Gary Young, First Pavement Drummer, Dies At 70

MAMARONECK, NY — Musician and Mamaroneck native Gary Young, known for his time as drummer in the band Pavement, died at age 70 this week, according to his family.

Young was born in Mamaroneck in 1953, but moved to Stockton, Calif., with his family. It was in California that Young entered the exploding West Coast hardcore punk scene by booking shows featuring bands like Black Flag and Dead Kennedys while playing in his owns bands.

Stephen Malkmus and Scott "Spiral Stairs" Kannberg, the founding members of Pavement, contacted Young in 1989 to be their drummer and help record their first EP, "Slay Tracks."

"He did it all in his garage, a studio called Louder Than You Think. Stephen and Spiral knew him from the Stockton punk rock scene and got his phone number from the yellow pages. He made all of their early songs happen as tried to grasp their youthful mayhem and, make sense of it all. That, he did," the band wrote in its own obituary about Young.

After touring with Pavement in the early 1990s, Malkmus fired Young in 1993 due to alcohol use and unreliability, according to the band. Young went on to record his own album "Hospital" in 1994 that included the oddball hit "Plant Man." Young remained on good terms with the band, and joined them as a guest drummer in 2010 and in recent years when Pavement reformed.

The band said Young graduated from the "Keith Moon School" of drumming.

"Without Gary, many people would not have noticed us. In all the best ways, he was a freak show. He was magnetic. He was magical. He was dangerous. We could think of him as an uncle, an older brother that none of us had," the band wrote.