“He was my best friend,” says Ringo softly. “Yeah. I loved Harry.”
rolling stone interview
“Ringo and I spent a thousand hours laughing,” Nilsson said.
ringo: with a little help, by michael seth starr
Mark Hudson: “I think that Harry's friendship with John was also very very close, but I - I don't think it was as intimate as his relationship with Ringo Starr.”
Harry Nilsson: “I had a relationship with John - we were roommates a couple of times you know, short times […] But uh, Ringo and I are the, Ringo and I are friends. It's funny I always thought I would be closer to John but then over the years Ringo and I ended up being pals.”
Michael Seth Starr: Harry, born in Brooklyn, New York, in June 1941, was less than a year younger than Ringo. They were both three years old when their fathers (Richard and Edward, respectively) abandoned their families, never to return. They both enjoyed alcohol and practical jokes and were garrulous in nature, at least early in their relationship. Neither man had completed any semblance of an education. Ringo left school at the age of fifteen; Nilsson, who was extremely bright, dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
Ringo Starr: “I think I could always call Harry, night and day, and he would come and save me. I'm very lucky with friends like that.”
Harry Nilsson: (on Pete Best) “Well first of all he said he was a better drummer than Ringo, which is impossible.”
Chris O'Dell: “They became really, really close friends, and a lot of it was based on how much alike they were. They shared a sense of humour. You can never underestimate Ringo’s sense of humour. It’s there, it’s a huge part of who he is. Harry was also like that. [...] They were like brothers.”
Harry Nilsson: “I saw Ringo in an interview once looking very nervous saying “Well I'm probably the best rock and roll drummer in the world” and the truth is he is. But he looked very scared saying it. I could see him being scared about it, not scared, but not comfortable about it. And I wanted to be right there and say “Yes! You are! It's okay! You are the best rock and roll drummer in the world ever. That's it. Period, the end.”
Doug Hoefer, Harry's Cousin: “They would fight about shit and hang up on each other. Then time would go by and one of them would call the other back and they would pick up where they’d left off. I’m not really sure exactly how they pissed each other off, but they would . . . because Harry had a very strong personality as well.”
Stephanie La Motta: (on a stranger barging into the hotel room she's sharing with Ringo) “He said, ‘I’m Harry’ and he goes searching all over the place - and I’m screaming for Ringo - who comes out and hugs Harry, because he loved Harry. They had a special bond. It was unbelievable this bond I saw between them. He loved Harry as much as Harry loved him.”
Harry Nilsson: “Ringo was the beat behind the beatles, and they're called the beatles, and he was the beat. [...] When he plays you hear him, he's there, he makes things that drummers will be copying for a hundred years. I mean he is that good. I hate it when guys say you know, "is he really a good drummer?" Are you crazy!? Are you nuts? The guy's amazing and he plays drums better than anybody.”
Harry Nilsson: “Ringo and I speak a couple of times a week. We're very, very dear friends. [...] He's my pal. He was best man at our wedding. He's one of the dearest friends you can have in life. He is godfather to our children. And I hope I'm his best pal in life.”
Ringo Starr: “Harry’s no longer with us. He’s been gone 20 years now. I still miss him.”
Music played this way
All I need is my imagination
Take me far away
Where I can be with everyone who loves me
Harry's Song, by Ringo, 2008
There's no more oyster bar
There's no more Ringo Starr
There's no one left to love but you and me
UCLA, by Harry Nilsson
Ringo paid for Harry to have cosmetic dentistry to straighten his front teeth. [...] Some of Nilsson's closest friends believed that self-consciousness about his crooked teeth had been a significant factor in his decision not to appear in live concerts. Samantha Juste, for example, said: "He didn't have great teeth. I remember when he had his teeth fixed, it did a lot for him. In the early days he didn't smile really. Those teeth made a big difference to him, and to his confidence."
- from "Nilsson, The Life of a Singer Songwriter" by Alyn Shipton
Most commentators have focused on "You're Breakin' My Heart" as the one song that expressed Nilsson's emotional torment about [his wife's] departure. However, there is another interpretation, which was that it represented his first quarrel with Ringo Starr. There are coded references to Starr and their social life together, notably in the lines, "You won't boogaloo - Run down to Tramps - Have a dance or two". The reference to the Beatles' Drive My Car [You won't drive my car, might be a star] is another clue to this possible interpretation.
- again from "Nilsson, The Life of a Singer Songwriter"
For reasons of his own, Ringo did not attend Harry’s funeral, which was held on January 17, a day that was rocked by aftershocks from an earthquake in nearby Northridge. He claimed to be too grief-stricken, and Barbara went in his place.
- from Ringo: With A Little Help, by Michael Seth Starr
"We tried every which way to get Ringo to talk on camera. What came back to us each time was that there are three people he just does not feel comfortable talking about in person: John Lennon, George Harrison and Harry Nilsson. It’s just too emotional for him and I totally respect his feelings on the matter. Ringo was, however, tremendously supportive of the film including providing us with photos and making it possible to use Son of Drac, a film that Ringo and Harry made in the early 1970s but has been locked away in a London vault since 1974. At the end of the day, we were happy to have his support and understood the decision he made. Sometime later we had heard that he saw the film and liked it but thought some things were missing from the story. And I said to myself, “Yeah, Ringo, you were missing…” (laughs).
- John Scheinfeld, about making 'Who is Harry Nilsson..?'
(I have found absolutely no evidence that ringo starr knitted this)
Honestly, I really enjoy diving into Ringo’s earlier interviews, because I feel like out of the four, he showcased a vulnerability and a special ability for grasping and articulating certain emotional nuances that I think truly highlight the band’s dynamic. Take for instance, this quote below from a July 1988 interview of his. It stands as one of my favourite insights into the inner workings and relationships among those four boys in the band, and how these dynamics shaped their music.
INT: I would imagine it was an adjustment personally, but did you feel lost musically?
RINGO: Well, I'd never played with a better band, you see, so I think that's the loss I felt.
INT: Where does one go from the best?
RINGO: It's not even just the best. A lot of it was telepathy. We all felt so close. We knew each other so well that we'd know when any of us would make a move up or down within the music, and we'd all make it. No one would say anything or look at each other; we'd just know. The easiest word is telepathy. The band worked so well, and we were four good friends a lot of the time. But like any four friends, we had rows and shouted and disliked each other for a moment.
Then it ended, and I started playing sessions and had a really good time, but I was just playing. You can play with any band, but that band was something special to me, and it's never been like that again. I've had great sessions, great tracks, but it's never been like that, and you can't expect that if you walk into a studio and play someone's session. You're strangers.
We had all lived together so close; we knew each other so well that it crossed over into the music. We knew exactly what the other was doing. That's even the wrong way to explain it. We just knew that the chemistry worked! The excitement! If things were just jogging along and one of us felt, “I'm going to lift it here,” it was just a feeling that went through the four of us and everyone lifted it, or everyone lowered it, or what-ever. It was just telepathy. When I do sessions now, I'm playing the best I can, and some sessions are really great. But I've never played on anyone's album all the way through, because I always felt it was boring, so I'd do three or four tracks.
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