Harry Nilsson

Singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson merged ingredients drawn from rock and pop lineages yet stayed at core an independent spirit loyal to neither camp. Although widely recognized for his interpretations of material originated by others, including Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'," Badfinger's "Without You," and an album-length set of Randy Newman compositions, Nilsson proved himself a capable songwriter and gained respect as a pop artisan of exceptional caliber. The first cluster of LPs he released in the late 1960s endeared him to the Beatles, who shared his facility for memorable melodies, incisive lyrics, and an expansive vocal span. Subsequent forays into pre-rock pop idioms, however, cost him part of that early following, and he issued relatively little new music across the final fifteen years of his life.

Harry Nilsson had spent more than five years attempting to gain traction in the music industry before the 1967 release of his well-received album Pandemonium Shadow Show. He produced demonstration recordings, performed on advertising jingles, and pitched his material while retaining his position at a bank in the Los Angeles vicinity. During the mid-1960s he co-wrote several numbers with Phil Spector that found their way to the Ronettes and the Modern Folk Quartet, and he occasionally placed his own records on the market. The Monkees cut his "Cuddly Toy," and the Yardbirds included "Ten Little Indians" on a single released near the end of their run. Nilsson did not leave his banking post until Pandemonium Shadow Show appeared, at which point he gained genuine studio freedom and could display his three-and-a-half-octave range without restriction.

The album drew notice from the Beatles, aided in part by its inventive medley of familiar Beatle numbers titled "You Can't Do That." At a press conference John Lennon and Paul McCartney identified Nilsson as their preferred American vocalist, an unusual distinction for an artist still largely unknown. Rumors even circulated at times that he might become a member of the group. Three Dog Night carried his "One" into the Top Ten in 1969, while Nilsson's follow-up LP Aerial Ballet sustained the adventurous pop-rock course of his debut by pairing his mildly unconventional, buoyant, and occasionally precious melodies with ornate orchestral arrangements. The inclusion of one track, "Everybody's Talkin'," as the theme for the film Midnight Cowboy supplied Nilsson with his first Top Ten single. The twist lay in the fact that, despite Nilsson's primary association with original songwriting, the number was in reality a cover of folk-rocker Fred Neil's composition.

Nilsson nevertheless refused to be confined within fixed stylistic boundaries, a stance made plain by the pair of albums he issued in 1970. One consisted solely of interpretations of songs by Randy Newman, then still emerging as a performer, while the other served as the soundtrack to the animated children's program The Point and contained the hit "Me and My Arrow." Another cover, this time of a Badfinger album track, furnished his largest single success, the chart-topping "Without You." Even so, Nilsson declined to exploit his commercial peak through conventional touring; he never mounted live concerts, limiting himself to sporadic television appearances, and instead concentrated on studio craftsmanship.

"Without You" surfaced on 1971's Nilsson Schmilsson, which also yielded two additional hits, the mock-tropical "Coconut" and the unexpectedly raw "Jump Into the Fire," widely regarded as his most aggressive rock recording. Throughout the first half of the 1970s Nilsson continued to expand beyond the polished, upbeat, and introspective songs that had marked his earliest work, turning at times toward harder-edged and more acerbic material. He nevertheless forfeited part of his audience with 1973's A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, a set of pre-rock standards arranged for orchestra under the direction of Gordon Jenkins, the conductor best known for his long association with Frank Sinatra. His fondness for such repertoire was unsurprising, given the persistent Tin Pan Alley sensibility that informed much of his own writing, yet the project sat at odds with prevailing tastes of the era.

A substantial share of Nilsson's public profile arose from his mid-1970s association in Los Angeles with John Lennon, who was then separated from Yoko Ono. The two, often inebriated, were ejected from the Troubadour club in an incident that received widespread press coverage, after which Lennon volunteered to produce Nilsson's next album. The timing proved unfortunate; Nilsson damaged his voice during the sessions, rupturing a vocal cord yet concealing the injury for fear that Lennon would withdraw. Issued as Pussy Cats, the record became his last to reach the Top 100. In the same period he collaborated with another former Beatle based in Los Angeles, Ringo Starr, contributing acting and music to the little-seen film Son of Dracula.

The upper range of Nilsson's voice, long his principal strength, sustained permanent though not irreversible harm. Following several modestly received late-1970s albums, Nilsson stepped away from recording to focus on family life and assorted business pursuits, devoting considerable effort to gun-control advocacy after Lennon's 1980 shooting. Diagnosed with diabetes in the 1990s while his health declined, he suffered a fatal heart attack in early 1994 shortly after completing vocal tracks for a new project.

MusicMasters issued the tribute collection For the Love of Harry: Everybody Sings Nilsson a year after his death, featuring appearances by Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, Stevie Nicks, and Aimee Mann. That same year the career retrospective Personal Best also reached stores. In the early 2000s, BMG's U.K. division Camden began a reissue program that paired Nilsson's albums through Knnillssonn. Director John Scheinfeld premiered his documentary Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)? at the 2006 Mods & Rockers Film Festival in Los Angeles; further editing preceded its limited theatrical run and eventual full home-video release in 2010.

Sony Music presented The RCA Albums Collection in 2013, a thorough box set assembled by Andrew Sandoval and Rob Santos that contained all fourteen of Nilsson's RCA albums plus three discs of additional material. Flash Harry also received its first expanded CD edition that year. A deluxe reissue of the Popeye soundtrack followed in 2017.

Mark Hudson completed production on Nilsson's final recordings for the 2019 album Losst & Founnd.