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Harry Nilsson

A Brooklyn-born singer and songwriter whom John Lennon called his favorite American artist, who wrote for the Monkees, won a Grammy for "Everybody's Talkin'" and took Badfinger's "Without You" to number one in 1972.

Origin
Brooklyn, New York; Los Angeles
Years active
1958-1992
Genres
pop, rock, singer-songwriter
Labels
Tower, RCA, Mercury
Also known as
Harold Edward Nilsson III

Demos and RCA

Harold Edward Nilsson III was born on June 15, 1941 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His father left when he was about three, and he grew up poor, moving between Southern California and New York, with an uncle in San Bernardino helping to develop his voice. He worked at the Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles, and after it closed in 1960 took a bank job, working nights on the bank's computers. From 1962 to 1966 he sang demos for Scott Turner at five dollars a track, co-wrote a song for Little Richard with John Marascalco, was briefly signed to Mercury as Johnny Niles and wrote three songs with Phil Spector in 1964. George Tipton financed four recordings for Tower, a Capitol subsidiary, and Spotlight on Nilsson followed in 1966.

At RCA, Pandemonium Shadow Show (1967), produced by Rick Jarrard at RCA Victor Hollywood and arranged mostly by Tipton, was praised by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and the Monkees recorded "Cuddly Toy". Aerial Ballet (1968) included Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'", a US number six hit in 1969 after Midnight Cowboy, which won him his first Grammy. Harry (1969) was his first charting album, Nilsson Sings Newman came in 1970, and The Point!, an animated ABC film and album, reached number 25.

Nilsson Schmilsson and Son of Schmilsson

Nilsson Schmilsson (November 11, 1971) was produced by Richard Perry, who agreed on condition of final say in the studio, and recorded from January to June 1971 at Trident and Island Studios in London and RCA Studios in Hollywood. Perry said in the 2010 documentary that he thought Harry could be his Beatles and he could be his George Martin. The album reached number three in the US and four in the UK, and was certified gold. At the 1973 Grammys it won Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Without You" and was nominated for Record of the Year, Album of the Year and Best Engineered Album. AllMusic gave it four and a half stars, Rolling Stone five, Christgau an A-minus, and Pitchfork 9.4. It includes "Coconut", which reached number eight in the US.

Son of Schmilsson (July 10, 1972), also produced by Perry, was recorded in March and April 1972 at Trident, Apple and CTS Studios in London, and reached number 12 in the US. Faced with pressure to repeat the earlier album he made a more eccentric work, and most of its sessions were filmed for an unreleased documentary, Did Somebody Drop His Mouse? Uncut's Bud Scoppa wrote in 2013 that it began the pattern of self-sabotage. A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (1973) was an album of standards arranged by Gordon Jenkins and produced by Derek Taylor, and Pussy Cats (1974) was produced by Lennon.

Later years

His later records were Duit on Mon Dei (1975), Sandman and ...That's the Way It Is (1976) and Knnillssonn (1977), and he left RCA after an unconsulted greatest hits compilation. He scored Robert Altman's film Popeye (1980), made Flash Harry (1980) for Mercury, and after Lennon's death in December 1980 became active in the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. His last concert was with Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band in Las Vegas in September 1992; he nearly never sang live. Harry Nilsson died on January 15, 1994 in Agoura Hills, California, aged 52, while recording his final album, which was completed from tapes by Mark Hudson and released as Losst and Founnd on November 22, 2019.

Rolling Stone ranked him 62nd among the 100 greatest songwriters. The documentary Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?), directed by John Scheinfeld, was released in US theaters in September 2010, with Randy Newman, Brian Wilson and Yoko Ono among those interviewed, and Alyn Shipton's biography came out from Oxford University Press in 2013. The A.V. Club called him the musician's musician.

Records

Songs

Badfinger

Where to go next

Official

Reference

Discography and data

Writing and criticism

Sources

  1. Harry Nilsson, Wikipedia
  2. Harry Nilsson discography, Wikipedia
  3. Harry Nilsson, The A.V. Club (2011-01-20)
  4. The RCA Albums Collection, Uncut (2013-08-21)