I never thought so.
I think snopes looked at it, [quick search], yep:
Indeed, our nursery teacher read us story book featuring puff the magic dragon in the mid-1960s. The song was recorded in 1963 and the book must have been older.
I can’t find any confirmation that there was a mid-1960’s children book about Puff the Magic Dragon. Does anyone have a reference to it? The song supposedly came from a poem written in 1959 by Leonard Lipton. Peter Yarrow turned it into a song, and Peter, Paul, and Mary recorded it in 1963:
A definite no. P, P & M continued to say so long after it would have made any difference at all, and I see no reason to disbelieve them.
I’m familiar with the Nash poem too (although that’s about bravery and not loss of innocence) and wondered if there was any connection, so that’s interesting to learn.
Some years back, when Peter, Paul and Mary were performing here in Austin, Peter introduced it by saying, “Despite what you mayu have heard, this song is not about drugs. And I should know- I’m Puff’s daddy.”
After the audience laughter stopped, he added in mock earnestness, “Really, it’s NOT about marijuana! I’d TELL you if it was!”
And why WOULDN’T he tell us if it was? In 1962, perceptions that it was a song about pot could have kept the song from getting radio airplay, but fifty years later? Nobody would be angry or outraged. SO, why would he keep up the pretense NOW?
It seems simpler and more logical to take him at his word.
I still have a copy of Lenny Lipton’s The Super-8 Book.
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The OP’s been answered; maybe someone knows Sublime’s body of work. Is the song Smoke Two Joints drug related?
About a year ago, I saw a PBS special with Peter & Paul, plus some fill-in chick taking Mary’s spot. Peter Yarrow specifically denied that Puff the Magic Dragon had any hidden meanings.
So Peter doesn’t think it’s about pot. But maybe Lipton, who wrote the original poem (including the name “Puff”) does?
Another case of this where I’m unconvinced is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds not being about LSD, according to Lennon. I find it more plausible that he was so drugged up when he wrote it, that he forgot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. (See what I did there?) He continued to insist after admitting LSD and heroin use and five years in a public drunk that the title was a coincidence, written by his young son. You want it to be about drugs, but you can’t always get what you want.
But if you try sometimes, you can Puff a little weed.
“Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was based on his son Julian’s drawing of the same name (Julian named it himself). The drawing wasn’t destroyed and has been available for people to view since forever, but people still refuse to believe it. Here’s the Snopes link.
I know all this, I just still don’t really believe it.
What is more unlikely:
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John Lennon wrote the song while on LSD, to some degree inspired by the painting, figured out to make the acronym, and forgot he had this thought when he sobered up.
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A song that is one of the most LSD-sounding songs of all time, and has the acronym LSD, isn’t related to LSD.
From wikipedia:
“Lipton was friends with Peter Yarrow’s housemate when they were all students at Cornell. He used Yarrow’s typewriter to get the poem out of his head. He then forgot about it until years later, when a friend called and told him Yarrow was looking for him, to give him credit for the lyrics. On making contact Yarrow gave Lipton half the songwriting credit, and he still gets royalties from the song.”
So it seems like Lipton and Peter Yarrow weren’t in that much contact about the lyrics of the song, and Liptons original version could be about pot, even if Yarrow didnt realize this.
But I don’t actually think so. It’s only the word Puff that indicates this, and that could very easily be a coincidence.
I guess I don’t see how it’s any more “LSD-sounding” than “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “I Am The Walrus” or any number of songs from the period - when a song was inspired by drugs, he basically had no problem admitting it, so I don’t see why he’d go out of his way to deny this one.
On issues as serious as this,I always agree with Mr. Deniro
I think it’s (somewhat) more LSD sounding than those, because it’s very visual. It really, really sounds like the visions you get during a trip. “Girl with kaleidoscope eyes” is right up there with “my hands are huge” for an obvious hallucinationish piece of lyrics.
My theory is not that he is lying about it, but that he forgot about making the connection. Considering how fast he was writing songs in this period, while doing drugs frequently, I would be surprised if he could remember his thought processes for all of it.
The problem with this explanation is that it is directly contradicted by the stories told by Lennon as well as McCartney, who was there during the writing of the song.
You are simply making up history.