The S&V Interview

The art of songwriting can sometimes be mysterious, frustrating, and even off-putting, to a certain degree—but when it’s done right, a songwriter can literally teach the world to sing. One such songwriter who has an inherent knack for consistently reaching the masses in a special way is Jesse Colin Young. Since the early ’60s, the folk-centric singer/songwriter has unlocked the keys for how to marry catchy melodies with visceral storytelling. “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 does what he does.

But, I hear you clamor, what about “Get Together,” The Youngbloods’ most infectious hit that was originally found on their self-titled 1967 RCA Victor debut album? The thing of it is, that’s 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 example of such.)

“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,” Young confirmed with me. “And I’ve always done that.” Now, Young wants to spread those truths as far and wide as possible by taking it another positive step further with The Perfect Stranger Songwriting Contest, which is being held in conjunction with Future Youth Records and is also wholly supported by S&V. The contest runs through September 15, 2024, and all the entry rules and requirements can be found here.

Incidentally, the contest name comes from Young’s July 1982 Elektra LP The Perfect Stranger, which the artist himself recently reissued digitally. (You can find it on most major digital platforms by going here.) 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, the steely directive of “Fight for It”—a heartfelt duet with Carly Simon—and the foreboding dread of “Long Nights Coming” all yet again serve to reinforce the tenets of Young’s artistic prowess.

Young’s impetus for the youth-oriented songwriting contest is simple. “‘Get Together’ brought people together,” he explains, “and since that time, lots of things have been pulling us apart until we have become perfect strangers from each other. So, we’re asking 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.” It’s that kind of collaborative thinking that bodes well for the future of songwriting, we say—and good luck to all the entrants too!

During a recent Zoom call to California, Young, 82, and I discussed what triggered his interest in becoming a songwriter, how “Get Together” beat the odds to become an indelible hit, and why he feels “Darkness, Darkness” is among his best-loved—and most covered—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 Song 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 flows 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. [MM adds: 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.]

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.” [MM adds: 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 album on Universal, Dreamland.]

Mettler: Last question. What do you want your songwriting legacy to be?
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.