One of the oddball phrases you hear a lot is that someone is so great that you'd listen to them read the phone book.
Well, it used to be a phrase you'd hear a lot back before the internet when people had and used phone books. (Kids, ask your parents what this means.)
But Harry Nilsson really did have a voice that was so beautiful that it would be cool to hear him sing the phone book.
As far as I know he never did that (or at least never recorded it), but here's the next best thing: Nilsson sings the credits to the Otto Preminger movie Skidoo.
Apparently, Harry Nilsson was taking LSD one day and went for a walk. He was struck by how all the trees (and many other things in the neighborhood) literally ended in points.
And then he wondered what it would be like if everything in the world (including the people) had points.
And then he wondered what would happen if a round-headed boy were born into a world in which everything was required by law to have a point.
What would the point of that be? And could not having a point by the real point? At least some of the time?
Nilsson scribbled the outline to a fable, animator Fred Wolf did some drawings, and they sold the idea to ABC, who made The Point the first animated TV movie of the week.
The movie aired twice and featured Dustin Hoffman as a father narrating the story to his son and 7 new Nilsson songs (including "Me and My Arrow").
As was common in those days, the contracts didn't include provisions for video or DVD release (or, in this case, for anything beyond the initial airings). So when the movie reappeared on TV years later (and even later on video and DVD), Dustin Hoffman was replaced variously by Ringo Starr, Alan Thicke, and Alan Barzman.
But now, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first broadcast (or maybe because it's just cool), the great For the Love of Harry blog has the original Dustin Hoffman version in glorious 1971-era animation.
I watched the movie Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin' About Him) the other day.
Great movie. Ultimately a sad story.
In the movie, Richard Perry talks about how amazed he was by Nilsson's talents as a singer and songwriter. And how Nilsson became more interested in partying and making sessions into a joke.
Until what should have been a decades-long career of a superstar, instead flamed out after a few short years.
And yeah, there would be a few flashes of brilliance in even Nilsson's worst albums. But the last half of his professional life is noted for his devotion to epic drink-and-drug-fueled adventures instead of creating music.
These days, producers with computers strip vocals from one song, add beats, take samples from another song, add new vocals, and come up with something "new" (or at least new-ish).
(And if you're not sure you understand what a mashup is, listen to this. I'll wait.)
Harry Nilsson did the same thing. In 1967. With no computers or studio tricks.
Instead, Nilsson took a single Beatle song as a spine and wrapped around it vocal and instrumental licks from more than a dozen other songs. With no producers with computers to fix all his shitty tracks. The result was different from lame TV-show medleys and was fun and memorable (and a great way to respond to John Lennon's statement that Nilsson was his "favorite American band"). Not bad for a guy who was doing computer work for a bank and trying to peddle his songs to established acts. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)
Thirteen years later, Ringo Starr was in the middle of recording an album that would ultimately be retitled Stop and Smell the Roses. (John Lennon, 12 days before he was killed, gave Ringo demos of 2 new songs Lennon wrote for Ringo, including "Nobody Told Me." They made arrangements for Lennon to produce a session for Ringo to record the songs in early January 1981. When Lennon was killed in December 1980, Ringo couldn't bring himself to record the songs. An enhanced version of Lennon's demo would surface a few years later on the posthumous Milk and Honey album.)
For Stop and Smell the Roses, Harry Nilsson decided to revisit the technique he'd used for "You Can't Do That": with Nilsson producing (and singing background vocals) Ringo re-recorded his 1972 hit "Back Off Boogaloo" (now featuring the intro from "It Don't Come Easy" and more of a funk feel). Nilsson used "Back Off Boogaloo" as a structure from which he hung sections from a half-dozen other songs by Ringo and the Beatles. The result was mixed; mostly it worked, but it felt like it probably should have gone a lot farther. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)
So offering these examples from the years before Pro Tools and sophisticated music software, I put forth this simple idea:
She was gorgeous and careless, a dangerous combination.
And six of us, all guys, all awake at 3:45 am on the first Tuesday morning of college, decided that her picture should go in the dictionary next to the phrase Hot Mess.
I'd like to tell you that she was evil incarnate. But she wasn't. She was smart and funny and had a sweet side that made you want to follow her into the depths of hell.
She told me at lunch one day that she was planning on breaking the hearts of exactly 13 guys that semester, then she'd ignore guys and devote all her attention to her classes. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)
She loved Harry Nilsson and had all his records -- the great ones filled with songs marked by amazing music, dazzling wordplay, and sophomoric jokes as well as the later albums (with one or two decent songs and a bunch of drunken ideas whose flashes of brilliance were buried beneath long-stale humor that never quite worked). She'd frequently argue that his years of drunken partying with various Beatles were not wasted even if many of his songs from that period sound like he's wasted.
One by one, she broke exactly 13 hearts. Then, as promised, she turned her attention back to her classes and paid no attention to guys until the next semester. Her goals were different in our second semester. This time, she told me, she was going to break exactly 17 hearts. And so she did.
Sophomore year, she lived down the hall from me. And told me the number had risen to 19. She was drinking more and often was more mess than hot. But the guys still wanted to follow her into hell. (Amazingly, I wasn't one of them... but that's another story for another time.)
Her last semester, she told me she was going to break 41 hearts. But then a funny thing happened. She fell in love. With a guy who was a total jerk. He saw the hot and navigated away from the mess, but somehow overlooked the sweet and smart and funny. And he crushed her when he walked away without looking back or giving her a second thought.
And suddenly, she realized what she'd done to all the guys whose hearts she'd broken over the past four years. She locked herself in her room and played this song over and over for an entire weekend.
When she emerged, she said she wasn't interested in numbers or in breaking hearts anymore. She wrote personal notes to all the guys whose hearts she'd broken. More than one of them told her that apologizing wasn't enough, that she'd have to do something else. She listened to each of them, didn't argue, and didn't make excuses. Then she aced her finals. And applied to med school.
She married the next guy she went out with. And became a surgeon.
Even jangly mope-rockers. Which means, yup, even fans of the Smiths & Morrissey.
Which brings me to this video of comedian Dave Hill at a speed-dating event aimed solely at Smiths fans. As Hill says "You really can't lose. Unless you don't like the Smiths and Morrissey, in which case you could lose." (Link for Gmail subscribers.)
Speaking of Valentine's Day, I am slightly ashamed to admit that I first knew the song "Only You" from the Ringo Starr cover (and not the great 1950s version by the Platters). (I blame the aliens in Ringo's space ship.)
And by the way, how wild does your night have to be that you would wind up in the morning in a bathrobe on top of the Capitol Records building in Hollywood with two statues, a space ship, and a singing alien? (Link for Gmail subscribers.)
An important part of the mythos of John Lennon is the 18-month "Lost Weekend" he spent in Los Angeles after separating from Yoko Ono. The official account is that Lennon drank, got high, and screwed around with May Pang while getting nothing done. While the drinking, drugging, and screwing are certainly true, Lennon actually got a ton done during that Lost Weekend.
Sure, he was thrown out of the Troubador when he and Harry Nilsson drunkenly heckled the Smothers Brothers (with Lennon wearing a tampon on his forehead), but during that 18 months, Lennon also:
Produced the Nilsson album Pussy Cats,
Recorded a bunch of oldies with producer Phil Spector (as part of a settlement of a lawsuit brought by Morris Levy from Roullette Records, who claimed Lennon stole parts of "Come Together" from Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" -- but agreed to drop the suit if Lennon recorded three songs Levy's publishing company owned),
Spent time with his song Julian (whose grade-school drawing reportedly inspired the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), whom he hadn't seen for years,
Wrote and Recorded the Walls and Bridges album (which featured Julian drumming on one song),
Recorded his single to hit #1 in his lifetime (not counting the dozens of Beatle singles), "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" (with Elton John on piano and vocals),
Performed three songs with Elton John live at Madison Square Garden,
Co-wrote and sang on David Bowie's song "Fame,"
Wrote, sang and played on Ringo's "Goodnight Vienna,"
Hosted a weekly jam session at a rented house in Santa Monica (almost everyone who participated in these jam sessions is now in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame),
Fought back against attempts by J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon to have him deported,
Reunited with Paul McCartney in the studio for a jam session that also included Stevie Wonder, Bobby Keys, and Jesse Ed Davis (widely bootlegged under the title A Toot and A Snore in '74,
Recorded a radio commercial for Tower Records,
Appeared on the Grammy Awards and made bad jokes with Paul Simon (when Art Garfunkle accepted the award for Olivia Newton John, who won Record of the Year, the first thing Simon said was "I thought I told you to wait in the car"),
And made these two TV commercials (links one and two for Gmail subscribers):
Not bad for a "lost weekend."
PS: Ringo, the aliens want their cheap special effects back.
Great movie. Ultimately a sad story.
These days, producers with computers strip vocals from one song, add beats, take samples from another song, add new vocals, and come up with something "new" (or at least new-ish).
Which means, yup, even fans of 
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