Interviews

Singer, songwriter, and folk-centric multi-instrumentalist Jesse Colin Young passed away at age 83 at his home in Aiken, South Carolina, on March 16, 2025. Young’s artistic legacy remains quite vibrant and most especially fruitful on vinyl. Jesse had an inherent knack for consistently reaching the masses in a special way when he first began marrying catchy melodies with visceral storytelling, starting with his early ’60s debut solo LP — The Soul of a City Boy, on Capitol, with the songwriting credits listed under his birth name, Perry Miller — and carried forward during his stint with folk-rock pioneers The Youngbloods from 1965-72 on RCA Victor and Racoon Records before resuming his solo career, which lasted right up until he passed. “Darkness, Darkness,” from The Youngbloods’ third studio LP on RCA Victor, April 1969’s Elephant Mountain, is perhaps the best — and most frequently covered — example of how Young did what he did.

And, of course, there is absolutely no denying the ongoing impact of “Get Together,” The Youngbloods’ most infectious hit that was originally found on their self-titled 1967 RCA Victor debut album and a song that later reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969. The thing of it is, “Get Together” is actually a cover of a Dino Valenti song — but Young and his fellow Youngbloods brethren did such an incredible job of it that they instantly made the song their own. That’s also the mark of a cagey, cognizant songwriter at work — one who’s able to recognize great songs that relate to their own creative vision and viewpoint, and then bring them under their own unique wing. (See also The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1968 studio version of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” as another prime example.)

Some of the best vinyl offerings for Young’s music from The Youngbloods era can be found via Sundazed’s 2010 reissue of 1967’s Earth Music that was sourced from the original RCA Victor mono masters, Impex’s 2023 180g LP reissue of 1969’s Elephant Mountain that was mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio from “a flat 1.1 transfer” of the original analog tapes and pressed at RTI. More recently, Young’s 2019 solo album Dreamers saw a 2LP vinyl edition on BMG that was mastered and cut at Sterling Sound. (More on how the latter 2LP set came to be later on.)

Just last year, I was honored to be asked to be one of the judges for The Perfect Stranger Songwriting Contest, which was spearheaded by Jesse in conjunction with Future Youth Records, Taylor Guitars, and our sister site Sound & Vision. Entries were sent in directly to Future Youth between June and September 2024 from all across the globe, which were then pared down to ten finalists for those of us on the panel to vote upon in October. Without getting too far into the weeds, each song was evaluated in the three core categories of 1) song form, 2) lyrics, and 3) alignment with theme — and we all agreed that the winning entry, Syante’s “A Little Sunshine,” was clearly the best of a very competitive bunch.

Inspired by an unexpected act of kindness — a stranger had offered Syante a ride when she was stranded with a dead phone battery in Los Angeles — “A Little Sunshine” captures a wish for a world built on trust and unity. “That experience made me reflect on how rare it is to trust strangers,” Syante observed, “and I wrote this song as a reflection of that moment, and a wish for a world where we can feel connected to, and trust, even those we don’t know.” For his part, Jesse added that, “I am so excited to help bring the next generation of singer-songwriters into the fold of socially conscious music. They are the future.”

Syante co-produced “A Little Sunshine” along with Jesse, Jason Wall, and Maxwell Fink at Stagg Street Studios in Los Angeles. The song made its debut on all major digital platforms just a little over 10 days ago on March 7, 2025, and you can check it out here. (We are, of course, hoping for “A Little Sunshine” 45 at some point to give it a proper analog spin!)

“Part of the job of a songwriter is to be able to tell us truths that are hard, whether you want to hear them or not — and I’ve always done that,” Young explained to me during an interview we did about the contest, as well as his own long and storied career, for S&V. Incidentally, the song contest’s name came from Young’s July 1982 Elektra LP The Perfect Stranger, which the artist himself reissued digitally — but, of course, I still prefer listening to it via my original vinyl. While Stranger is indeed an of-era record in terms of its production values, the songwriting-driven intent behind songs like the yearningly hopeful title track that opens the LP, the steely directive of “Fight for It” (Side One, Track 2) — a heartfelt duet with Carly Simon — and the foreboding dread of “Long Nights Coming” (Side One, Track 5) all serve to reinforce the tenets of Young’s artistic prowess.

Young’s impetus for the youth-oriented Perfect Stranger Songwriting Contest was quite simple. “‘Get Together’ brought people together,” he explained, “and since that time, lots of things have been pulling us apart until we have become perfect strangers from each other. So, we asked people to write a song that is so strong and so beautiful that perfect strangers can sing it together — and enjoy it. And somehow, that song will be able to pierce all these lines in the sand that have been drawn. That song can act as a kind of wind that can just sweep in there, and blow those lines right away — blow those lines right out of there until we realize we’re alone on the beach, and we’ve just got to get it together — or we’re all kind of done.”

During a Zoom call to California that was conducted in June 2024, Young and I discussed how “Get Together” beat the odds to become an indelible hit, why he feels “Darkness, Darkness” is among his best-loved — and most covered — songs, and why his 2019 studio album Dreamers absolutely had to appear on 2LPs, and not just one. Some of the following Q&A previously appeared on S&V, but I went back to my original transcript to expand it for the AP audience writ large, including a much deeper dive into The Perfect Stranger and some of its key songs. Be my pillow / Take my hand / And let me sleep / In the coolness of your shadow / In the silence of your deep. . .

Mike Mettler: When did you know that you could affect somebody with your music? Was there one lightbulb moment for you where you realized, “Okay, I think I’ve got something here — and maybe I can also be a songwriter too”?
Jesse Colin Young: Well, the first lightbulb thing happened when I was coming home from prep school. I hadn’t even turned 16 yet — but I was about to, because I’m a Thanksgiving kind of birthday guy [specifically, on November 22, 1941]. I’d learned how to play the guitar, and when I came home, I brought with me this horrible little Stella with action like (shakes head), oh my God! (both laugh) It was definitely a $15 guitar.

JCY: On that guitar, I played “Tear Drops,” by Lee Andrews and The Hearts, a 1950s song. [Released as a single in 1958 on Chess, “Tear Drops” reached No. 20 on the U.S. Pop chart, and No. 4 on the R&B chart.] I sang it for my mother, and she cried. And I thought, “Wow! What’s going on?” As a result, I think she gave me permission to become a songwriter — and a singer. (chuckles)

Mettler: Right, right — I totally get that. You evoked an emotion out of creating something with music, and that was probably a new experience for you.
JCY: Yeah! Yeah, it sure was.

Mettler: Had you already been buying 45s at that age? What was the first record you ever bought?
JCY: Oh, I’d been buying records since I was 10. I was [growing up] on Long Island, and Alan Freed comes on the radio. I’m 10 years old, and the first record I ever bought was [The Penguins’] “Earth Angel” — and “Earth Angel” has a red label. I can still see myself holding it up in the record store. (chuckles) [“Earth Angel,” released on Dootone in October 1954, was originally the B-side to “Hey Señorita,” but it actually became a chart-topping single.]

And on the other end of the radio dial, Symphony Sid was playing a little more rhythm and blues, but a lot of the same doo-wop. I had a radio in my headboard, right at the head of my bed. If I turned it down low enough, my parents couldn’t even hear it.

Mettler: Yeah, I can relate to that. A lot of us did “under the covers” listening back in those days. I did mine with a red, round Panasonic radio. Still have it, too. (laughs)
JCY: (chuckles) So, for the first maybe four years of my listening life, that radio, it burned all night long — and I absorbed everything that was being played on the radio. It was going into my body.

Mettler: Yeah, you were literally absorbing your music, as it were. Did you have a favorite record shop that you went to regularly in those days?
JCY: There was only one shop in Garden City, Long Island, because there weren’t any chains around there back then. But, yeah, what a thrill it was to collect records. And, as you know, 78s are heavy! You get about a hundred 78s in this metal box, and. . . (shrugs and laughs) I didn’t take them around to other people’s houses, although I did do some DJing at some things that were happening in my church, once upon a time. I did that a couple of times, and I would have to bring my records. It was so easy to get them scratched up.

Mettler: Oh, I know! I was never a fan of loaning records out, because sometimes you’d never get them back. I’m still waiting to get back some records and videos I loaned out in the mid-’80s, but never mind that. (both laugh)

Mettler: Records are something you connect with so viscerally. I think there’s just something about them that gives you a certain feeling, especially when you have the physical representation of your music. I’m sure that, as an artist, you like that vinyl has come back in the way it has these past few years — and I’m glad you were able to release the Dreamers record as double vinyl [released in February 2019, on BMG]. My favorite track on it is “Shape Shifter” (LP1, Side A, Track 2), which I think acts a sinister bookend to your “Get Together” days. Getting to do Dreamers as double vinyl must’ve been something special for you, wouldn’t you agree?
JCY: Absolutely! Absolutely. Yeah. And I remember thinking, “This is not going to fit on one record!” (chuckles)

Mettler: Well, I’m glad you were able to spread it out like that. Now, you sat in on a number of mastering sessions early on in your career, right?
JCY: I did. Most of the early mastering I did, I just sat there and learned from how they explained it to me. I found out that, on the Neumann [record] lathe, there used to be some kind of compressor that was built into it that actually seemed to be a really good thing as far as being able to get more level.

Mettler: Do you remember having any notes in any of those mastering sessions? Anything you can recall, like hearing something and going, “Hey, can you bring my guitar up?” or “My vocal needs to shift,” or anything like that for something you may have heard at that stage?
JCY: Well, no. I was doing all the mixing too, so I got it the way I wanted it — after the first few hundred times. (MM laughs) I mean, I learned how to do this, mostly all by myself. I built a studio, had a few microphones from my road case from the band, and rented a four-track that was the size of a refrigerator — and I started making records. It was a lot of fun.

Mettler: Oh, I’ll bet it was! Is there one early “perfect” mix, or one mix where you felt like, “Okay, I’ve now got it down. I know how I can make this sound to maximize my voice and playing”?
JCY: (slight pause) Hmm. No, I don’t think so. Discovering compression, though — the Urei 1176 compressor. And without compression to mix my voice — I mean, I would have pages of notes for the mix, because I’d have to pull down all these things and then push up my voice all the time because it was too quiet, and then it was too loud — and then it was too quiet! (laughs heartily) Everyone else was doing it, and I wondered, “How do people do this?”

Mettler: You must have had some tough rounds of tweaking, I’m sure! (JCY laughs) One song of yours I spun recently was “Morning Sun,” the opener on your Songs for Juli solo record [released on Warner Bros. in September 1973]. To me, that song seems to be the perfect entry point into where you were at that stage of your career. Did you feel like you got that mix spot on?
JCY: Absolutely, yeah! Yeah, it’s beautiful. I mean, it all came together. I just had a friend there [likely Eddy Ottenstein] who said, “You want me to put a harmony guitar part on that?” I said, “Really? You can just listen to that, and play in harmony? Yeah, do it!” And he just did it! (chuckles heartily) I was amazed.

Mettler: Funny how it can work out like that sometimes. And that song rolls so nicely into the title track, where you just let it kind of flow for a while there before any of the vocal comes in — which is an interesting choice as the artist, I think.
JCY: Yes, “Song for Juli” was “Melody in B-Flat” long before it was “Song for Juli.” My ex [Suzi Young] just scribbled down the words one day when she was listening to a rehearsal when we were working on recording it. And, bingo — I said, “Oh! Yeah, we’ll just play it, and then we’ll have a flute solo or a keyboard solo, and then we’ll go back down to the starting place of the fingerpicking and stick a vocal in there.”

Mettler: Such a great tune. And since we’ve mentioned The Youngbloods, I have to ask — were you happy with the overall mix of your big hit, “Get Together”? Obviously, people are hearing that song in many different ways these days, so can you step back and feel like, “Yeah, we got that the way I really wanted it”? You’ve got a lot of emotion, a lot of message, and a lot of harmony there. Did it come together literally the way you wanted it to?
JCY: Yes. The only reason we signed with RCA is they let us have our own producers. We chose Felix Pappalardi because we had heard the music he was doing. He had just made this kind of a folk-rock record with this guy who was singing in Arabic [an artist dubbed The Devi’s Anvil, on Hard Rock From the Middle East, released on Columbia in 1966], and on it, somebody [Kareem Issaq] played the oud. And we said, “Yeah, that’s what we want! We want to carry the folk stuff in, but add the rhythm section in too.” And yeah, Felix — he mixed “Get Together” beautifully. [Pappalardi was perhaps best known for his production work with Cream, as well as being the bassist/vocalist in Mountain. He sadly passed away at the relatively young age of 43 in 1983.]

Somebody at BAI — that’s WBAI, the station in New York City for public radio — he said, “There’s something very pure about ‘Get Together.’ Why is that?” Well, (chuckles) besides the lyrics being so incredibly beautifully written by Dino [Valenti], it was five-and-a-half minutes long, and there was nobody at the record company saying, “Let’s do this. Let’s do that.” It was an art piece, and we thought nobody was going to play it on the radio. It was way too long. (laughs)

Mettler: Well, that was pretty much proved wrong, eventually.
JCY: Yeah, we got that wrong. (laughs again) Of course, we did do an edit of it. I mean, eventually, I think we did that on one side, because we know what we were up against — but as soon as it was a hit, everybody played the long version. But, yeah, those Felix mixes were good. They were really good.

[MM adds: As noted earlier, “Get Together” was originally on The Youngbloods’ self-titled January 1967 debut album on RCA. At that time, it only reached No. 62 on the Billboard Hot 100, but when it was re-released as a single in 1969, it reached No. 5 on the chart, and it has since been ubiquitous on many a film and TV soundtrack, along with a myriad of other media outlets and usages. The 45 sleeve shown a few grafs earlier is from the 1969 German 45.]

Mettler: I totally agree. I also think “Darkness, Darkness” [on the aforementioned April 1969 RCA Victor release, Elephant Mountain] has a certain vibe to it that has a lot to do with the way you’re singing it. but it’s also the choice of arrangement there too — not to mention that you guys had another wonderful choice of producer.
JCY: Yes! That’s Charlie Daniels producing, of course. And Charlie, he said (affects slight Southern drawl), “Some people need me to stand in front of microphone and pull them back, and others need a kick in the ass.” And then he said, “I think you guys just need me to be here.” [Charlie Daniels may be best known as an expert fiddler and storyteller — see “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” “Uneasy Rider,” and “Still in Saigon,” for starters — but he also served as a producer at times as well. Daniels passed away at age 83 in July 2020.]

What you’re hearing there was really me blossoming as a writer. Of course, I wrote quite a few things on my early folk albums [in the early/mid 1960s], but in The Youngbloods, on the first record [released in 1967], there might be a couple songs that I wrote, and the same thing with Earth Music [their second 1967 album, also on RCA Victor]. Then we moved to California — and now, all of a sudden, we have “Darkness, Darkness,” and “Sunlight,” and “Ride the Wind.” Yeah, it was wonderful. I was just finding my legs as a songwriter — and “Darkness, Darkness” has probably been the most recorded song of mine by other people. [MM adds: One of my personal favorite covers of “Darkness, Darkness” is the even-more-chilling version of it done by Robert Plant on his July 2002 LP on Universal, Dreamland.]

Mettler: Let’s talk some more about The Perfect Stranger LP. I’m sure for you that, as the cover subject, the pose and the look was very specific to a message you wanted to get across there. Is it fair to say that how you look on that cover was very important to the album’s overall concept?
JCY: Yeah! Yeah. We were looking for the right Perfect Stranger picture, and we got it in some alley in Hollywood. (chuckles) [Jim Shea is given the photography credit on the back cover.]

Mettler: Oh, wow. Nice. It’s such an evocative title, and it’s also the right song to open up a record like this one. And speaking of sequencing there, the next song is the track you sing with Carly Simon, “Fight for It.” Tell me a little bit about how you and Carly got together to do that song.
JCY: I opened shows for Carly when I was just starting out with The Soul of a City Boy [his 1964 debut solo LP, on Capitol]. She was in The Simon Sisters. They were a duo. [Carly and Lucy Simon performed as a folk duo between 1964-69, and they released three studio LPs together on Kapp and Columbia.] She once came and sang with me on Martha’s Vineyard when I played a show with The Band out there [for the Vineyard Peace Concert ’86, which occurred late that July at the MVRHS football field]. The Band was still playing then, but [Robbie] Robertson was gone. Levon [Helm] and [Rick] Danko, those were my buddies in that band. It was fun to play with them out there and Carly lived there, so I went over and visited her. I probably hadn’t seen her more than a few times since we were folkniks. I said, “You want to come sing together? I know you have a hard time with agoraphobia, but I’d love to have you come, if it feels right.” So she did.

Anyway, for that Perfect Stranger song, I was thinking, “Fight for it. Carly’s the kind of gal who probably fought for it.” She was with James [Taylor] while he was busy fighting his addictions. I’m sure her kids appreciated it, and I know she’s got them around her now. We called her and she said yes, so we flew to New York. We had recorded the basic track at Santa Barbara Sound [in California] and I’m not sure that I wrote it as a duet, but somehow, the idea was introduced. Maybe Michael James Jackson, the fellow who produced it, was listening to it that way. I don’t know, but I just I got it in my head and I thought, “it’s a duet — and I know who’s the kind of gal who could sing this with conviction.” And it was Carly.

Mettler: Another Perfect Stranger track l reconnected with was “Long Nights Coming” (Side One, Track 5), after having not having heard it for a while. It’s got some nice grit and a punch to it that just grabs you.
JCY: Yeah, and I was glad to have Michael Porcaro playing the bass on that one. The drummer on that tune was Carlos Vega — and, finally, we got a slide [guitar] performance out of Rick Vito. That’s what it needed.

My father-in law [at the time] was on his way out. He was dying, and it just was so easy for me to go into that songwriting space with Wendy [Waldman]. I’d never done it before. I never wrote songs with anybody! I just wrote songs myself. But they [the label/management] suggested I do a whole record of co-writes, and that I use studio musicians instead of putting a band together. So I said, “Okay, I’ll try it.” Wendy and I co-wrote five of the songs on that record, and it was really easy. I did one with Mike McDonald, “Fire in the Water” (Side One, Track 4). That was fun! [Mike McDonald is, of course, Michael McDonald of The Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan background vocals fame.]

Mettler: Since you had basically written by yourself before that, were you surprised how you were able to collaborate with other writers at that time?
JCY: Yeah! But I noticed that Wendy and I really wrote 50/50. It seems like songwriting often goes the other way. One of the writers will have the dominant ideas. I know that with Danny O’Keefe, who co-wrote a song called “On the Edge” (Side Two, Track 3), he said, “Whatever it is, it’s 50/50. You can’t sit around and argue about it.”

Mettler: You can’t fight it, in other words. (both laugh) Okay, last question. This is what I like to ask people before signing off. So, 50 years from now, it’s likely that you and I may not be physically on the planet, unless, as I like to say, some weird science is going on and it keeps us around. (JCY chuckles) If somebody types in “The Youngbloods” or “Jesse Colin Young” into a listening device 50 years into the future, what kind of listening experience do you want that future person to get from your music?
JCY: Well, listeners, they’re gonna get whatever’s in there — and it’s going to be different for different people. I don’t really have any opinions about how they are touched by the music. I’m just trying to touch them — I don’t know which way they’re going to jump. I’ve always just wanted to touch people with what I’ve seen, and what I’ve felt — and put it together in a beautiful way that somehow touches them and gets a rise.

But as to what emotions they’ll have — I just don’t presume to know how people are gonna react. As long as they do react, then it’s that I’ve done my job. I’ve given them something to chew on. I always thought that was my job.