Had a chance to review the new documentary
Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin' About Him?), which is now in theaters, as they say, and highly recommended.
The most memorable sequence, and the one guaranteed to win over anybody unfamiliar or unmoved by Harry's work, is from a 1971 BBC-TV special, where (through the miracle of video-tape editing) a trio of Harrys sits behind a piano and sings a spell-binding three-part harmony version of the New Orleans classic "Let the Good Times Roll." The most jaw-dropping is an excerpt from an uncompleted documentary on the making of the Son of Schmillson album from 1972, in which Harry, dressed in a ridiculous suit and cardboard hat, gets a bunch of seriously old British geezers straight from a rest home to sing along on a tune whose endlessly repeated chorus goes "I'd rather be dead than wet my bed." It's an act of wanton cruelty and by the end really painful to watch, but I still laughed harder at it than at almost anything else I've seen in a movie this year.
Both of those scenes, as it turns out, are on YouTube (albeit in not so great quality prints); in the meantime, you can read the rest of my review over at Box Office
here.
Had a chance to review the new documentary Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin' About Him?), which is now in theaters, as they say, and highly recommended.
12 comments:
A whole bunch of that BBC special are (or were) on YouTube, including his Nairobi Trio homage version of "Coconut." I wish they'd release that on DVD!
Sorry... "is."
came damn close to pissing it all away
I don't think it was close. He pissed it all away. Marshall Crenshaw did a great cover of Don't Forget Me in the tribute album For the Love of Harry. "When I'm older, and full of cancer ... "
The most painful loss of my flooding was a great import copy of his Touch Of Schmillson In The Night record. Thankfully, I had recorded it onto the computer a week before.
Harry was so funny, and could be so touching. He was really a huge talent.
Trey
To be honest, I was never much of a fan -- for personal reasons; it had something to do with my initial tenure at Stereo Review -- but the movie pretty much converted me.
Amazingly talented guy; the one thing the movie doesn't really come close to explaining is how he got to be such an incredibly accomplished musician at such an early age.
I'd like to leave comments over at Box Office, but even though I'm registered, it's nearly impossible to post on your comments page there. What's going on?
I genuinely don't know. I keep complaining to the tech people, and they never do anything.
It's very annoying....
Strange that they'd pick that for the title...a song he didn't write...
this column led me over to YouTube to listen to some of this stuff. I found a bunch of Nilsson demos for the Monkees posted there, including Cuddly Toy, a song I never would have thought twice about, though listening to it today it seemed the peak of bitter wit.
AP
Cuddly Toy was allegedly about a gang-bang (choo-choo train left out in the rain etc). I recall a MOJO piece on him and his final days were heart-wrenchingly awful.
and there was a story that as he died around the time of the last Big One in LA, his body slipped through a crack in the earth and his coffin was filled with rocks instead of his body. I swear I heard this story, read it in print even; anyone else?
I wonder if anyone explained that to Davy Jones.
AP
nah, that coffin story is fiction, circulated by Marianne Faithful:
http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2009/04/15/music-legends-revealed-1/
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