Jesse Colin Young death: Youngbloods singer dies at 83
The band's biggest hit 'Get Together' was initially released in 1967, but received renewed interest after being used in a radio announcement by the National Conference of Christians and Jews in 1969, and went on to reach the top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Young's soulful vocal and the song's entreaty that 'Everybody get together' and 'Try to love one another right now' made it an anthem of the hippie era.
Young's wife and manager Connie Young announced he died at home in Aiken, South Carolina on Sunday, according to The Hollywood Reporter,
Young was born Perry Miller in Queens, New York on November 22, 1941. His parents, originally from Lynn, Massachusetts, were both fans of classical music and encouraged their son to learn piano.
In 1959, he won a scholarship to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and studied classical guitar there until he was expelled. He attended Ohio State University for a semester, but later transferred to New York University so that he could perform as part of the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene.
He chose a stage name that combined the outlaws Jesse James and Cole Younger, and Colin Chapman, founder of the Lotus sports car company.
Young released his debut album, The Soul of a City Boy, in 1964 and the follow-up Young Blood in 1965.
Young then met folk guitarist Jerry Corbitt and the pair decided to form a duo known as the Youngbloods to tour Canada. They later added guitarist and pianist Lowell "Banana" Levinger and drummer Joe Bauer to the group, becoming the house band for the Cafe Au Go Go night club in Greenwich Village.
In 1967, the group released their debut album The Youngbloods. The record included their version of 'Get Together', which had been written by the singer-songwriter Chet Powers. The song became their signature hit.
The group released a second album Earth Music just a few months later and became prolific, releasing three more albums in the next few years: Elephant Mountain in 1969, Good and Dusty in 1971 and High on a Ridge Top in 1972.
After the band split, Young continued as a solo artist. He released 15 more solo albums, most recently Dreamers in 2019.
He was married twice. He had two children, Juli and Cheyenne, with his first wife Suzi Yong. Juli was the subject of the title song from Young's fourth and most successful solo album, 1973's Song for Juli.
Young met his second wife, Connie Darden, in the 1980s. They also have two children, Tristan and Jazzie, who are both musicians.
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It's often the only thing that my characters have: their bodies are shaped by what they do, and their lives are shaped by how they use their bodies to survive. JS There's a lot of attention concentrated on our bodies. You see that shift in the high street, the way the shops change over the years: you used to have a post office, a stationer's, a butcher; now many have transitioned to nail bars, tanning salons, tattoo parlours. DS I was at a university a couple of weeks ago to do a reading of Shuggie Bain. It's only five years old but I can't yet look back on him with fondness. All I wanted to do was rewrite the book. I wished I had a red pen. Do you look back with kindness? With fondness? JS Fondness sometimes, or I find my fearless naivety a bit amusing. Often I hear the music that was playing at the time, look at passages of paint and remember making that mark, the size of brush I used, the feeling inside. When I see my paintings I often think: 'Oh, that part worked, but maybe I should have put another bridging tone there.' People say: 'Oh, that's a great painting,' and you think: 'It's not as good as it was in my head.' DS It's similar with writing: your audience encounters the finished artefact and they don't see the journey and the loneliness. JS I wouldn't call it loneliness. I enjoy making paintings. DS I find writing very lonely because I worked for 20 years in fashion. Now, writing in contrast to fashion feels incredibly lonely because I sit around and talk to imaginary people all day. JS Do you have a routine? DS I find that imaginary people are chattiest in the mornings, so I try to get up at six o'clock and I work till two or three in the afternoon. How about you? JS I've had different working rhythms and routines in my life. Recently I've been getting up about 6.30 in the morning and then I'll paint until I feel that lull, which tends to be around four, and then I might do another session. I like painting eyes first thing in the morning. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion DS Why is that? JS Because my concentration's at its highest, so I tend to paint details like teeth and eyes first thing in the morning, when I'm sharp. DS One of the things that speaks to me the most about your work is your journey with colour. It has evolved so much. In the early work I can actually feel Glasgow in the paintings. JS Glasgow can have beautiful light. My first home there was on Hill Street, and you'd look over toward the flats and mountains and see this silvery light. I've never seen it anywhere else quite the same way. Over the last few years I've thought much more about nature and light. I'd travel, look at other approaches to painting. I went to Paris and New York and saw how [Willem] de Kooning painted flesh and thought: 'What great colours and fluidity.' Then after 11 September and the Iraq war, we were flooded with images that had a lot of intense colour and emotion and I responded to the atmosphere of that time. My work evolved and I started using ranges of red and blue pigments, for example, like in my Stare heads. If you're curious you experiment, and on that journey you discover possibilities. DS The same in writing. You've got to write through it, to free yourself of it, and then get to the thing that you've got no idea that you were heading toward. You're feeling a character and you're not quite sure what they're going to do, so you build this world for them and then you see how they react. JS It's been said before, but it's probably impossible to make the perfect work. I often think: 'That's almost what I meant, that's got something.' And this moves you forward to the next painting. DS Truth is essential in writing. And there's power in writing truths that people would rather leave unsaid – maybe like depicting a body that some might rather not see? I must admit, I was horrified looking back at the journalism around some of your earlier work, and the fact that reviewers would use the word 'grotesque' to describe it. Obviously those works haven't changed, but the world around us keeps shifting, so hopefully reactions have changed as well. Has that journey been interesting to you, or do you not pay attention to it? JS I just get on with my work. You can't predict how work will be perceived. And you evolve as well. In the early 90s there were fewer spaces to show, and only a small minority of artists got major platforms. Now art is exhibited from all over the world and different voices are being heard. And then once you've been accepted, it's like, you've won the Booker prize, you can't stay annoyed about that. DS I felt really overwhelmed by the feeling of being on the outside and nobody knowing me. And then suddenly everybody looked at me like: 'Where the hell did you just come from?' There was 15 years of work behind my novels so I hadn't just arrived, I'd just been quietly over there where no one was paying attention to me. I miss that. JS It's important to have time to develop, be playful, use your imagination. I'm often judged on those early degree show works and I've developed my painting a lot since then. You have to make the work the way it should be. You can't make work to appease people who have written a bad review. And if you're mature about it, the bad review of a new body of work is OK. DS That's very big of you. I'm not sure I'm quite there yet. That's why the world is so nostalgic for the 90s: a time before the internet, for that sense of being by ourselves inside our own lives, without constant commentary and feedback. I'm fascinated by what Cy Twombly told you once about working: about trying to be ignored for as long as you can in your career, which is so smart. JS By the time he'd told me that, everybody wanted to know Cy, to show his work and talk to him. And your impulse is to look at that with admiration, but I could see there was a kind of suffering in his words, because you need to concentrate, you need time to play, and that's probably why he worked in isolated places, so he could focus. You can't have judgment when you play. You want to be like that child sitting on the floor making a painting when nobody cares: that's the most precious thing because it's a space without judgment, and you need to feel that. DS You've got to retreat from the world. But was your early success overwhelming at 22, or did it just feel like permission? JS Many opportunities happened in a short space of time. I was fortunate to sell my degree show, which was the first time I had enough money to work for a prolonged period. I had this run of wonderful things happen. And as I moved forward I just said to myself: 'Get this work right, make this work the best you can.' I stayed quiet and concentrated. And that's the lesson I learned: that the prize is the journey. Working and enjoying life's opportunities with family and friends is the prize. Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, to 7 September, then tours the Modern Art Museum Fort Worth Texas, from 12 October - 18 January 2026. Douglas Stuart's next novel, John of John, will be published by Picador on 26 May 2026.
