40 Year Itch : Just Something Real

Harry Nilsson : Something True

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   There's not much to recommend listeners to the first of Nilsson's two 1976 albums, Sandman. His famous voice has now long been destroyed. Rolling Stone critic Billy Altman sums it up: "Sandman appears to be more the work of the drunken, disheveled beach bum on the cover than the mysterious, introspective singer/songwriter that Nilsson once was."

     But "[Thursday] Here's Why I Did Not Got To Work Today" is a charming song co-written with everyone's favorite singer-songwriter partner Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar. And "Something True" is a gem, written with Perry Botkin, Jr. whose theme for the soap opera "The Young and The Restless" would be chosen by a Romanian gymnast for her floor exercise at the 1976 Olympic games. That gymnast was Nadia Comaneci. She would win gold as the top all around gymnast and the single, marketed as "Nadia's Theme",  would hit the Top 10 in time for me to give to my younger sister for Christmas.

40 Year Itch : All Meat!

Nilsson/Cher : A Love Like Yours ( Don't Come Knocking Every Day)

   Perhaps the highlight of this 1975 $2 Warner Brothers loss leaders is the obscure Harry Nilsson/Cher cover of Martha and the Vandellas' "Heat Wave" B-side "A Love Like Yours ( Don't Come Knocking Every Day)". The single was produced by Phil Spector at the same time he was recording John Lennon's Rock'n'Roll sessions. This is the only album you'll be able to find this song. Other highlights are the Faces last single, "You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything",  the title track from ex-Spooky Tooth Gary Wright's The Dream Weaver, and Elvin Bishop's "Juke Joint Jump" from the album of the same name.

40 Year Itch : In a Cardboard Town

Seattle pedestrians, 1975


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   From an album originally titled God's Greatest Hits comes Harry Nilsson's "Puget Sound", recorded, like the rest of the album, in the midst of a cocaine and alcohol fueled party. Upon first listen to Duit On Mon Dei, released in March of 1975, Nilsson's mother said " Harry, I can hear the ice cubes clinking". The title is from the motto on the front cover of the Ringo album.

For the album Nilsson made the promotional video below at the LA Forum which he paid $800 to rent for three hours.

40 Year Itch : Meow and Purr

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  Ragged. I believe that is the word that best describes the John Lennon/ Harry Nilsson collaboration, Pussy Cats, released in August of 1974

 . "Ragged" describes Lennon's Spector-style  production, the arrangements, the drumming, and - most unfortunately- Nilsson's voice as he attempts to hit notes that were within reach a year earlier.

     The recording occurred during Lennon's "Lost Weekend", beginning shortly after the infamous Troubadour experience. Lennon was a different cat when he was recording. Focused for the most part. He and May Pang agreed to invite some of the Pussy Cats musicians to stay at the Santa Monica beach house they were renting. That way they could rehearse at all hours, discuss the songs and arrive together at the studio. The only problem was the cast of characters. 

  While Lennon and May Pang took the master bedroom ( where the Kennedys had supposedly bedded Marilyn Monroe), the other rooms went to Harry, Ringo, Klaus Voorman, Ringo's business manager Hilary Gerrard, and Keith Moon. The established routine was to record in the evening hours, stay up all night drinking and partying, wake up with hang-overs, try to recover poolside, and ride in limos back to the recording studio.

   Lennon and Nilsson agreed on a couple of covers. Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers to Cross", "Save the Last Dance for Me" and Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues". Nilsson wrote a few of his own including "Don't Forget Me" which seems to inspired by his failed marriage.

   "Don't Forget Me" would be one of the last times anyone would hear Harry's voice, the way it used to be. During the sessions, Nilsson lost his voice. A doctor told him  he had ruptured his vocal chord and not to speak for two weeks but Harry kept singing. And not just singing. But screaming the way Lennon did on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. To hear "Many Rivers to Cross" is to hear one of the great voices of the 70's shredded to bloody bits. Apparently Harry never told Lennon about the diagnosis. Lennon blamed himself. That they were friends and musical partners didn't change the fact that Nilsson was one of the great Beatles fans of all time. He must have been daunted.

   Nilsson came up with the album cover idea when he found some anthropomorphic kitten postcards. Somehow they slipped the D block, RUG, S block past the RCA censors. Hitting shops weeks after Mama Cass had died in Nilsson's London flat, Pussy Cats failed to launch any successful singles and stalled at #60 in the US album charts. For Nilsson, this would be the beginning of the end.

40 Year Itch : The Death of Mama Cass

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   On July 29, 1974, "Mama" Cass Elliot was found dead in Harry Nilsson's London flat. She was 32. 

As a member of the Mamas and the Papas, she sold 40 million albums and sang on such hits as

"California Dreamin'" , "Monday Monday" and "Creeque Alley". Cass was the first member of the group to release a solo album, 1968's Dream a Little Dream.




When the group broke up for good, Cass also tried to break away with her "Mama" image. RCA signed her and let her record as "Cass Elliot".
It was during a two week stand at the London Palladium, rewarded each night with standing ovations, that she and former manager Bobby Roberts walked by a photo of Judy Garland.
   "Cass said 'I know what it must have meant to that lady to be a hit here, because I know what it means to me.", remembered Roberts who also told Rolling Stone  "She was overweight, but she carried off like she was a beauty queen."

    The story of "Mama" Cass's death has taken on mythic proportions. It was widely reported , as Rolling Stone did, that she choked on a ham sandwich "while lying in bed and from inhaling her own vomit". Actually she died of heart failure probably caused by a condition known as "fatty myocardial degeneration" due to obesity.
   Four years later, in the very same flat, Keith Moon died of a drug overdose.
 

40 Year Itch: Oh No, Oh No, Oh No, Oh No

It's not the best film ever made, but I've seen worse.

-Ringo Starr 

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   On April 11th, 1974 the soundtrack for the Apple film Son of Dracula was released, eight days before the movie premiered in Atlanta. The movie stars Harry Nilsson who took payment in the form of cosmetic dentistry. It is, by all accounts, abysmal. Ringo Starr financed the whole thing as a tribute to the classic monster movies of Hammer and Universal. He even managed to round up an all star cast of Peter Frampton, Keith Moon and John Bonham to play in the Count Downes, the son of Dracula's band. The movie tanked. Even when it was re-released as Young Dracula to try to cash in on Young Frankenstein's success. ( At least that movie inspired one rock n roll hit: Aerosmith's "Walk This Way").

                                                       

   The soundtrack is a dud as well. With the exception of the Top 40 single "Daybreak" ( featuring George Harrison on cowbell), all of the songs on the album had been previously released on Nilsson Scmilsson or Son of Schmilsson.

40 Year Itch: Gonna Rip It Up

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OK. So I was drunk. When it's Errol Flynn, all those showbiz writers say "Those were the days when we had Sinatra and Errol Flynn, socking it to the people." I do it...I'm a bum

-John Lennon

This week in 1974 John Lennon's lost weekend hit its low points. First, at a dinner in a Santa Monica restaurant with May Pang and Jesse Ed Davis, Lennon emerged from the bathroom with a kotex on his forehead. The three went to the Troubador where, even more drunk, Lennon asked a waitress "Don't you know who I am?" The waitress snapped back "Yeah, you're some asshole with a Kotex on his forehead."

On March 12, Lennon and Nilsson returned to the Troubador where they drunkenly heckled Tommy and Dickie Smothers in front of such luminaries as Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Peter Lawford. They were ejected from the club and Lennon got into a tussle with a parking attendant as flashbulbs popped.

The next day Lennon and Nilsson sent the Smothers Brothers flowers and a note of apology. Actress Pan Grier also received a note:

40 Year Itch: Sing A Song Of Long Ago

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RCA record execs were probably pretty nervous. In 1972 Harry Nilsson and producer Richard Perry made a platinum album called Nilsson Schmilsson, a gold album called Son of Schmilsson, and two gold singles , Melody Maker's record of the year and future Grammy winner "Without You" and "Coconut".
   But now their cash cow was off in London recording a collection of pop standards with Gordon Jenkins. For that reason perhaps, RCA saw fit to re-release 1970's all but ignored Nilsson Sings Newman.



It's an absolutely delightful, absolutely short ( with running time of just over 25 minutes) collection of intimately performed pop tunes showcasing Newman's more sentimental, less sarcastic side ( with perhaps the exception of "Yellow Man") and Nilsson's warm, perfect voice.


 
Record exec fears were well-founded.While A Little Touch of Schmilsson In The Night  remains a favorite to some, it undermined Nilsson's pop music cache and was met with critical slings and arrows. The Village Voice's Robert Christgau wrote "I wouldn't give my extra copy to my mother".

40 Year Itch: Bang Bang Shoot 'Em Up Destiny

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Shy and private, Harry Nilsson struggled with his fame. When fame came a-calling with his US/UK #1 interpretation of Badfinger's "Without You" and the Top 10 "Coconut", Nilsson's reaction was an odd one, verging on self-sabotage.He reveled in his bawdy side and displayed a sense of humor that could easily be taken the wrong way.

The obvious single, "You're Breakin' My Heart", had a lot going for it. Both Ringo and George Harrison ( as "George Harrysong") played on the cut --and so did a young Peter Frampton. The only reason it wasn't released on a 45 was the lyric: "You're breakin' my heart/You're tearin' it apart/So fuck you."





For the recording of "I'd Rather Be Dead" (than wet my bed), Nilsson and producer Richard Perry recruited a couple dozen senior citizens, liquored them up, and had them help him with the chorus. Most of the recording sessions were filmed for an unreleased documentary called Did Somebody Drop His Mouse? and this scene towards the end is the most entertaining.

Thank God for YouTube because here is the entire 40 minute doc:



"Spaceman" wound up being the single. It peaked at #23 in the Billboard charts ensuring Nilsson's fame would be short-lived and he'd remain a hero only to the rock and pop cognoscenti.

 

40 Years Ago Today " Without You " is Number One

[Buy Nilsson Schmilsson]

On March 11, 1972 Harry Nilsson's "Without You" ended its four week run at number one in the US and began its five week run at the top of UK charts.

Credit booze. Really. Nilsson has been up all night drinking and listening to albums.
He told the story to Dick Clark:

"After sobering up the next day, I said, 'What was that Lennon tune we were listening to last night?' We went though a bunch of (Beatles) albums and couldn't find it. Finally I said "No! It wasn't The Beatles, it was another group. It was Grapefruit or something "


Actually it was Badfinger. The album was 1970's No Dice.



Although the demo is a bit rough ( and therefore incredibly revealing) Harry knew he had something special. With the help of producer Richard Perry, Nilsson went after a more epic sound--one that showed off his incredible voice and his incredible range."It was a different record for its time. It was a big ballad with a heavy backbeat, and although many artists have cut songs like it since, no one was doing it then.--Richard Perry
Gary Wright of Spooky Tooth plays piano. Klaus Voorman is on bass. The single was the biggest hit of the year. Period. It sold millions of copies and earned Nilsson a Grammy Award. Paul McCartney called it  "the killer song of all time."




The sad footnote: both of the writers behind the lyrics "I can't live/ If living is without you" committed suicide by hanging themselves. Pete Ham in 1975 and Tom Evans in 1983.