James Young (British musician)

Young's memoir of his years performing and travelling with Nico Songs they Never Play on the Radio, (US title: Nico The End) was published to international critical acclaim in 1993, winning the In The City award for music book of the year. Described by Greil Marcus in Esquire as ‘A coolly literary masterpiece about the geography of nowhere’, the book was later serialized in 1996 for BBC Radio 4. Songs They Never Play On The Radio (Bloomsbury Publishing) ISBN 978 07475 4411 1 Nico The End (Overlook Press) ISBN 0-87951-545-7 This was followed in 1996 by Moscow Mule ((Century) ISBN 0 71 2 66005 4), a dystopian travelogue situated within and around the Moscow Metro, also serialized for BBC Radio 4 in 1997. Young interpreted the book's milieu in Last Train To Taganskaya recorded for the BBC Radio 3 experimental audio feature Between The Ears.

For the bi-centennial of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in 1999, Young created a sound portrait for BBC Radio 3 Pushkinskaya, of Moscow's Pushkin Square, featuring Moscow voices and readings by Ralph Fiennes.

During the period of the early 1990s Young was exposed to the then marginalized world of Russian Outsider Art. He became instrumental in introducing the genre to the West, chiefly through articles in the magazine Raw Vision.

Young's 2003 release joanna is to date his only solo unaccompanied album. A portrait of his battered old upright piano, it was described in The Guardian as ‘a hymn of devotion that both dignifies and delights in his old piano's imperfections.’

Coinciding with the release of joanna, a period of illness, adhesive capsulitis of the shoulder, affected the use of Young's arms and prevented him from performing.

In 2006 Young was invited to co-curate the exhibition The Fabric of Myth at Compton Verney Warwickshire.

Young returned to the stage in October 2008 with The Golden Hunger, a ‘Liederabend’ referencing Berlin's post-war creative drive, as part of the Nico tribute evening Nico 70/20 at The Volksbühne in Berlin.

Recently Young has been working as producer with the Scottish poet, singer and performance artist MacGillivray.

Currently Young is completing two albums: The Golden Hunger (see above) and I Feel The Air Of Other Planets based on the Stefan Georg poem Entrückung (Rapture).

In June 2020 The Times listed 'Nico: Songs They Never Play On The Radio' number 2 in 'The Ten Best Music Memoirs'.

Raw Vision articles:

• Whispers from the Universe: Vasilij Romanenkov | Raw Vision Magazine Archived 10 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine
• Pavel Leonov: A Fool's Paradise | Raw Vision Magazine Archived 1 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine
• Alexander Belykh’s Tigers in the Taiga | Raw Vision Magazine Archived 1 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine

Guardian review of joanna:

• Bring on the absinthesiser!

James Young on music and heroin (including Nico, Bill Evans, Berlioz) featured in BBC Radio 4 Heroin (Prof. Andrew Hussey)

• BBC Radio 4 - Heroin

James Young, BBC Radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent on the Russian Naïve artist Pavel Leonov:

• Painter's rural idyll irks Russian villagers

The ten best music memoirs as compiled by the Times June 2020

• The Times Ten best music memoirs