#harry nilsson

[rubisdoobles]

happy boxes

[fence-time]

Anyone else give a gaf about them or is it just me

[davidhudson]

Harry Nilsson, June 15, 1941 – January 15, 1994.

[hymnsandhearses]

Sorry, but I won’t commit to one style or genre of music.

I am polyjamorous.

[muzaktomyears]

In all the years I knew John I didn't see him as a frightening figure. An interview with Playboy had him saying he used to hit women; all I can say to that is that I certainly never saw any evidence to suggest that he did any such thing. The posthumously published interviews contained many misleading insinuations, not least the suggestion that Paul was given to gate-crashing the Dakota apartment like some mendicant intruder, uninvited and unannounced, with a view to importuning John for, say, a song for Paul’s next album. It wasn't like that at all. When I visited Yoko and John at the Dakota - by invitation, I suppose I’d better add - John was very funny about the extraordinary McCartney panache, cheek, impudence that enabled Paul to pass doormen, cops, fans, almost anyone in the world except Japanese customs officers without let or hindrance. ‘I dunno how he does it,’ John marvelled, ‘the cheeky get; but he’s the only one who can get in here without anyone being able to do anything about it. Elton can’t get away with it, nor can Bowie or Mick - and if it was me going to see Paul, I’d definitely be stopped.’ So I don’t buy all that stuff about Paul barging in on The Great One’s peace of mind. I think it was all got up by the envious. That John was a man with a riotous and wild tongue is beyond dispute. He did say outrageous things; printed, they would have looked vile and beastly cruel. Harry Nilsson and I were caught up with him in a mad night in LA somewhere around 1973/74. We had gone to Alan Pariser’s house and were listening to various cassettes, on which John was pronouncing summary judgment: ‘crap’ or 'great' or ‘gerritoff’. In Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Old Rocking Chair’, on a Peter Skellern album, there was a reference to ‘my dear Aunt Harriet, up in heaven she be…’ and John shouted: ‘Harriet’s dead, did you know that?’ (Harriet was a sister of Julia Lennon and Mimi.) Then he tired of the record: ‘It's got no f’g beat. We spent f’g years doing records to put this stuff out of business and you go and make a whole album, you and Nilsson. It’s incredible how hard you can try and turn the world on and still people won’t listen.’ I said this wasn’t Harry’s album but another I had produced; though this singer, too, was a romantic. ‘Like you,’ added Harry. ‘I’m not a romantic,’ said John, laughing at himself, at Harry, everyone. ‘Oh, yes, you are, man,’ said Alan Pariser. ‘You’re the most romantic of all of us.’ John stopped laughing and stared at him: ‘Who asked you? Fuck off home!’ Pariser, startled, said he was home: ‘This is my house!’ John laughed uproariously. ‘Oh, yeah? That’s right! Well, go into the kitchen, then.’ I told John Mimi would give him a hell of a bollocking for being so rude, and he agreed; he was only kidding, he said, and Pariser should come back and accept an apology. Alan was not easily placated; that had been no way to talk to a man in his own house. ‘I know, I know,’ John said. ‘Now just accept that I’m a cheeky get.’ He hugged him and said it had been the drink talking. It often was in those days; but it was also the man to whom too many kept saying ‘yes’.

Fifty Years Adrift, Derek Taylor (1984)

[beatleswings]

HARRY NILSSON, RINGO STARR, ELTON JOHN, PAUL McCARTNEY, LINDA McCARTNEY and JOE ENGLISH outside a restaurant in Mayfair, London. 1975. Photos taken by TERRY O'NEILL.

[ceofjohnlennon]

John Lennon and Harry Nilsson at the hotel during the event March of Dimes. Last photo taken by Cindy Rebello, April 28, 1974.

Via: Sara Schmidt.

[paulmccartneyexplodingonstage]