Rolling Stone #190: Jesse Colin Young

Jesse Colin Young’s Post-Limbo Rock

San Diego – In the three years since he disbanded the Youngbloods, Jesse Colin Young has taken the long route toward a mass audience. His solo albums and concerts have drawn raves, but he’s lingered in the commercial limbo that only a hit single can dissolve overnight. Rather than make the necessary AM compromises, though, Young has chosen the more grueling alternative – constant touring.

“There’s no question that I’d like to expand beyond a hard-core following,” Young said backstage after a recent San Diego appearance. “But if I contrived a hit single, I’d have to contrive a follow-up, and where would I fit them into the set? I want to deserve and appreciate whatever acceptance I get. My goals have all been musical ones – to sing better and to make better records.”

At the very least, young has already accomplished that ambition. A three month tour headlining small halls, many in previously unvisited Southern and Midwestern cities, has paid off in a steadily growing, firmly based audience. And Young’s latest album, Songbird, more spirited than previous efforts, has already sold over 200,000 copies.

“I’m very happy to take it slow and thorough,” Young continued. “I’m not drawing like the Rolling Stones, but I’m building up a following of people who depend on me to play well – you now, not come out onstage drunk and falling down. The same with my albums – at this point, I’d be a fool to let an album come out that wasn’t my very best. I’m proud of the loyalty my band and I seem to have cultivated.”

The fluid-sounding vocalist/guitarist has been gathering a fiercely devoted following since 1963, when he performed on the Greenwich Village folk circuit and released his first album,The Soul of a City Boy. Although Capitol Records recently reissued it by popular demand, the original pressing sold less than 5000 copies. Frustrated, Young made one more solo album and then put together his first band, Jesse Colin Young and the Jerry Corbitt Trio, in Cambridge. “Somewhere along the line,” he recalled, “we got on a rock & roll trip. We picked up electric instruments and decided we needed a catchy name like everybody else.” The band became the Youngbloods, and then recorded an album named for the group that contained “Get Together,” everybody’s favorite brotherhood song.

“In retrospect, the Youngbloods was a learning process for me. It taught me how to play in a band. The only problem was that I started the Youngbloods so that I could have a band that played my music. The Youngbloods always worked best when I was at the center.”

Jerry Corbitt, an ambitious folksinger/songwriter, disagreed and left shortly after the group released its second album, Earth Music. Trading in the Lower East Side for the more mellow streets of Marin and the Haight, the band continued as a trio, Lowell “Banana” Levinger on guitar and electric piano and Joe Bauer on drums. Their first Californian effort, Elephant Mountain, is still widely considered to be a minor classic. Young considers it to be both the quintessence and end of the band’s seven year career.

“Banana and Joe had very bizarre musical tastes; I was much more straight ahead,” Young opined. “There was a good year and a half of performing; then I began to drift away. Without my strong direction, down the fucking tubes they went. That’s the truth.”

(Banana, who still gigs around San Francisco, had a different explanation: “I didn’t want to make records any Joe idiot could appreciate.”)

Young began working on a solo album during a break in the Youngbloods sessions for Good and Dusty. “We’d reached a very difficult dry spell. We never really could work in the studio after Elephant Mountain. It took seven weeks to get together what little we could – a kind of old-tune mishmash. At the same I had started fooling around with a four-track tape recorder in my living room and got seven tunes in four days. I started saying to myself, ‘What’s going on here? Why am I struggling?'” In 1972, shortly after Young released a solo album called Together, the group split into two factions. Jesse resumed his solo career and Banana and the Bunch went on to record the unsuccessful Mid-Mountain-Ranch. The next year Warner Bros, failed to renew the group’s label, Raccoon Records.

Jesse immediately put together a group that included his wife Suzi and did a sold-out club tour. “We were a hot, smokin’ band,” he remembered. “I thought we were going to waltz in the studio, haul ass and in two months we’d have a record.” It didn’t happen. “Right out of the blue, I lost my voice.”

It took six crucial months of visiting everybody from throat specialists to acupuncturists before Young learned it was an allergic reaction. “I was allergic to practically everything – smog, house dust, cats, horses, rugs, pillows, feathers, pollen. I didn’t even know I had that problem. I had to get regular shots to get my voice back and finish the record. Even now, when I get sick my allergy flares up in a terrible way.”

Young took the next album, Song for Juli, label shopping. He came close to a contract with Asylum Records, but ended up back on Warner Bros. “Geffen backed out on me. He didn’t think the album had any hits. I just don’t understand. If anybody’s waiting for me to come up with ‘Rock the Boat,’ it’s not gonna happen.

“When I re-signed with Warners I decided to use the traditional approach of working the album hard on the road. I visited every FM station and did every interview I could. And I learned a lot. I found out a lot of people thought the Youngbloods were boring. Plenty of promoters hated us. ?We fucked around too much and played into overtime.”

After touring in his mobile home to promote Light Shine, Jesse decided to take the summer of 1974 off. “We’d worked so hard. I was having an incredible time unwinding, goofin’ off and fishing my way home. Then I called the office and found out we were offered the opening spot on CSNY’s reunion tour. It was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.

“For some reason, I expected heavy boogie crowds that would yell and scream during ‘Sunlight’ or something. Instead it was beautiful. I remember staying in Memphis to David Crosby that I didn’t think there were so many people who were into melodic music. He said that he’d seen Dylan on tour and was surprised too.”

The CSNY dates, finishing Songbird, the subsequent roadwork and even producing an album for his labelless pal Jerry Corbitt have forced Young to reschedule his vacation for the summer. “Nothing is changing my mind,” he said as he finished a can of apple juice and dumped it into a nearby trash bin with a hook shot. “This summer is going to be my hard-earned vacation. I really love to play, but music shouldn’t become everything. I don’t want it to be a job. I want it to stay a thrill.”

Courtesy of Rolling Stone #190 – Cameron Crowe – July 3, 1975