Singer/songwriter Jesse Colin Young, of the Youngbloods, died on March 16. He was 83. Young began performing in the early ’60s, and joined Jerry Corbitt, Lowell “Banana” Levinger, and Joe Bauer to form the Youngbloods in 1965 (the band split up in 1972). Their biggest hit was “Get Together,” which was released in 1967, rattled along for a couple of years, before emerging as an emblem of the Love, Peace & Happiness ‘60s by the end of the decade. Young continued to write, record, and perform as a solo artist, to middling success (he kept working, which for a musician is success itself). Of his most famous song, Young said, “The Youngbloods were playing at the Cafe-A-Go Go in New York . . . So one day, I’m walking through the Village, it’s a Sunday and I’m figuring maybe the Go Go is dark and that we could go in and rehearse. So I stopped by and Buzzy Linhart was singing and I fell in love, and just rushed backstage which I had never done and said, ‘I’m Jesse Young from the Youngbloods, and I need the lyrics to that song.’ He wrote them out for me and I took them into rehearsal with the Youngbloods the next day, and the rest is history.”
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