Harry Nilsson's Rememberance (1981)

 

Photo taken by Bob Gruen 

Harry Nilsson's Rememberance 

By Harry Nilsson

Songwriter magazine

January/February 1981

    Singer/ Songwriter Harry Nilsson was closely associated with John Lennon during the past decade. The two of them shared a deep friendship, particularly while John was separated from Yoko Ono in the mid-70s; their late-night carousels in Los Angeles made for gossip column copy at the time. But beyond the excess, there was a professional relationship that led to Lennon's producing Nilsson's Pussycats in 1974, one of John's few outside musical projects. Nilsson shared his memories and outrage with contributing editor Barry Alfonso.

     I met John after the Beatles' publicist Derek Taylor played my first album for him. This was about 1968. Derek called me and asked if I wanted to come over to England and go to a session. I was met at the airport by Ringo's car, and went to Apple, said hello to Derek, and was chauffeured to where John lived, which is now, I think, Ringo's house. 

    I spent the weekend with John at his house. It was the weekend that Cynthia moved out and Yoko moved in. We spent the night talking about divorce and all that stuff -- 12 hours nonstop. He was like that, always hyper. John wasn't a very relaxed guy. He was always manic. "Let's go. Let's do it." An all-or-nothing person, as far as I knew him.

     We were roommates later for a time, sort of like the Odd Couple. This was in 7'5 or so. For a month and a half, a whole bunch of us lived in this beach house in Malibu. John, Ringo, Keith Moon, Mal Evans, and I were there. 

    After that, John and I went to New York, and he lived in a hotel --at the Pierre for another month and a half. I considered myself his closest friend during that period when he was away from Yoko; when he needed a friend, I was there. I took a lot of the blame for him getting drunk and all that, but I didn't force foul-tasting liquids down his throat. That was his own doing.

     I can tell you this: when we were doing the Pussycats album, we were all getting nutso. It was the height of something, the peak of rock and roll madness. We could do anything we wanted to do, but people didn't exactly know what to do with that kind of freedom. 

    During that period, Keith and John and Ringo and myself were all out there getting crazy. It was a destructive period that everyone went through. And because everyone was doing it, everyone thought it was a thing to do.

     When John and I decided to do that album, we started off on the same foot,"Let's make an album and get loaded along the way." At one session, I remember counting just the drums. And between Ringo and Jim Keltner and Keith Moon playing on, I think "Rock Around the Clock", there were 24 drums. We would finish the session, go back to Malibu, and get out of our minds on Amarillo, nitrate, acid, coke, grass, liquor --the works.

     And then at one point, when it got too crazy, I lost my chops, and people were sleeping on pool tables. John went, "click."  Like that --turned off and became the leader of the band. The producer. He straightened up, and he was great. He did his job. We were working very well. Then it became a race to get the album finished in a month or two. But we did it, and he did a good job. He became the responsible person and was a tremendously creative producer. In fact, he was the only other guy other than myself who tried to get things out of the engineer. He worked with the engineer rather than telling him what to do or letting him do it by himself. He encouraged the guy. I loved that. So in other words, he was a creative producer. Was productive and got a lot of work done in a short time. 

    He'd wake up in the morning five minutes before you would, and he'd be shining your shoes. I'm serious, literally shining your shoes. Real manic. If he was getting drunk, he was really getting drunk, and if he was getting sober, he was really getting sober. 

    I know we learned things from each other. We did agree on songs. We shared the opinion that it took a little bit of this and that, a little salt and pepper, a word here and there to make you laugh, to make a song. That's the attitude I still take when writing, and that was the attitude he showed me by his own songwriting.

     I remember working on a song we did together, "Old Dirt Road". He had this bit of a song and an idea. We were in the studio, and I went to the piano and finished it. I came over to him with a page of lyrics, and asked him what he thought of them, and he said, "You're flying. Go with it."

     That was his attitude. The most important thing I learned from him was to follow through. To finish what you start. You say you're going to send someone a postcard --send a postcard. He always followed through.

     I was talking to my wife the other day about his work. She asked me, "What was it that he did?" I said that I really didn't know. If you look at the words of his songs, occasionally, there's a clever line, but they don't look very good on paper. His melodies were probably more important than his words. Yet he was known for his words. A lot of his melodies were like child melodies. I do think he was a great singer, though I don't know that he had a great range. When you put the words and the melodies together, there was the thing that happened-- that synergy. I really couldn't explain it to my wife any more than I can explain it to you, but there it was. 

    Basically, I'd say what made him great was brains and a sense of humor with heart thrown in. Everyone's going to miss John. You keep saying,"No more wit from John, no more anticipation of what he's going to do next." Christ, he's gone. That makes me angry more than sad.

     I only hope that out of this, maybe some good can happen, and that has to do with gun control. We all know what John did, and we all know about his killer, unfortunately. Now, do we all know what we're going to do about it? I want to know what we're going to do about handguns. The answer isn't registration. The answer is to stop the manufacture and distribution of them. The only way to do it is through power, which comes out of signatures and money. I want to take out an ad in the TV Guide about it, put John Lennon's name on it, and say, "If you care, send in this coupon." I've had offers of help. Publisher Lester Sills of Screen Gems has offered to let me use his office. There are people in record companies who have offered to put up money-- artists who are willing to do concerts to help pay for ads. Reminiscing isn't important, but this is.