Who Is Harry Nilsson? (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)
(2006 American documentary about singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson;
directed by John Scheinfeld)
a movie review by LMH
Well, after watching this documentary,
I learned that Harry Nilsson was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1941.
And grew up in such poverty that he was forced to eat dog food.
His mother was an alcoholic
and his father abandoned him when he was three.
Both his parents died in their fifties,
and Harry was bounced around from relative to relative after that.
But why did everybody talk about him?
Well, because he grew up to be a great songwriter.
And one of his first songs was about all that pain:
“Well, in 1941 a happy father had a son.
And by 1944, the father walked right out the door.
And in '45, the mom and son were still alive.
But who could tell in '46, if the two were to survive?”
In this documentary,
Van Dyke Parks recollects the road trip he took
back to Brooklyn with Harry,
to visit the house he grew up in.
And how Harry wept.
Harry’s grandparents were Swedish circus performers,
and Harry may have got some of his talent from his grandmother,
who played piano.
Harry’s uncle encouraged him to sing
and later, Harry learned how to play the ukulele and guitar.
Because of the poverty,
Harry was a high school dropout
and began working at a very young age.
But after he was fired from his job as a caddie,
he got kicked out of the house.
Harry was only 15 years old when he decided to leave New York
and hit the road for California.
There, in the style of the Everly Brothers,
he formed a vocal duo with a friend,
and began writing songs.
He got a job at the Paramount Theatre in L.A.
where he learned piano chords from the musicians
who performed there,
and another job working the night shift at a bank.
Harry’d get off work at 1am, hit the bar for an hour
and then write songs all night.
Sleep being not much of a priority,
he’d head out again during the day to hustle his songs
before starting work.
Then he got a publishing deal for $50 a week.
Then the Beatles arrived.
And he hated them for beating him to the punch.
But he loved them for being so good,
for giving him something to aspire to.
No other band mattered to him,
but The Beatles.
Until he wrote a song called Cuddly Toy for The Monkees.
He quit his job at the bank after that,
when he landed a recording contract with RCA Victor.
RCA released the album Pandemonium Shadow Show,
the first of more than a dozen albums Harry would record for the label.
In addition to Cuddly Toy and 1941,
Pandemonium Shadow Show featured a cover
of John Lennon’s You Can’t Do That,
which arrived in the Top 10 on the Canadian charts.
In this documentary,
you’ll hear how Derek Taylor, the Beatles publicist
became such a fan of Nilsson
that he immediately wanted to share Harry’s records
with all his friends.
Just like we all wanna do when we hear great music for the first time -
share the records with our friends.
But Derek’s friends were John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Next thing you know,
Harry’s receiving telephone calls from John and Paul,
expressing enormous enthusiasm for his songs.
John went as far as to declare in the press that
Nilsson was his favourite “group”.
Later, when Harry married Una O'Keeffe,
Ringo was his best man,
bringing a tray of rings from Tiffany’s
for them to choose from.
Nilsson was married three times:
Sandi McTaggart (1964-1967),
Diane Clatworthy (1969-1974), who he had one child with; and
Una O’Keefe (1976-1994).
He had six kids with Una.
Flowers and melons.
As the documentary moved along,
I learned a great deal more about Harry
from all the talking heads who make special appearances,
the likes of which include Mickey Dolenz, Eric Idle, Robin Williams,
Yoko Ono, Randy Newman, and Brian Wilson.
Ray Cooper,
the percussionist I first got to know through the albums of Elton John,
describes the joy he felt listening on headphones
to Harry’s pure-toned, multi-octave vocals.
Cooper played on the Son of Schmilsson album,
and the doc shows Ray along with a very young looking Peter Frampton
making the album with Harry in studio.
Noteworthy that both Roger Pope and Caleb Quaye,
musicians I also first got to know through Elton John albums,
performed on the Nilsson Schmilsson record.
For me, listening to Harry Nilsson’s voice reminds me
of Rufus Wainwright.
Or, I should say listening to Wainwright reminds me of Nilsson.
Another truly great song written by Nilsson is One,
released on Ariel Ballet in 1968.
Harry wrote the song after making a telephone call
and getting a busy signal.
He had stayed on the line listening to the tone of the beep, beep, beep,
and that busy signal became the opening notes of the song.
“One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do.
Two can be as bad as one.
It's the loneliest number since the number one.”
One became a breakthrough hit for Three Dog Night,
earning them a Gold Record in 1969.
That same year, Midnight Cowboy happened,
the film starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight.
And suddenly, Everybody’s Talkin.
Nilsson was asked to write the theme for the film,
but so was Bob Dylan,
which resulted in an unused Lay Lady Lay.
Fred Neil may have written the song,
but it was Harry’s cover of Everybody’s Talkin that won out.
“Everybody's talkin’ at me
Can't hear a word they're saying
Only the echoes of my mind.”
Midnight Cowboy won the Oscar for Best Picture
at the 42nd Academy Awards.
It also garnered Nilsson the award
for Best Contemporary Vocal Performance
at the 12th annual Grammies.
The song would become Nilsson's first hit to reach
the American Top 10,
and it reached number one in Canada.
But unlike every other recording artist,
Harry didn’t take his success out on the road to perform
in front of live audiences.
No one’s entirely sure why.
Perhaps he didn’t want to be on someone else’s schedule.
Perhaps it was insecurity.
Some say he was terrified of performing live.
Instead, he performed on the BBC.
He also wrote Best Friend,
the theme song for The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,
a television sitcom starring Bill Bixby (1969-1972).
“People, let me tell you about my best friend.
He's a warm-hearted person who'll love me till the end.
People, let me tell you about my best friend.
He's a one boy cuddly toy, my up, my down, my pride and joy.”
I watched that show when I was a kid.
In 1970, Harry recorded Nilsson Sings Newman,
a tribute to Randy.
He also released The Point that was accompanied by an animated film,
which premiered as an ABC Movie of the Week.
The Point is “a fable that tells the story of a boy,
the only round-headed person in a Pointed Village,
where by law everyone and everything must have a point.”
Explaining his inspiration for The Point, Nilsson said:
"I was on acid and I looked at the trees
and realized that they all came to points.
The little branches came to points,
and the houses came to points.
I thought, 'Oh, everything has a point!
And if it doesn't, then there's no point to it.’”
1971 saw the release of Nilsson Schmilsson,
featuring two of the greatest songs:
Coconut and Without You.
Without You was written by the fellas in Badfinger,
and was a huge hit for them.
Nilsson’s cover of it earned him his second Grammy.
Coconut did best in Canada, where it peaked at #5.
In this documentary,
you’ll hear how Coconut developed in the studio,
thanks to Nilsson’s producer, Richard Perry.
"She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up.
She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up.
She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up.
She put the lime in the coconut, she called the doctor, woke him up.
She said, Doctor!”
(Remember when Coconut was used in
the 1992 Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs?)
A whole whack of award nominations followed.
And then of course, the downward spiral.
Harry was another one of those absent husbands and fathers.
Yet another example of the duality that goes on
deep inside some folks, especially artists,
who wanna be good husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, sisters, brothers, friends –
who wanna be good people,
but just can’t do what’s expected of them.
So they break away, feel guilty and rely on
drugs and alcohol to get them through.
And oh, Harry did do that.
When making plans for the follow up record,
Harry would not compromise and went against
the advice of his producer.
Nilsson: “It’s an artist prerogative to be indulgent to themselves.
He owes it to everyone else to be indulgent to himself.”
Good Catholic boy that he was, Harry released Son of Schmillson,
containing the songs I’d Rather Be Dead and You're Breakin' My Heart,
which had no commercial value.
“You're breakin' my heart.
You're tearing it apart,
so fuck you.
All I want to do is have a good time,
now I'm blue.
You won't boogaloo.
Run down to Tramps,
have a dance or two.
You're breakin' my heart.
You're tearing it apart,
so fuck you.
You're breakin' my heart.
You're tearing it apart,
boo-hoo…”
Nilsson was going through a divorce at the time he wrote
this “fuck you” song,
and it became a favourite of George Harrison’s.
Paul Williams: “Harry was a big bunny with really sharp teeth.”
Perry felt Nilsson was developing a death wish,
and the two parted ways when Nilsson decided to record
an album of standards,
A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night.
With Frank Sinatra’s arranger, Derek Taylor producing,
and the London Philharmonic Orchestra backing him up,
the album featured Nilsson singing songs like
Me and My Gal and As Time Goes By.
In 1974,
Harry received one of the largest advances in history from RCA,
compliments of John Lennon.
And as you would imagine,
Nilsson soon had dealers approaching him left, right and center,
offering to help him spend those advances.
And partying with Harry got your name in the press.
Remember the one of him and Lennon getting thrown out
of the Troubadour Club in L.A?
When the Smothers Brothers were doing a comeback show
and all the major stars were there?
Nilsson fooled Lennon into believing that
the Smothers enjoyed being heckled.
Thus, Lennon heckled them relentlessly until
management threw them both out,
amidst flying fists and overturned tables.
But how in the world did that Kotex pad end up on Lennon’s head?
There’s an unusual photo of John, Mickey Dolenz, Alice Cooper
and Harry, resting his chin on the shoulder of Anne Murray.
Cocaine and Cognac?
Or, Brandy and Milk?
These were the times of the full-on drug culture.
And getting a call from Nilsson was like getting a call from Sinatra –
you knew you’d be on an adventure for the next three days of your life.
With similar childhoods, it wasn’t hard to understand why
Lennon and Nilsson got along and partied so well together.
In the 1970’s, Nilsson owned a flat in London.
When he was away, he lent the 2-bedroom to his musician friends.
It was in one of these bedrooms that Mama Cass Elliot
of the The Mamas and The Papas
took her last breath.
Four years later, Keith Moon of The Who also died
in the same bedroom.
Nilsson then sold the flat to Pete Townshend.
Then Nilsson ruptured a vocal chord and RCA suggested a payoff.
Yup, they offered Nilsson the package.
But Blow Me Down,
then came Popeye!
You remember that feature film from 1980,
starring the impossibly talented Robin Williams?
The soundtrack to the film was composed by Nilsson,
and it included He Needs Me,
that oh-so lovely song sung by Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl.
He Needs Me was also featured in the 2002 film Punch Drunk Love,
starring Adam Sandler.
Considered to be his comeback album,
RCA promised a substantial marketing campaign for its release.
But then Elvis died.
And RCA ignored everything except meeting the demand for
Presley's back catalog.
Then John Lennon was murdered.
Nilsson was in the recording studio watching television
when it happened.
And all the music stopped.
Because Harry then became the poster boy for gun control.
He put songwriting aside to go to Washington
and lobby to end handgun violence.
Then the 90s came and with it:
embezzlement, bankruptcy, gray hair and heart attacks.
And The Fisher King,
the 1991 Terry Gilliam film starring again,
the uncontainable talent known as Robin Williams.
For the film, Harry wrote I Love New York in June.
After that came an earthquake and a funeral.
For on January 15, 1994,
Harry Nilsson died in his sleep at the age of 52.
Although aftershocks of the earthquake were still being felt,
Harry’s service went on and many people attended.
And many stories were told about him,
much to his children’s delight.
Harry is interred in Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park
in California.
A moving moment of acknowledgement was had for Harry
at the top of the doc,
compliments of Dustin Hoffman.
Rolling Stone ranked Harry Nilsson No. 62
on the list of 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time.
And Nilsson’s voice and songs have been featured in the films
All That Jazz starring Roy Scheider (1979),
Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas (1990),
and two films starring Tom Hanks:
Forrest Gump (1994) and You’ve Got Mail (1998).
Over the years, songs penned by Nilsson were recorded by
a wide range of artists including:
Fred Astaire, Glen Campbell, Joe Cocker, Neil Diamond,
Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Mathis, Diana Ross, The Shangri-Las,
Barbra Streisand, and The Yardbirds.
In 1995,
the album For the Love of Harry: Everybody Sings Nilsson
was released,
featuring Nilsson's songs performed by, among others,
Adrian Belew, The Roches, Ron Sexsmith,
Stevie Nicks and Jimmy Webb,
with proceeds benefiting the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
That's who Harry Nilsson was,
and why everybody was talkin' about him.
The trailer for…
Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)?
