NILSSON: the true one: 2018

mardi 18 décembre 2018

Fab Harry

John, George, Ringo and... Harry?!

Nice image with this very imaginative drawing of Harry and the Beatles influences on him and his work. A very true image when you know all the fascination Harry always had on the Beatles from the very beginning. And till the very end.

Harry and the Fab Four

People even thought of him as the famous fifth Beatle. That's not just the fruit of pure imagination. It's because his artistic talent as a singer and composer is very close to McCartney or Lennon's one.

On his first albums, Harry began with Beatles covers and even with a very imaginative medley of Beatles songs that came to Beatles attention through their press officer Derek Taylor. Taylor who quickly became a close friend of Harry writing liner notes for some of his early albums.

A for Apple

After that, Lennon told in Apple 1968 press conference that Nilsson was their "Favorite American Group" as a joke and ended as a very close friend of Harry during John Lennon's so called Lost Weekend in 1974 and eventually the recording of Pussy Cats album.

And of course Harry and Ringo longtime friendship gives credit in Beatles importance and influence in Harry's life.

Illustration by
Linda Guyman from Crawdaddy magazine,
Sept 1974 issue

John, George, Ringo and... Harry?!

And now the story. Here is how the article goes:

What would you say if someone told you that an ex-bank official

who recently recorded an album of songs like "As Time Goes By" and

"Makin' Whoopie" (and has never performed in public) was about to reunite the Beatles?!

You'd probably laugh, unless you've been hanging on the Beatles rumor grapevine over the last few months, in which case you could conjure a breathless whisper and a hearty "Harry Nilsson."

Do You Want To Know A Secret?

by John Swenson

(...) In this light the stories that have Harry Nilsson joining a reformed Beatles in place of Paul McCartney, or joining with the four of them as a keyboardist, thus freeing Paul to just play bass, can be looked up under "Speculative Fiction."

After all, Ringo recently made a public announcement in London to the effect that he would take all bets to £1,000 that the Beatles would not get back together.

Nevertheless, there are some nagging facts about Harry that fit him rather snugly into the controversial role that New York disc jockeys used to fight so vainly for back in '64-the fifth Beatle. (...)

Crawdaddy cover

Sept 1974 issue

John, George, Ringo and... Harry?!

lundi 18 juin 2018

Happy 77th birthday Harry

On this day, June 15th...

It's a big Day.

A perfect Day.

jeudi 26 avril 2018

Pussy Cats and Lennon's Lost Weekend

Pussy Cats and John Lennon's Lost Weekend
Special color vinyl edition 2018

Limited to 1500 copies, it’s the first-ever reissue on LP vinyl, today is on special hardwood color vinyl edition issued for the Record Store Day 2018.

Harry Nilsson and John Lennon's "Lost Weekend" Album

Hardwood Vinyl Edition

Limited to 1500 copies

First-Ever LP Reissue

A collaboration between Harry Nilsson and John Lennon during his famous 18 month Lost Weekend, as John Lennon used to call it, in year 1973/1974.

An album recorded in Los Angeles with a bunch of friends (Ringo Starr, Klaus Voormann, Jesse Ed Davis, Keith Moon, Jim Keltner...) and mixed in New York in Record Plant Studios.

Harry and John are on the cover as two cute little kittens in a funny and kitch looking montage from a child's postcard that Harry found in a pharmacy in New York.

And for a joke (and provocation towards RCA), there will be Harry's final coded addition with the two children letter blocks "D" and "S" placed on each side of the kittens' rug, thereby spelling out "d-rug-s".

During the recording sessions in L.A., Harry and John were hanging out in clubs with John’s girlfriend May Pang (as Yoko was in New York) and another friend, Brandy Alexander, made famous through the Troubadour Club episode.

Harry recalls that night:
"Get one Beatle drunk and look what happens!

The incident ruined my reputation for 10 years. It still haunts me.

People think I'm an asshole and a mean guy. They still think I'm a rowdy bum from the '70s who happened to get drunk with John Lennon, that's all. I drank because they did. I just introduced John and Ringo to Brandy Alexanders, that was my problem."

May Pang recalls: Harry said to John "you gotta try this drink." It was a Brandy Alexander. John said "wow, it's like a milkshake."

Raising hell with Harry...

Harry explains: "I don't know when it happened. It just sort of happened.
"Raising hell with Harry" became the catchphrase of the month.

I think it was probably during the period with John when he was bounced out of the Troubadour for being a naughty boy and blaming it all on me, because I wasn't as famous as him, the bum!

I was associated then with drinking and carousing, because I think Keith Moon was a friend, Ringo was a friend, and we had good times, and people assume you're raising hell if you're having a good time.

I promise you folks — we don't raise hell, but we do have a good time!"

(BBC Radio interviewed
by Stuart Grundy - 1977)

Harry with Ringo and Keith Moon attending the West Coast premiere of Claude Watham's musical film That'll Be The Day, February 1977

L.A. is also the place where those two buddies formed a drinking team with Alice Cooper, Ringo Starr, Micky Dolenz and Keith Moon.
They called themselves the Hollywood Vampires and this very private club has its own private loft at the Rainbow Bar.

Alice was the president, Keith was vice-president ....and Harry, John and Ringo were among the members as you can see on the plaque that still remains and that reads "Lair of the Hollywood Vampires".

In the aftermath of the Troubadour incident, Harry and John agreed that they had to do something more positive than spend all their time going out on wild benders.

In due course, it was settled that Harry would start to record his next album for RCA and that John would produce it.

This was not an entirely new idea, because John had announced somewhat garrulously to Phil Spector and a room full of spectators at the 'Rock and Roll' sessions the previous fall that he wanted to produce a record by Harry.

After that evening with John and Phil, Harry thought, "Oh, he's drunk, he'll forget about it."

But the idea refused to go away, as May Pang recalled: "John and I used to talk about what a magnificent voice he had.
When John said, 'I want to produce you, Harry,' he didn't think in a million years that John was going to do it. Then he got really nervous".

As John later said, "I think it was psychosomatic. I think he was nervous because I was producing him. You know, he was an old Beatle fan when he was in the bank... But I was commited to the thing, the band was there and the guy had no voice. So we made the best of it".

May Pang recalled: "In L.A. they had more of a lax attitude when making records. It was a tough situation. Harry would do one thing to make his voice back, and at night, he'd be out there drinking again, and it would undo everything. And it was a cycle.

Finally, John said, "We can't do it here. We'll have to redo all the vocals back to New York. I can't be in L.A. any longer.""

Don't Forget Me is one song on the album that displays something of the tone, clarity, and range of his former voice. And this was dubbed in during May or June 1974 in New York, when his vocal cords had had time to recover from the ravages of early April in L.A..

(some excerpts from Alyn Shipton's book NILSSON The Life of a Singer-Songwriter)

John with his engineer Roy Cicala in Studio C on the tenth floor of the Manhattan Record Plant while Harry quietly watching.

"Everything is the opposite of
what it is."
Dr. Winston O'Boogie M.D. (Manic Depressive)

"But somehow it isn't only not just the words, isn't it?"
Prof. Schmilsson M.E. (Me)

A sad story album because Harry damaged his vocal cords and lost his beautiful voice ...and unfortunately never fully recovered.

Anyway, it remains a nice and iconic album. An underrated album but for some reasons, one of my favorites.

Signed copy with RUG written by Harry in the middle of

the children letter blocks "D" and "S"

mercredi 25 avril 2018

The True One in magazine

The True One

The True One, that’s the title of a great article in a brand new issue of a French music magazine (or bookzine) called MUZIQ where Harry’s career is told over 10 pages.

Very nice and complete, it tells everything you must know about Harry from his first records, Spotlight on Nilsson, Pandemonium Shadow Show... until his last works and the box set RCA Albums Collection included 17 CDs.

It begins like this: "Harry Nilsson fait partie de ces chanteurs que tout le monde connaît sans vraiment le savoir. Durant les dix années qui ont vu paraître ses albums les plus marquants, il n’aura eu de cesse de brouiller les pistes et de se dérober à l’emprise de l’industrie du disque.

Son parcours, atypique et chaotique, est jalonné d’éclairs de génie et de descentes aux enfers. Le sort a voulu que le grand public ne se souvienne d’Harry Nilsson que pour deux de ses nombreuses reprises (Everybody’s Talkin et Without You). Souvenons-nous de Nilsson, The True One."

Translation: "Harry Nilsson is one of those singers that everyone knows without really knowing it. During the ten years that have seen his most memorable albums, he has never ceased to scramble the tracks and to shirk the grip of the record industry.

His path, atypical and chaotic, is dotted with flashes of genius and descents to hell. Fate wanted the public to remember Harry Nilsson only for two of his many covers (Everybody's Talkin and Without You).
Remember Nilsson, The True One."

Playing guitar in studio during reharsals for his debut album Pandemonium Shadow Show in Summer 1967

Having a walk in Central Park in 1968 during his second album Aerial Ballet recording sessions

Harry at the piano (1972)

I’m sure it will help Harry getting best known in France, a country where he is not among the most popular artists. People do know some of the most famous songs but, in most of the time, can’t put a name on it.