Noel Stookey Says He Never Meant to 'Demean' The Beatles with Pointed Lyric in Peter, Paul and Mary's ‘I Dig Rock and Roll Music’
Noel Stookey Says He Never Meant to 'Demean' The Beatles with Pointed Lyric in Peter, Paul and Mary's ‘I Dig Rock and Roll Music’
Meredith WilshereSun, June 28, 2026 at 12:58 PM UTC
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Noel Stookey in 2014Credit: Brian Cahn/ZUMA Wire/Shutterstock -
Noel Stookey regrets the lyrics in “I Dig Rock and Roll Music” that referenced The Beatles, saying they were not meant to demean
Stookey praised The Beatles' songwriting and predicted their music will remain influential for decades
Peter, Paul and Mary performed together until Mary Travers' death in 2009, leaving Stookey as the last surviving member
Noel Stookey didn't intend to take a dig at The Beatles in one of Peter, Paul and Mary's early songs.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, the musician, 88, shared that he has a “regret” about naming the British band in 1967's “I Dig Rock and Roll Music” following the explosion of Beatlemania.
“When you write songs, you sometimes get overwhelmed by the desire to rhyme something rather than to say what it is you mean," he explained. "I was young and impatient when I wrote ‘I Dig Rock and Roll Music,' and the verse that says, ‘And when the Beatles tell you they got a word "love" to sell you, they mean exactly what they say,' I never meant to demean their motives.”
Peter, Paul and Mary: [L-R] Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers, Noel "Paul" StookeyCredit: Dezo Hoffman/Shutterstock
"I Dig Rock and Roll Music" was written by Stookey, James Mason and Dave Dixon. The song was featured on the album Album 1700 and parodied the style of famous acts of the time, including The Beatles and The Mamas & The Papas.
He emphasized that he “loved The Beatles."
"As you could probably tell if you've played Peter, Paul and Mary music at all, I'm the wild one in terms of the trio and in terms of relating musically to the folk idiom in a jazzy or unpredictable kind of way," he said. "I've always felt that there should be a certain freedom."
While many musicians from the folk era were threatened by the rock band, Stookey noted that they all shared common ground as long as they “stayed true to the subject and material.”
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“I thought [Paul] McCartney and [John] Lennon, [George] Harrison, [Ringo] Starr, they were digging deep into personal relationships, and there was a truth there. There still is," he told Rolling Stone. "I mean, in pop music today, it's very hard to summon, how shall I say, the substantiation of wanting to do the twist to ‘This Land Is Your Land' or to boogie or to dance to ‘Blowin' in the Wind.' ”
He said those songs “have a lot of informational import, but there are songs that are happy stuff.”
The Beatles perform in November 1963.Credit: Getty
“I thought The Beatles did an amazing job of bringing first-person angst into the public arena, ‘She Loves You,' I mean, even their early tunes," Stookey shared. "As they got later and later in their careers, I don't think they lost a thing, and their musicality was off the charts. It was just some brilliant writing."
In fact, Stookey predicted that 50 years from now, people will still be “talking about the immense library of work that still is performed that was created by Paul McCartney and John Lennon.”
Stookey was one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary alongside Peter Yarrow and Mary Travers. The trio played together, on and off, until Travers' death in 2009. Yarrow died in January 2025, making Stookey the band's last surviving member.
The "secret to a long and happy life," according to Stookey, "is to be thankful."
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
