Yarrow has insisted that the song is about no more than the loss of innocence and has joked about the misinterpretation during live performances. Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul, and Mary, added lyrics and music to a poem written by college chum, Leonard Tipton. The song, however, was originally conceived in 1958, several years before the 1960s’ drug culture and Vietnam got under way. Others believed that the song’s title referred to the AC-47 gunship, a military weapon used in Vietnam. As “Puff” rose on to the Billboard Top 10 in 1963, imaginative critics suggested that “puff” referred to marijuana, “Jackie Paper,” rolling papers, “Autumn Mist,” the smoke, and “Hanalei,” the Hawaiian village known for its potent marijuana. To listeners today, it seems somewhat ludicrous that “Puff (The Magic Dragon),” one of folk’s most enduring children’s songs, was believed in some quarters to be subversive.
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