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A true artist

10/2/2015

4 Comments

 

Harry Nilsson was an artist, pure and simple.  In the early Seventies it was impossible to listen to radio for more than an hour without hearing one of his songs. Starting in the Sixties Nilsson wrote and recorded for TV, films, commercials and recorded hundreds of songs for popular release.  Nilsson never toured and rarely performed live.  He was, after all, an artist(songwriter).  Like many "artists" Harry liked to drink and lived an idiosyncratic lifestyle.  At the outset of his career he was championed by no less than the Beatles.  John Lennon and Ringo Starr became life long pal's and drinking buddies.  Cass Elliot(formally of the Mamas and Papas) died while residing at Harry's flat in London in 1974.  Keith Moon, Who drummer and Harry's good friend, died in the same room as Elliot in 1978 as a guest of Nilsson's.
Choosing a song was almost impossible but I went with the odd radio hit "Coconut"
Harry Nilssion passed away of a massive heart attack in 1994.
4 Comments
unome2L
10/15/2015 12:17:22 pm

I cannot love this 5-octave vocal range hellraiser enough! There was a very good documentary about him on Netflix. Check it out.
Although it got overplayed in my teen years, I went back to listen to "Jump Into the Fire" recently, off the same great album as this tune. The video I saw had Keith Moon in it, but he was not drumming on the record. That was actually Roger Pope & Jim Gordon. Not sure if Gordon was in the video or not...maybe he was off KILLING someone that day! Mwahaha!

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Jeff
10/15/2015 12:42:54 pm

His catalog is massive. Much of it good...much of it not.

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unome2L
11/2/2015 06:23:27 pm

I watched the "Jump Into the Fire" video again...It was from a movie that Ringo had made, "Son of Dracula," so I watched (some of) the movie too. It had more of Nilsson's songs in it. The strange thing was that it had a couple of the same songs from Harry's cartoon "The Point." As you said, he had quite the catalog. I don't know why the songs got recycled for the Dracula movie. I just seeing the cartoon in my mind.

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Everett Drapery link
7/27/2022 01:16:30 pm

I thoroughly enjoyed this blog thanks for sharing

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    Vertical asked me to join his blog as a guest expert on "Nuggets" era music... Psychedelic, Garage and Fuzz.  Are there others more qualified?  You bet, but they weren't asked. He's also letting me write about anything I want…  We'll see.

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