Trio’s Reunion Shows Magic Remains
by Barbara Stone, The Post-Star, August 17, 1978
Peter, Paul and Mary are together again with their own special magic.
The folk singers played to an appreciative audience of 9,096 Monday night at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Although Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers split up in 1970 to go their own musical ways, they know and the audience knows, that the exciting mellow blend is still there when all three grace the stage.
They call it a reunion and have cut an album by that name to be released in September. The Saratoga concert was the fourth in a series of 17, but at the end of the month the threesome will return to individual status.
Monday night’s concert was sprinkled with Peter, Paul and Mary hits of the 1960’s such as “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Day Is Done.”
The audience shared their joy in being together again. It applauded during the first recognized bars of a favorite number. They clapped along with the tune. They sang along when encouraged by Peter or Paul, and they just sang anyway when they knew the words.
After the concert, Mary said, “It was a wonderful thing to share this show. To sit and watch a concert is a passive thing but to sing is anything but passive.”
Peter, Paul and Mary create the same harmony that won nine gold album awards and three Grammy Awards but have added what Paul calls “up-to-date arrangements.” They now appear with a backup group consisting of a bass, drummer, and a dynamic electronic piano player. The accompaniment was smoother during the second part of the program.
A highlight of the first half of the concert was Billy Joel’s “Summer Highland Falls,” called “sadness or euphoria” by Paul, who explained, “You won’t understand it the first time you hear it.”
They still tend to prefer music that philosophizes, and Mary still complains about the time the other two take to tune their guitars.
After intermission, the three-hour show was reopened by solos by each of the performers. Prolonged applause greeted Paul’s “Every Flower” and Mary’s “Follow Me.”
Mary’s favorite song, “Blowing in the Wind,” brought tears. After the concert, Paul told her, “Your green tears fell like rain.
They tried to close with “Like the First Time,” but standing ovations brought them back for three encores.
On and off the stage, the three have a genuine rapport. It’s apparent that they really like people and each other.
Peter, now a Californian, said, “We discovered our lives have really touched each other. We know we really have reached each other musically, emotionally and ethnically.
“Our relationship is much more precious now because we can see it for what it is. I didn’t expect it (the reunion) to be as deep an experience as it was,” he added.
In private, Mary and Peter call Paul “Noel.” He’s the one who says “It’s fun” while Mary says “It’s very time-consuming” and Peter says “It’s very difficult.”
In order to plan the album and the tour, which occurred due “to a coincidence in schedules,” the trio listened to 500 possible songs to be arranged in their own special style.
This get-together is a project not to be construed as a permanent arrangement, but they don’t discount another “reunion” in eight or 10 years. It, too, may open symbolically with “Best of Friends.”
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