March 23, 2025 • 15 mins
Original Air Date: March 23, 2025
We just lost Youngbloods founder Jesse Colin Young to a heart attack at 83. His career and almost his life was ruined by health and mental health issues caused by long undiagnosed Lyme Disease.
We just lost Youngbloods founder Jesse Colin Young to a heart attack at 83. His career and almost his life was ruined by health and mental health issues caused by long undiagnosed Lyme Disease.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, conversations about issues that matter.
Here's your host, three time Grasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This week, we just lost Jesse Colin Young, founder of
the Young Bloods. We lost him at eighty three to
a heart attack. So this morning, in his honor and
his memory, I'm going to rerun an interview I did
with him several years back now on Q one oh
four point three.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
You know him best, probably from the Young Bloods and
the iconic hit Get Together that was released in nineteen
sixty seven. First of all, thank you, Jesse, and what
were you most thankful for? On Thanksgiving?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
I'm being to stand up and breathe and walk around
the box, all right.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
That sounds good? All right, So let's catch up with
Jesse Colin Young. What is new in your life?
Speaker 4 (00:59):
What is in my life? I've been I decided not
to tour this year, and besides doing a little publicity
and work on a book that I started at the
beginning of COVID and then kind of quit working on.
So I've been at this hoping that all this writing
(01:22):
is will maybe kind of stir up a few songs
because they have been mostly missing for a few years now,
and so I said, okay, let's write the book. And
I wrote five chapters. I happen to have a a
(01:42):
Politzer Prize winning author who lives down the street here.
I said, would you write? Would you read read this
and tell me if I need a you know, if
I need a ghost writer. It's okay, I mean one
way or another. And read it and said, no, you're
doing fine. I'm going to tell you anything about writing
(02:02):
because your voice is clear. You're coming across. I can't
wait to read the book. You've had an interesting life.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
So this is a memoir, yes, okay, okay, because it
could be a work of fiction. Who knows. I mean,
you're a man of multiple talents, so all right, I know.
The reason you're here is that we are celebrating the
fiftieth anniversary of the fully the released and fully remastered
(02:32):
version of your album Song for Julie. So fifty years
and at the end of this session we'll be playing
a bit of Song for Julie. What's the story behind
Song for Julie.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Well, Song for Julie was the first record I remember
when I was recording at RCA, when we first there
with the Young Bloods and we were in the control
room for the first time and they said, don't touch
the board. You can't touch the board. So you have
a generation of artists who built their own studios because
(03:12):
they were told you can't touch the board. So I
built a studio next to my house on the ridgetop,
and so just to have a house there and be
there instead of on the Lower East Side was a
big dream. So to have a studio next door so
I didn't have to fly to La to record it
(03:35):
was a beautiful dream. And I had just disbanded the
Young Bloods and said I had been out playing with
a different rhythm section that summer and saying I've got
to have something newer, I've got to have something different,
and I found a new band gradually that became the
(03:57):
song and Song for Julie was the first record we
made together there in that studio. And yeah, that was
fifty years ago and it was you know, it was
filmed by a young man named Hero Narita, who would
go on to become rather well known in Hollywood for
(04:20):
his talent as a videographer. But we really didn't I
just reunited with Hero after fifty years. We watched the
movie together and we only had a kind of a
copy from a VHS. He made this movie of at
the house and in the studio, very intimate picture of us,
(04:42):
the recording and my wife and the kids, and my
ex and the kids. And it was a beautiful movie
and unusual. But after we watched it together and I said, Hero,
who directed this? He said, you didn't? He said, they
(05:03):
told me, Well, anything that Jesse suggests, just shoot it.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
So wait a minute. So was Julie your ex?
Speaker 4 (05:11):
No, Julie's my daughter.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Julie's your daughter. Okay, that's what I wanted to get to. Okay,
And what is Julie doing today?
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Julie still writing songs. She's doing some legal bookwork for
a steady income, but the songs keep coming, and you know,
I wish I wish the same for myself. Good for her.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Okay, Now tell us about your iconic song get Together.
What's the story behind that?
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (05:49):
The one thing I wanted to tell you that. Yeah,
when Hero and I watched the movie and we thought,
I wonder where the film master is, and I said,
you know, I have this. I own the recording studio,
and it's still it survived the ninety five fire. I'll
never forget walking up there and everything is ashes as
(06:11):
far as you can see, and then there's this little building.
It's sitting in the middle of the ash, which is
my recording studio, and my godson lives there. And I
called him up. I said, Ethan, you know, I've never
really torn apart all the tapes down there to see.
I had this faint memory that Igor, the fellow who
(06:34):
was involved in producing the movie, had given me the
master when they were done with it, and I've never
been able to find it down there. And next day
he called me up and he said, I got it.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
So what are you going to do with it?
Speaker 4 (06:51):
Well, we're in the process of kind of retransferring it Kodak.
I guess I don't order it's Kodak film, but whatever
it is, it gets kind of pink as it gets older,
so they can color, correctorate and retransfer it to film
(07:12):
and then we will we will bring it out somehow
in a special way because it's a it's a neat movie.
It will become. It will be because it just happened
to be right when Soft for Julie was happening it's
it's like a documentary of all of that time.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I'm speaking with Jesse Colin Young. He is known best
for the song get Together that was released in nineteen
sixty seven when he was with the Young Bloods. So
tell us about that song. What is the story behind
get Together? Because it really became an an anthem for
(08:01):
a generation.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
It took two years, huh. I found it in the
village at the Kaffir Go Go. I was wandering. I
love these. There was an empanadas stand and bleaker and
McDougall in the village and I went over there on
a Sunday to get some empanadus. Walking back, I thought, well,
(08:26):
I'll check in at the go go and maybe it's dark.
I'll call the guys and we can rehearse. So it
was not dark. Two flights of stairs down below the street,
I hear some music and I said, ah, it must
be a They must be having an open mic. And
usually I would have gone home to practice. Because I
had just become the bass player of the band. We
(08:48):
couldn't find a bass player, and so I eventually said
I'm okay, I'm going to do this. So I needed
to practice a lot and for some reason. I went
down the stairs through the beaded curtain. It's kind of
like a movie, and there was Buzzy Lenhard singing Get Together,
which he had learned from Dino Valente. Dino had gone
(09:10):
already to the West Coast by the time Young Blood's
got to the village, and I ran backstage and said, oh, man,
I got to have the lyrics to that. Where'd you
find that song? And he told me about Dino and
the Dino had gone to join Quicksilver in San Francisco.
(09:33):
And I took the lyrics song and practiced it and
took it into rehearsal the next day and we recorded
it for the nineteen sixty seven release. But when it
came out, it was only a hit on the West coast. Huh,
San Francisco, Seattle. But then the National Council of Christians
(09:56):
and Jews did a Brotherhood commercial, one of these things
you put on late night and TV when it's because
supposedly they put them on for free, and it was
a beautiful commercial, and Get Together was the whole soundtrack,
and you know, that was on television for a couple
of years. So when it came time for Spring of
(10:20):
nineteen sixty nine, Aggie Bloom, who was the head of
promotion at RCA, said we're going to put this record
out again because now is the time. And this was
the spring before Woodstock, so, I mean he smelled it coming.
And they said to him, Oggie, we don't do that,
and he said, oh, yes, you do, or you can
(10:45):
kiss me goodbye. And he was the best in the business,
and they wouldn't kiss him goodbye, so they said, okay, whatever, Aggie,
put it out, you know, don't waste your time. So
he put it out and then that year sixty nine
was a year that it kind of paved the weight
to Woodstock. That was Yeah, that was the year.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
And Richie Havens performed it at Woodstock. Yeah, why not
the young Bloods?
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Yes? Why not the young blood as well?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Why not?
Speaker 4 (11:19):
That's what we said to our manager. Why were we
playing at the We were playing in San Francisco on
that weekend instead of Woodstock. Yeah, I'm sorry we missed it,
but get together. It didn't miss it. Yeah, And.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
So did you know, like when you heard it that
this symbolized how a whole generation was feeling.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Yes, I went into uh, I would say an altered state.
When I heard it, and I knew that my life
was going to change radically and that this was the
path forward for me. It was almost like there was
a huge arrow saying this way, this way. Yes, you know,
(12:09):
have you ever been in the movies, one of the
movies about the Bible and the clouds part and the
sea part? Yeah, well, I mean that's there were any
clouds or se down there in that basement. But that
happened my life. The clouds parted, and I said, oh,
(12:30):
it's peace and love. Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
And something else happened in your life that was very
bad and very mysterious till it became known to you.
What was making you so sick, which basically thwarted your career.
You had lime disease. When did you get lime disease?
(12:55):
And when did they finally diagnose it? Because you told
me the story before. Were we only have a couple
of minutes left, so you're going to have to yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Okay, shorten it. Yeah, I got When we got to
San Francisco in nineteen sixty seven, we moved to the
country about thirty miles north near Point Raised and Inverness,
and I began walking in the woods every day and
sixty seven. The Burgdorfia, which corus causes lime disease, was
(13:29):
not really isolated until nineteen eighty two. So people in
those days you just picked ticks off you and that's
what everybody did. Nobody knew it was anything more than it.
So I think I probably had it, you know. I
was diagnosed in two thousand and six or two thousand
and seven, but.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
That was a long time. And what were your symptoms,
because I mean it was serious.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
You know, they you know, they were not bad until
the house burned down. And when the house burned down
in ninety five, and this was the same fire that
spared the studio, but it's just a little building. We
couldn't live there. We moved to Hawaii and we had
two little kids, and yes, how does that fit in there? Oh?
(14:20):
And when I got there, I started to have not
to be able to sleep and not to be able
to swallow, and I have to get up in the
middle of the night and walk around in the driveway
for two or three hours to get to a place
where I could swallow and relax. And I said, oh boy,
(14:44):
something's wrong. So they put me on They didn't know
a line disease. So they just put me on not tranquilizers,
but anti anxiety drugs are that are so common these days,
and that did help, because there was tremendous anxiety. And
(15:08):
I mean it just came out of nowhere. I mean
here I was in. Yes, my house had burned down,
but I mean part of it may have been PTSD.
That's what my doctors told me once upon a time
when diagnosing me for this. This this was a you know,
quite a quite a blow you took.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
We remember Jesse Colin Young, founder of the Young Bloods.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You've been listening to Sunstein sessions on iHeartRadio, a production
of New York's classic rock Q one oh four point
three
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, conversations about issues that matter.
Here's your host, three time Grasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This week, we just lost Jesse Colin Young, founder of
the Young Bloods. We lost him at eighty three to
a heart attack. So this morning, in his honor and
his memory, I'm going to rerun an interview I did
with him several years back now on Q one oh
four point three.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
You know him best, probably from the Young Bloods and
the iconic hit Get Together that was released in nineteen
sixty seven. First of all, thank you, Jesse, and what
were you most thankful for? On Thanksgiving?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
I'm being to stand up and breathe and walk around
the box, all right.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
That sounds good? All right, So let's catch up with
Jesse Colin Young. What is new in your life?
Speaker 4 (00:59):
What is in my life? I've been I decided not
to tour this year, and besides doing a little publicity
and work on a book that I started at the
beginning of COVID and then kind of quit working on.
So I've been at this hoping that all this writing
(01:22):
is will maybe kind of stir up a few songs
because they have been mostly missing for a few years now,
and so I said, okay, let's write the book. And
I wrote five chapters. I happen to have a a
(01:42):
Politzer Prize winning author who lives down the street here.
I said, would you write? Would you read read this
and tell me if I need a you know, if
I need a ghost writer. It's okay, I mean one
way or another. And read it and said, no, you're
doing fine. I'm going to tell you anything about writing
(02:02):
because your voice is clear. You're coming across. I can't
wait to read the book. You've had an interesting life.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
So this is a memoir, yes, okay, okay, because it
could be a work of fiction. Who knows. I mean,
you're a man of multiple talents, so all right, I know.
The reason you're here is that we are celebrating the
fiftieth anniversary of the fully the released and fully remastered
(02:32):
version of your album Song for Julie. So fifty years
and at the end of this session we'll be playing
a bit of Song for Julie. What's the story behind
Song for Julie.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Well, Song for Julie was the first record I remember
when I was recording at RCA, when we first there
with the Young Bloods and we were in the control
room for the first time and they said, don't touch
the board. You can't touch the board. So you have
a generation of artists who built their own studios because
(03:12):
they were told you can't touch the board. So I
built a studio next to my house on the ridgetop,
and so just to have a house there and be
there instead of on the Lower East Side was a
big dream. So to have a studio next door so
I didn't have to fly to La to record it
(03:35):
was a beautiful dream. And I had just disbanded the
Young Bloods and said I had been out playing with
a different rhythm section that summer and saying I've got
to have something newer, I've got to have something different,
and I found a new band gradually that became the
(03:57):
song and Song for Julie was the first record we
made together there in that studio. And yeah, that was
fifty years ago and it was you know, it was
filmed by a young man named Hero Narita, who would
go on to become rather well known in Hollywood for
(04:20):
his talent as a videographer. But we really didn't I
just reunited with Hero after fifty years. We watched the
movie together and we only had a kind of a
copy from a VHS. He made this movie of at
the house and in the studio, very intimate picture of us,
(04:42):
the recording and my wife and the kids, and my
ex and the kids. And it was a beautiful movie
and unusual. But after we watched it together and I said, Hero,
who directed this? He said, you didn't? He said, they
(05:03):
told me, Well, anything that Jesse suggests, just shoot it.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
So wait a minute. So was Julie your ex?
Speaker 4 (05:11):
No, Julie's my daughter.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Julie's your daughter. Okay, that's what I wanted to get to. Okay,
And what is Julie doing today?
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Julie still writing songs. She's doing some legal bookwork for
a steady income, but the songs keep coming, and you know,
I wish I wish the same for myself. Good for her.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Okay, Now tell us about your iconic song get Together.
What's the story behind that?
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (05:49):
The one thing I wanted to tell you that. Yeah,
when Hero and I watched the movie and we thought,
I wonder where the film master is, and I said,
you know, I have this. I own the recording studio,
and it's still it survived the ninety five fire. I'll
never forget walking up there and everything is ashes as
(06:11):
far as you can see, and then there's this little building.
It's sitting in the middle of the ash, which is
my recording studio, and my godson lives there. And I
called him up. I said, Ethan, you know, I've never
really torn apart all the tapes down there to see.
I had this faint memory that Igor, the fellow who
(06:34):
was involved in producing the movie, had given me the
master when they were done with it, and I've never
been able to find it down there. And next day
he called me up and he said, I got it.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
So what are you going to do with it?
Speaker 4 (06:51):
Well, we're in the process of kind of retransferring it Kodak.
I guess I don't order it's Kodak film, but whatever
it is, it gets kind of pink as it gets older,
so they can color, correctorate and retransfer it to film
(07:12):
and then we will we will bring it out somehow
in a special way because it's a it's a neat movie.
It will become. It will be because it just happened
to be right when Soft for Julie was happening it's
it's like a documentary of all of that time.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I'm speaking with Jesse Colin Young. He is known best
for the song get Together that was released in nineteen
sixty seven when he was with the Young Bloods. So
tell us about that song. What is the story behind
get Together? Because it really became an an anthem for
(08:01):
a generation.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
It took two years, huh. I found it in the
village at the Kaffir Go Go. I was wandering. I
love these. There was an empanadas stand and bleaker and
McDougall in the village and I went over there on
a Sunday to get some empanadus. Walking back, I thought, well,
(08:26):
I'll check in at the go go and maybe it's dark.
I'll call the guys and we can rehearse. So it
was not dark. Two flights of stairs down below the street,
I hear some music and I said, ah, it must
be a They must be having an open mic. And
usually I would have gone home to practice. Because I
had just become the bass player of the band. We
(08:48):
couldn't find a bass player, and so I eventually said
I'm okay, I'm going to do this. So I needed
to practice a lot and for some reason. I went
down the stairs through the beaded curtain. It's kind of
like a movie, and there was Buzzy Lenhard singing Get Together,
which he had learned from Dino Valente. Dino had gone
(09:10):
already to the West Coast by the time Young Blood's
got to the village, and I ran backstage and said, oh, man,
I got to have the lyrics to that. Where'd you
find that song? And he told me about Dino and
the Dino had gone to join Quicksilver in San Francisco.
(09:33):
And I took the lyrics song and practiced it and
took it into rehearsal the next day and we recorded
it for the nineteen sixty seven release. But when it
came out, it was only a hit on the West coast. Huh,
San Francisco, Seattle. But then the National Council of Christians
(09:56):
and Jews did a Brotherhood commercial, one of these things
you put on late night and TV when it's because
supposedly they put them on for free, and it was
a beautiful commercial, and Get Together was the whole soundtrack,
and you know, that was on television for a couple
of years. So when it came time for Spring of
(10:20):
nineteen sixty nine, Aggie Bloom, who was the head of
promotion at RCA, said we're going to put this record
out again because now is the time. And this was
the spring before Woodstock, so, I mean he smelled it coming.
And they said to him, Oggie, we don't do that,
and he said, oh, yes, you do, or you can
(10:45):
kiss me goodbye. And he was the best in the business,
and they wouldn't kiss him goodbye, so they said, okay, whatever, Aggie,
put it out, you know, don't waste your time. So
he put it out and then that year sixty nine
was a year that it kind of paved the weight
to Woodstock. That was Yeah, that was the year.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
And Richie Havens performed it at Woodstock. Yeah, why not
the young Bloods?
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Yes? Why not the young blood as well?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Why not?
Speaker 4 (11:19):
That's what we said to our manager. Why were we
playing at the We were playing in San Francisco on
that weekend instead of Woodstock. Yeah, I'm sorry we missed it,
but get together. It didn't miss it. Yeah, And.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
So did you know, like when you heard it that
this symbolized how a whole generation was feeling.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Yes, I went into uh, I would say an altered state.
When I heard it, and I knew that my life
was going to change radically and that this was the
path forward for me. It was almost like there was
a huge arrow saying this way, this way. Yes, you know,
(12:09):
have you ever been in the movies, one of the
movies about the Bible and the clouds part and the
sea part? Yeah, well, I mean that's there were any
clouds or se down there in that basement. But that
happened my life. The clouds parted, and I said, oh,
(12:30):
it's peace and love. Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
And something else happened in your life that was very
bad and very mysterious till it became known to you.
What was making you so sick, which basically thwarted your career.
You had lime disease. When did you get lime disease?
(12:55):
And when did they finally diagnose it? Because you told
me the story before. Were we only have a couple
of minutes left, so you're going to have to yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Okay, shorten it. Yeah, I got When we got to
San Francisco in nineteen sixty seven, we moved to the
country about thirty miles north near Point Raised and Inverness,
and I began walking in the woods every day and
sixty seven. The Burgdorfia, which corus causes lime disease, was
(13:29):
not really isolated until nineteen eighty two. So people in
those days you just picked ticks off you and that's
what everybody did. Nobody knew it was anything more than it.
So I think I probably had it, you know. I
was diagnosed in two thousand and six or two thousand
and seven, but.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
That was a long time. And what were your symptoms,
because I mean it was serious.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
You know, they you know, they were not bad until
the house burned down. And when the house burned down
in ninety five, and this was the same fire that
spared the studio, but it's just a little building. We
couldn't live there. We moved to Hawaii and we had
two little kids, and yes, how does that fit in there? Oh?
(14:20):
And when I got there, I started to have not
to be able to sleep and not to be able
to swallow, and I have to get up in the
middle of the night and walk around in the driveway
for two or three hours to get to a place
where I could swallow and relax. And I said, oh boy,
(14:44):
something's wrong. So they put me on They didn't know
a line disease. So they just put me on not tranquilizers,
but anti anxiety drugs are that are so common these days,
and that did help, because there was tremendous anxiety. And
(15:08):
I mean it just came out of nowhere. I mean
here I was in. Yes, my house had burned down,
but I mean part of it may have been PTSD.
That's what my doctors told me once upon a time
when diagnosing me for this. This this was a you know,
quite a quite a blow you took.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
We remember Jesse Colin Young, founder of the Young Bloods.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You've been listening to Sunstein sessions on iHeartRadio, a production
of New York's classic rock Q one oh four point
three
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