{"id":8115,"date":"2026-01-16T11:39:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T11:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/harry-nilsson-he-redefined-what-a-song-could-do-152866\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T11:39:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T11:39:31","slug":"harry-nilsson-he-redefined-what-a-song-could-do-152866","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/harry-nilsson-he-redefined-what-a-song-could-do-152866\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Nilsson: \u201cHe redefined what a song could do\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Originally published in Uncut Take 196 [September 2013], Van Dyke Parks, Peter Frampton, Chris Spedding, Bobby Keys and Herbie Flowers revisit the three brilliant and contrary records Harry Nilsson made in the early ’70s. Success? Schmucksess! “I’d just call him a genius,” says Parks. “And by the way, I haven’t met any others. He redefined what a song could do.” <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Originally published in Uncut Take 196 [September 2013], Van Dyke Parks, Peter Frampton, Chris Spedding, Bobby Keys and Herbie Flowers revisit the three brilliant and contrary records Harry Nilsson made in the early \u201970s. Success? Schmucksess! \u201cI\u2019d just call him a genius,\u201d says Parks. \u201cAnd by the way, I haven\u2019t met any others. He redefined what a song could do.\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Stepney & Pinner Choir Club<\/h2>\n

While his biggest hit, \u201cWithout You\u201d, continues its reign at the top of the British and American charts, Harry Nilsson is attending to the pressing business of bussing in 30 senior citizens from the Stepney & Pinner Choir Club to Trident Studios in London\u2019s Soho.<\/p>\n

Having invited the somewhat bewildered OAPs to sing on his protest against the indignities of ageing, \u201cI\u2019d Rather Be Dead\u201d (\u201cthan wet my bed\u201d), Nilsson has decorated the studio with balloons, handed out party hats and laid on sherry, whisky and the mellifluous sounds of the Henry Krein Quartet.<\/p>\n

Despite the potential awkwardness of asking his ailing guests to sing \u201cIf I have to be fed, then I\u2019d rather be dead\u201d, everybody has a fine time. At the end of the session, Nilsson invites Tom, an 84-year-old tenor with a squeaky wooden leg, to play on the next album. \u201cOK,\u201d says Tom. \u201cIf I\u2019m alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe forget that he influenced The Beatles\u201d<\/h2>\n

Best known for two cover versions \u2013 \u201cWithout You\u201d and \u201cEverybody\u2019s Talkin’\u201d \u2013 a novelty song about a coconut, and getting trashed with John Lennon during his infamous Lost Weekend, Nilsson\u2019s escapades, such as those described in March 1972, have tended to distract from his four-octave voice, brilliant mind and seemingly inexhaustible supply of gorgeous melodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe forget that he influenced The Beatles, for Christ\u2019s sake, with him stacking his vocals and writing these unbelievably great songs,\u201d Peter Frampton tells Uncut. \u201cWe knew how talented he was. All the musicians had his records.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the smartest person I ever met in the music business,\u201d says Van Dyke Parks. \u201cHe was operating at the highest creative level imaginable. I wouldn\u2019t call him a musical genius \u2013 I\u2019d just call him a genius. And by the way, I haven\u2019t met any others. He redefined what a song could do, with incredible intimacy: beautiful and consoling and illuminating and clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he had stuck to one thing he would have been a superstar\u201d<\/h2>\n

A biography \u2013 Nilsson: The Life Of A Singer-Songwriter \u2013 and a 17-disc boxset, The RCA Albums Collection, aim to bolster Nilsson\u2019s wider reputation. At its centre are the three records he made at the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s: his two London recordings, Nilsson Schmilsson (1971) and Son Of Schmilsson (1972), and the standards album, A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night (1973).<\/p>\n

The first two are a good-cop-bad-cop pairing of perfect piano pop, mock-country weepies, bawdy soft-rock, beautiful ballads, subverted Tin Pan Alley, joke songs and childlike incantations. The third, recorded with a full orchestra and Sinatra\u2019s arranger Gordon Jenkins, was at once behind the times and decades ahead of them, and as such confused everyone. \u201cIf he had stuck to one thing he would have been a superstar,\u201d says Frampton. But if he had stuck to one thing he wouldn\u2019t have been Harry Nilsson.<\/p>\n

Part of the group of defiantly non-countercultural American songwriters that included his friends Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb and Van Dyke Parks, Nilsson arrived in London in June 1971 on the cusp of 30. A Brooklynite resettled in California, he had signed to RCA in 1967 and quit his job working as a computer operator in a bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat song in the long run annoyed him immensely\u201d<\/h2>\n

His second album, 1967\u2019s Pandemonium Shadow Show, was f\u00eated by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, partly for its precocious reinterpretation of \u201cYou Can\u2019t Do That\u201d, which referenced 23 Beatles songs in 140 seconds. It was a typically Nilssonian creation: a novelty number with substance, lightly wearing its dazzling technical skill. His version of Fred Neil\u2019s \u201cEverybody\u2019s Talkin’\u201d, recorded the same year, became a hit in 1969 as the theme to Midnight Cowboy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat song in the long run annoyed him immensely, because he hadn\u2019t written it, it was unrepresentative, and it was his biggest hit,\u201d explains Van Dyke Parks. \u201cFred Neil was very bitter about it, too. He told me, \u2018You tell Harry to write something for me.\u2019 If he had known how his song had troubled Harry, he might have been less bitter.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Nilsson hooked up with producer Richard Perry, whose credits included Captain Beefheart and Tiny Tim, he was looking to streamline his airy baroque-pop into something more robust and commercial. They both wanted to record in London, where the studios were technically superior. \u201cHarry was totally blown away with Trident Studios,\u201d confirms Herbie Flowers. \u201cIt was a bit like a dungeon, and he was entranced with this lovely grand piano they had. He was forever tinkling about with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t look like any banker I\u2019d ever seen\u201d<\/h2>\n

The core band for Nilsson Schmilsson constituted Flowers and Klaus Voormann on bass, Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon on drums, Chris Spedding and John Uribe on guitar, Bobby Keys and Jim Price on horns and Spooky Tooth\u2019s Gary Wright on piano. \u201cAll I knew was that he was an ex-banker from New York,\u201d says Bobby Keys. \u201cHe didn\u2019t look like any banker I\u2019d ever seen, and he didn\u2019t sing like a banker either. He had this beautiful instrument for a voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The preciousness of his voice was lost only on Nilsson himself, who during the sessions sat behind the piano chain smoking, using a saucepan as an ashtray. Perry would ask him repeatedly not to smoke so much, or swap his high-strength fags for low-tar.<\/p>\n

Chris Spedding recalls that artist and producer \u201cwould go at it half-jokingly, half-seriously\u201d \u2013 when their creative differences reached a head, the pair met for tea at the Dorchester to discuss it \u201clike gentlemen\u201d. Perry pointed out that when they had first decided to work together, Nilsson had agreed that the producer would call the shots. \u201cI lied,\u201d Nilsson answered.<\/p>\n

\u201cHarry was an intuitive talent\u201d<\/h2>\n

He knew exactly what he wanted, even if he felt no need to let anyone else in on the secret. Van Dyke Parks: \u201cHarry was an intuitive talent, and serene in his vision, but then he\u2019d have maybe 12 people in a studio, with no music written, having to organise an arranged performance. He mapped that line between the extemporaneous and the written process, and he did it very comfortably.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the musicians, it was a labour-intensive way of working. \u201cMy abiding memory is having to do lots and lots of takes,\u201d says Chris Spedding. \u201cI think we got to take 50 on \u2018Let The Good Times Roll\u2019, and we started flagging towards the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went home and came in the next day, and I got the impression when we came back, by the amount of cigarette stubs in the ashtray, the fug in the room and the looks on their faces, that they had been there since the previous night, listening to take after take after take. He was very professional, very serious and committed to his music. When we were in the studio, there wasn\u2019t much larking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved the way his mind worked\u201d<\/h2>\n

\u201cHe was a perfectionist,\u201d agrees Bobby Keys. \u201cHe would go over and over and over a part until it was exactly the way he wanted it. It could sometimes be a bit tedious, but it worked. I just loved the way his mind worked. He wasn\u2019t limited by anything other than his own imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herbie Flowers: \u201cHarry totally trusted people. It was always, \u2018Take your time, have a cup of coffee, let\u2019s have another go.\u2019 It was very convivial. We would laugh at his thoroughness, because it seemed like he was being overactive, but you couldn\u2019t knock the results.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recorded in two weeks, Nilsson Schmilsson is as straight as Nilsson ever got, but it\u2019s still appealingly crooked. The cover photo of him in a bathrobe, looking both vulnerable and seedy, underlined the idiosyncratic nature of the music, which moved from heartrending ballads (\u201cWithout You\u201d, \u201cI\u2019ll Never Leave You\u201d) to mawkish lullabies (\u201cThe Moonbeam Song\u201d), jaunty pop (\u201cGotta Get Up\u201d, \u201cDriving Along\u201d) and loose funk-rock (\u201cDown\u201d, \u201cJump Into The Fire\u201d). It\u2019s both sublime and silly, often at the same time, and no more so than on \u201cCoconut\u201d, a tropical comedy calypso written on one chord of C, which came together quickly in the studio.<\/p>\n

\u201cHarry loved playing with words\u201d<\/h2>\n

\u201cWe had a tea break, came back in and suddenly he was chugging away, and that turned into \u2018Coconut\u2019,\u201d says Flowers. \u201cJim Gordon is going boozo-da, boozo-da, and I\u2019m doing my thing, kind of jazzy. To share all that with Harry was great fun. He went upstairs to listen to it and Richard Perry chopped what was a 10-minute riff into a four-minute song.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nilsson and Perry came up with the idea of introducing a narrator, a sick woman and a doctor in the lyrics, each sung as a distinct character. \u201cHarry loved playing with words,\u201d says Van Dyke Parks. \u201cHe got married at the Marriott simply because he liked the way it sounded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJump Into The Fire\u201d was also boiled down from a long studio jam. \u201cIt was a bit of buffoonery. It went on and on, because what Jim was doing on drums encouraged us all just to enjoy the groove that was cooking,\u201d says Flowers. \u201cA lot of editing was done to shape it up. It might be better than it should have been!\u201d The song starts like Exile-era Stones meeting 1999 Prince and spends the last three of its seven minutes flirting with Krautrock, with its fiercely regimented drum pattern and Flowers\u2019 detuned bottom-bass string tumbling up and down the fretboard.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d had a miserable life\u201d<\/h2>\n

The abrupt shifts in style, approach and emotional sincerity in Nilsson\u2019s music were ingrained in his personality. A legendary bon viveur, he also exuded a deep melancholy, which Van Dyke Parks attributes to his father abandoning the family when he was three. \u201cHarry was very private, an amazing man of contradictions,\u201d he says. \u201cHe was trying to distract everyone from the raw truth that he\u2019d had a miserable life, which he was still trying to figure out \u2013 a miserable childhood, with unspeakable poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nilsson had a fourth-floor apartment on Curzon Street in Mayfair, but \u201che sometimes came and stayed in my house with my family\u201d, reveals Flowers. \u201cI think he was quite homesick. I\u2019d say, \u2018Come on, let\u2019s go to mine. We\u2019ll walk over Hyde Park, have some fish and chips.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, he was focused on having a good time and enjoying life,\u201d notes Keys. \u201cHe was a very bright person, well read; he didn\u2019t just talk to hear his head rattle. After we\u2019d finish we would go out and have a drink and would carry on talking, in a restaurant or a bar, and sometimes they would lead to the next bar! He was so opinionated. We would argue all the time and get really loud with each other, but it was silly stuff, for the sake of entertainment. He was straight on. He was a sociable person, but he had no time for stupid people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHarry wanted to stay hungry\u201d<\/h2>\n

In the short time between the release of Nilsson Schmilsson in November 1971 and the start of sessions for Son Of Schmilsson in March 1972, Nilsson became a bona fide pop star. The album reached the Top 5 in the US and UK, while \u201cWithout You\u201d was a worldwide No 1. Collectively they would go on to earn Nilsson a Grammy and three further nominations.<\/p>\n

Nilsson\u2019s response to mass acclaim was to sabotage it with a record that deliberately courted notoriety. \u201cI don\u2019t think there was anything self-destructive about it,\u201d says Van Dyke Parks. \u201cRCA wanted him to repeat himself \u2013 that\u2019s the executive trait \u2013 and Harry just wanted to stay hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working again with Richard Perry at Trident, Son Of Schmilsson had a starrier cast \u2013 Ringo Starr played drums, Peter Frampton joined Spedding on guitar, and there were brief cameos from George Harrison and Lowell George \u2013 but lacked Perry\u2019s careful touch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sang my balls off for you, baby\u201d<\/h2>\n

Thirty seconds into Son Of Schmilsson, Nilsson was already roaring \u201cI sang my balls off for you, baby\u201d on \u201cTake 54\u201d, which was swiftly followed by the drunken, drawled faux-country of \u201cJoy\u201d and the geriatric sing-song \u201cI\u2019d Rather Be Dead\u201d. \u201cAt My Front Door\u201d opens with Nilsson belching into the microphone. Most confrontational of all was \u201cYou\u2019re Breakin\u2019 My Heart\u201d \u2013 \u201cso fuck you\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shocked the hell out of me when I first heard that,\u201d recalls Bobby Keys. \u201cI said, \u2018Harry, you can\u2019t say \u2018fuck\u2019 on a record!\u2019 He said, \u2018What do you mean I can\u2019t!\u2019 He didn\u2019t have a problem going against the status quo.\u201d Peter Frampton: \u201cRichard Perry said to him, \u2018Is this a good idea?\u2019 and Harry turned around and said, \u2018And fuck you.\u2019 He knew what he wanted. It was an anti-success thing: \u2018Let\u2019s try and do something completely different and not follow it up like everyone expects me to do.\u2019 That was Harry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The album still contains moments of exquisite beauty, not least the minor hit \u201cRemember (Christmas)\u201d, a companion piece to \u201cWithout You\u201d sung tenderly to Nicky Hopkins\u2019 piano accompaniment and Paul Buckmaster\u2019s strings. But Son Of Schmilsson was, intentionally or otherwise, a momentum killer. Its fate wasn\u2019t helped by Nilsson\u2019s refusal to perform. He had tried playing live a handful of times in the late \u201960s and hated the experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was unfortunate he never toured\u201d<\/h2>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t buy into the idea that you must go out and get clapped at and approved of in public to make a living,\u201d says Van Dyke Parks. \u201cThat was a problem \u2013 he wasn\u2019t seen. Occasionally he would do a TV performance, a cameo appearance here and there. He wanted to be Hitchcock in his own great movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did a couple of TV shows and he looked very uncomfortable,\u201d claims Frampton. \u201cBut it was unfortunate he never toured. He had such a great personality; he would have wrapped the audience around his fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, he executed another swift volte-face with A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night, recording songs from the great American songbook with Gordon Jenkins and an orchestra. Nowadays, everyone from Rod Stewart to Robbie Williams does it. In 1973, it was a radical step. Richard Perry refused to have anything to do with it. \u201cThat was just Harry,\u201d says Keys. \u201cHe\u2019d want to do something and he would stick with it all the way through. He wasn\u2019t wishy-washy. When he got a purpose in his mind, he damn well did it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not a self-inflicted tragedy\u201d<\/h2>\n

Despite being, as Flowers says, \u201ca beautiful album\u201d, it was met with blank stares and sold poorly. Nilsson\u2019s career never quite recovered, particularly after he ruptured his vocal cords partying with Lennon and Starr in Los Angeles during the making of the unlovely Pussy Cats. His inspiration drifted into wilfully contrary self-indulgence, spoilt with sporadic reminders of his singular gift.<\/p>\n

His last album, Flash Harry, was released in 1980, and he died of heart failure in 1994. \u201cIt\u2019s a sad story in the end, Harry Nilsson,\u201d concludes Van Dyke Parks. \u201cBut it was not a self-inflicted tragedy. It was meted out. He illustrates how America neglects its own. He was too smart for the business at that time, but that\u2019s why his music endures. It has absolute durability and deserves to migrate to new generations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post Harry Nilsson: \u201cHe redefined what a song could do\u201d<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Originally published in Uncut Take 196 [September 2013], Van Dyke Parks, Peter Frampton, Chris Spedding, Bobby Keys and Herbie Flowers revisit the three brilliant and contrary records Harry Nilsson made…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,3737,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-harry-nilsson","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}