Robert Young

Guitarist with Primal Scream Born: 1965 Died: September 9, 2014

ROBERT Young, who has died aged 49, was a musician with the influential genre-hopping rock band Primal Scream. He played on hits such as Rocks and the band’s Mercury Prizewinning album Screamadelica before leaving the band in 2006. The band were also renowned for their on-tour hellraising for many years.

Young was a Glasgow schoolfriend of Primal Scream frontman and mainstay of the band Bobby Gillespie, and initially played bass with the group when they formed in the early 1980s. But after the relative flop of debut album Sonic Flower Groove, he went on to play guitar.

Born in Glasgow, Young met Gillespie while they were at school together at King’s Park Secondary in the Mount Florida area of the city. Young was a few years below Gillespie.

The two became friends. “Robert was this little kid who loved fighting,” said Alan McGee, another friend and who went on to form Creation Records. “He was the type of kid you had to watch, because even though he was small he was really bolshy. I was more of an outsider at school than Bob – he wasn’t the guy who was doing the fighting, but he always had a gang of boys round him.”

By the late 1970s, the group of friends were starting to become interested in music (one of the first gigs they attended was Thin Lizzy). With another schoolfriend Jim Beattie, Gillespie formed Primal Scream in the early 1980s, partly as a reaction to the music they saw in the charts that said nothing to them about their lives. Young was initially playing with another band but joined Primal Scream for their first recording, All Fall Down

“Robert had been in a band called Black Tuesday,” said Gillespie. “We got him for a gig at the Glasgow School Of Art. He was only in for one song, but after four he left them and joined us.”

All Fall Down was released in May 1985 on Creation records. “I knew there was something special about Primal Scream,” said Gillespie, “I knew the songs were good, I knew there was something developing.”

Their breakthrough album was Screamadelica, which was their third but the first to be a commercial success. Released in 1991, it went on to appear in many of the greatest album lists of the 1990s and was the winner of the first Mercury Prize.

The band were essentially a rock band that experimented with a more indie sound and Young, with his long hair and leather trousers, was a symbol of the harder rock sound, particularly on their second album. He once said that performing was like a war between the band and the audience and it was an attitude which Gillespie said he never let go.

By the time Primal Scream had released their 2006 album Riot City Blues, Young had officially left to go on sabbatical. Gillespie said of his departure from the group: “He went one way and we went another way. He stopped making music and we carried on making music. You just have to get on with your life.”

Gillespie also said that Young had left the band to come to terms with what he called problems in his personal life. “Let’s just say that he’s got some problems that he’s got to sort out for himself.” Gillespie went on to say: “I’d like him to be well. I’d like him to be happy. Further than that, I can’t really say. I just hope he wants to get better.”

After his death, Gillespie and fellow band member Andrew Innes described Young as a comrade and brother. He was, they said in a statement, a beautiful and deeply soulful man. “He was an irreplaceable talent,” the statement went on, “much admired among his peers. He was a true rock and roller. He walked the walk. He had Heart and Soul tattooed on his arm and on his heart too.”

By 2013, the idea of Gillespie and Young working together again was out of the question. “I grew up with Robert,” said Gillespie at the time, “and I love him like a brother, but we don’t see him any more. I don’t think he’s making music now but I wish he was because he’s super talented.”

Trainspotting author Welsh said of Young that he was “one of the best, the most beautiful, who WAS rock n roll”. Young is survived by his sons Brandon and Miles, their mother Jane, and his wife Rachel.