There are different kinds of sadness. It’s just somebody feeling categorically bummed, but then there’s the other kind, where somebody is feeling that they’re yearning for something. There’s great sadness in a song like “Blowin’ In The Wind” but there’s also the sense that there is a better way. It’s not a condemnation of the circumstances much as it is as a reflection on it … silver spoons to some and others get nothing or little. There’s a yearning for the existence of something where somehow it isn’t like that … it’s not a simple, straight condemnation. That’s because the lyrics are poetic and literate. There’s substance. Like a drama that has many perspectives that ignite possibilities for examining life, and it’s in that examination that wonderful things happen, when people have those conversations. Gordon’s songs gave us a window into those personal dramas.