Anyone remember Rolling Stone magazine's JR Young?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by perfectpawn, Apr 20, 2007.

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  1. perfectpawn

    perfectpawn Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
    Been reading a bunch of old Rolling Stone, particularly from 1970 to 1974. It's funny, even in that short span of time you can see how it was (d)evolving from a super-hip counterculture rag into a more slick, celebrity-worshipping format. But not nearly to the level it is today.

    Anyway, JR Young was one of the early reviewers, and was notable for writing his reviews in the format of short stories. The first Rolling Stone review compilation, "The Rolling Stone Record Review," published in 1972, even featured a section devoted to Young, titled "The Review as Fiction." A few of his more popular stories were included, like the "Live Dead" Grateful Dead review (famous for its "Put on the Dead and spread!" tag), and the superb CSNY "Deja Vu" review (which details a group of faux-radicals who meet a REAL radical, who tells them to stop listening to music, as it's the "Man's" way of preventing them from ever doing anything. After they blow up a record store, inspired by his words, they discover him blissfully listening to "Deja Vu.")

    It looks like Young only wrote between '69 and '71. I have some '72 issues, and none of them feature his work. So what happened to him? Did Wenner get rid of him because his reviews weren't commercial enough? I don't know if I believe that, as Wenner wrote the Young-praising intro to "Review as Fiction" in the RS Record Review, and that was published in 1972.

    Currently the RS site doesn't have any of Young's reviews online, but I found this transcription of his Live Dead review from 1970 (toward the middle of the page):
    http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cach...+young"++"live+dead"&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us

    And this one, of the Woodstock album, from 1970:
    http://www.rockandrollreport.com/the_rock_and_roll_report/2004/08/the_significanc.html
     
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  2. perfectpawn

    perfectpawn Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Dallas, TX, USA
    Nothing like replying to my own post...!

    Anyway, talk about coincidence. Tonight I was at the local Barnes and Noble, and came across a new book in the music section titled "The Boy Who Cried Freebird," by Mitch Myers. Music reviews and articles, many of them written in the style of JR Young. In fact the introduction mentions Young, and one of the stories (I only had a chance to peruse the book) -- which features a kid in the future traveling back to Woodstock -- is dedicated "To JR Young, wherever you are."

    Just thought that was weird, but definitely cool...at least someone else out there remembers this guy. I also intend to pick up the Myers book.
     
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  3. signothetimes53

    signothetimes53 Senior Member

    I'd love to know where JR Young went, too.

    Another of my favorite writings of his is the one about the two college guys driving through the mountains late at night, and B.B. King's (then-new) song "The Thrill Is Gone" comes on the radio. And the kid driving thinks something weird must be going on, an old radio broadcast from the 1940s has traveled thru space and time and arrived on his car radio in 1969, the song sounds so ancient and classic, he's never heard it before.

    But of course, it's just that nite's Wolfman Jack broadcast....
     
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  4. Cheepnik

    Cheepnik Overfed long-haired leaping gnome

    I do remember him. The gimmick only went so far, but the stories were entertaining and even sometimes ended up making a point about the record being reviewed.

    I seem to remember a review of the Woodstock soundtrack that tells the story of a guy who tries to impress his friends by telling him he was at the festival, but then is unmasked when he can't remember any details about the bands who weren't in the movie or the album.
     
  5. vonwegen

    vonwegen Forum Resident

    I think he went to Creem and did the same sort of stuff. I particularly remember the one he wrote about Emerson Lake & Palmer's Love Beach.
     
  6. rat1073

    rat1073 Active Member

    I believe he was also one of ther perps behind The Masked Marauders affair as well.
     
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  7. perfectpawn

    perfectpawn Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
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    So glad to hear others were fond of him. Cheepnik, the Woodstock review you remember is the second link in my first post, above.

    I've never seen the BB King review Signothetimes, but that sounds great. I will for sure be searching for it once the Rolling Stone DVD comes out (referenced in another thread -- the first 40 years of Rolling Stone on DVD-ROM, coming out this Fall). Apparently you'll be able to search for artists/writers/albums/etc, so the first search string I'll be entering is "JR Young."

    Who knows, maybe with the dedication I mentioned in Mitch Myers' book, Young will resurface.
     
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  8. Todd E

    Todd E Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hollywood-adjacent
    Had nothing to do with the Masked Marauders; that was Greil Marcus.

    Jeff was from Oregon, I believe, though he came to live in Los Angeles and work for at least one record company -- but that was decades ago. He does seem to have vanished.

    My guess would be the groves of academe; he's that kind of guy. I picture him with a pipe and leather sleeve patches, teaching creative writing at some artsy college.
     
  9. perfectpawn

    perfectpawn Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
    Man, I'm out of it tonight -- forgot the BB King review/story is also included in the Rolling Stone Record Review! In fact it's one of my favorite Young stories! Something must've been loose in the noggin when I responded earlier...

    I still think his Deja Vu story is a masterpiece. According to Wenner's intro in the Review, the story was even optioned for the movies, though that obviously never happened.

    Thanks for the note, Todd...Wenner's quick bio of Young in the Review offers slim details -- living on a farm with his family in Oregon, and yes, a former teacher at a University.
     
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  10. perfectpawn

    perfectpawn Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
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    Okay, just read Mitch Myers' "Boy Who Cried Freebird," and he has the JR Young style down PERFECT. Reading these stories, it's like most of them came from the pen of Young himself. He has the deceptively-simple storytelling, the hippie-viewpoint, everything, just right. So for all those (like myself) who have wished for a full book of JR Young-type rock allegories/stories, this is the book for you.
     
  11. MaineFan

    MaineFan New Member


    Years ago I read that JR Young piece about hearing "The Thrill is Gone" while driving over the mountains. I looked for it never found it again. It was so striking.
    I have thought about it a lot over the years. (Oh, come back, JR Young.) It's great to find that other people liked it and remember it. Thanks.
     
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  12. LMcC Musicfan

    LMcC Musicfan New Member

    J.R. Young was my brother-in-law in 1964. He graduated from the U of Oregon. After teaching two years in NY he and my sister bought a tree farm west of Eugene. They separated in 1971. Jeff Moved to California with Peter Jamison. Peter Died in 2010 after a successful career as an art director, producer & writer of 36 films. Jeff wrote liner notes for Capital Records. He wrote an article for TV Guide. After that my knowledge of his life has gone cold. Jeff was a great brother-in-law while his marriage lasted. We played games. He tried to teach me to play baseball. He and I went to the Sam Goody record store in Greenwich Villiage at 1 AM. He introduced me to BB King and Charlie Musselwhite and fellow Rollingstone writer Robert Gold. We went with a friend to Disneyland. He moved without saying goodbye. Lots of peoples behavior in those days was colored by the Vietnam War. His story "Put on the Dead and Spread" seems to still live in a cloud in Veneta OR each July as remnants of Ken Kesey's family put on the Oregon Country Fair. It's like some kind of hippie hangover as 70,000 Artists, Yuppie's and Attorneys now old & grey descend on our small town.
     
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  13. clhboa

    clhboa Forum Resident

    Did he write the review of Black Sabbath's "Never Say Die" for Creem? It seems like it was the same type of review.
     
  14. perfectpawn

    perfectpawn Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
    It's funny how things go in circles...I'd forgotten all about this thread I opened way back when. Recently I discovered an extra copy of the Rolling Stone Record Review volume 1 I bought years ago...I think I have 2 copies of this and this one was the "reading" copy. It's the fat paperback dated 1972, published by Pocket Books. As mentioned upthread this one has a "The Review As Fiction" section which is dedicated to JR Young's reviews. This spurred me to look the guy up again, figuring surely by now some more info would've surfaced about the guy...only for one of the top Google result to be this very thread!

    A big thanks to LMcC for the personal note on Young! That was great to read.

    I broke out my Rolling Stone Cover to Cover CD-ROM set, also mentioned upthread, and, after having to download a patch to make the damn thing work on my PC (it seems the proprietary Bondi reader software causes trouble for a lot of people these days), I pulled up all the reviews by Young. It looks like in total he wrote 26 of them for RS, with the latest being in 1973. It also appears that the short story format dwindled away; his later reviews are just straight reviews. I wonder if this was his own choice or if it was editorial pressure. I doubt the latter because Jann Wenner speaks so highly of him in the intro to his section in the Record Review. They also include two reader letters in that Pocket paperback, one of which humorously refers to Young's short stories as "jejune b.s."

    I'm working my way through the 26 articles he wrote; I've found his short stories are best savored slowly...otherwise they get a bit samey. So far that BB King story, mentioned by a few people above, is the standout. One I just read that's new to me is for American Woman by the Guess Who; it's about a dopesmoking teen, a self-declared "blues freak" who makes fun of his sister for listening to bubblegum music, but ends up listening to her Guess Who record. Young definitely captures the fuzzy-freaky vibe of the late '60s/very early '70s. The dude should've written a novel in the same vibe.
     
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  15. perfectpawn

    perfectpawn Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
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  16. TLL22

    TLL22 New Member

    Location:
    Bethlehem, PA
    Just stumbled on this thread. I also have a copy of the RS Record Review, which I bought when I was working at a used bookstore in the early '80s. It's dog-eared and falling apart ... because I've gone through it so many times and memorized half of it. (Opening to a Paul Gambaccini review of Freda Payne's "Band of Gold": "Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump," Gambaccini's way of describing a Holland-Dozier-Holland drummer getting ready for a session.)

    I also love the J.R. Young reviews. Thanks to LMcC for bringing us at least partially up to date and perfectpawn for the blog link. The reviews still hold up, jejune BS and all.

    And J.R., if you're still out there, send us a hello.
     
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  17. Comet01

    Comet01 Forum Resident

    I *think* that I met the "Band of Gold" drummer in a nursing home. When I asked him what kind of work he did, he mentioned that he was a drummer. He spoke of some of the people that he played with (including some work with George Clinton) and said that he appeared on the "Band of Gold" demo.

    Months after the demo, when H-D-H assembled studio musicians to record the track, he told me that H-D-H could not recreate the feel/sound of his drum part effectively. He claimed that they ended up using his drumming on the demo for the hit record.

    Listening to the drum part on the track, it sounds quite prominent and uncomplicated.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2018
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  18. MaureenCooper

    MaureenCooper New Member

    Location:
    Montpelier,Vermont
    I am writing something for a group and I wanted to re-read that very same article as it has left a deep impression on me,but where to find it? My quest led me to this site.

    maureen
     
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  19. signothetimes53

    signothetimes53 Senior Member

    I have the review in the original Pocket Book edition from Rolling Stone magazine, somewhere around the house. If I can find it, I'll scan it and send it to you by email.

    Update: Found it, PM me, I can send you a PDF
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2019
  20. alchemy

    alchemy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sterling, VA
    I met Jeff Young in the early 90's. In LA. A good friend of my knew his wife, I think through a TV station in San Francisco. Jeff and his wife who I think was a big TV producer were living in LA. She made big bucks and Jeff was home working on TV scripts. My friend was a great music lover and he would tell me of magical nights that turned into days of Jeff spinning records and weaving all the music together. My friend told of a night where he weaved Mick Taylors career from John Mayall, through The Stones and Little Feat etc. I wanted to meet him

    Anyway, my friend after months of trying was able to get me invited over to his place. On the way over I learned he was a writer and had once worked for Rolling Stone magazine.

    When I met him, I asked if had written the "put on the Dead and spread". review. He frowned when I asked that, he didn't seem to happy I knew and he poo pooed it.

    Anyway he was in a dark place, he was or just about to get divorced. Hs life style had been funded by the most part by his wife and he was working on getting his career back on track.

    There was another guy there and it wasn't a very good vibe. He was very heavy into I think Moterhead. Very into them.

    I preused his extensive record collection, pulling out LPs and asked him about them. He had a lot of K-Tel Comps that he said had very high quality versions of some of the songs on them I had hope to get him to play some, but he was really in to playing Motorhead, loud.

    We didn't stay to long, I was never invited back. When I asked my friend about him, he said that he had disappeared.
     
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  21. drad dog

    drad dog A Listener

    Location:
    USA
    Weirdly I have 2 copies, one a reading copy, too. Volume 2 got stolen from me in college so I got one on ebay. Count me as a fan of JR Young. He should have written one of those 33 1/3 books.
     
  22. alchemy

    alchemy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sterling, VA
  23. Jim Walker

    Jim Walker Senior Member

    Location:
    southeast porttown
    I found this site (in case you've not seen it yet) that will hook you guys up with JR Young's Deja Vu,
    along with The Thrill Is Gone piece. Scroll down and you will find the write-ups back to back. I've
    been going through the CSN&Y family-tree since Sunday (posted on the UnGrateful Thread), chasing
    the hippie dream down since the c-pandemic is keeping many of us housebound. Seeing the Crosby
    documentary recently added to the interest. Cheers...


    Glorious Trash: J.R. Young & The Review As Fiction
     
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  24. perfectpawn

    perfectpawn Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
    Hi -- Glorious Trash is my blog! The thread has come full circle! :)

    I still hope to get confirmation someday whether Young really did his "short story review" thing at Creem. Also following up from my post on the blog, above -- the stories/reviews I detailed there are indeed all the ones JR did for Rolling Stone. In my review I mentioned I was uncertain because some of the reviews didn't populate when you filtered the contributor to "JR Young" in the "Cover to Cover CD Rom." The other month I did a search on the Cover to Cover disc for JR Young and checked all the results, and those reviews mentioned on my blog were the only short stories he wrote.
     
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