The Angel of Sadness

Welcome to Sarah's Musical Corner where I can shove my personal musical preferences in your face but also give you the opportunity to do the same. 

I've always loved the music of Harry Nilsson.  Maybe it's his gorgeous three and a half octave vocal range or his natural improvisational lyrical talent or his unique writing... or maybe his words just strike a nerve.  Whatever it is, Nilsson had it in abundance and squandered it with careless abandon. 

I'm not a big follower of jazz even though I recognize the skill inherent to that genre. If I had to attempt the impossible --- classifying Nilsson --- unlike John Lennon who called his a rocker, I'd have to put him in the jazz category.  

This isn't meant to be biographical - you can read a book ("Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter" by Alyn Shipton)  or just visit Wiki.  This is mostly about my impressions.

While Nilsson wrote and sang about a myriad of subjects, from the mundane to the esoteric, I will always see him as a messenger of sadness who expressed his anguish with the voice of an angel.  

But Harry was no angel or if he was, he was one possessed by demons and the demons succeeded in turning his potential into a liability.

Nilsson was also enigmatic with a career filled with irony.
Fred Neil was a folk singer in the Greenwich Village circuit His bluesy "That's the Other Side to this Live" was recorded by the Jefferson Airplane and Peter, Paul and Mary.  Neil wrote a song called "Everybody's Talking" which was recorded, with ho-hum results, by an almost unknown artist (on his third album, "Aerial Balllet" -- his first two albums, "Spotlight on Nilsson" and "Pandemonium Shadow Show" also having met only borderline success)  who went by the name Nilsson.  Shortly after, the producers of an upcoming film titled, "Midnight Cowboy" used the song as a filler or place-holder while they decided on what song to replace it with from entries which included ones by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. In the end, the producers decided Neil's song was as good as any.  The release of the film propelled Nilsson's cover into the stratosphere and ignted Nilsson's musical career.  That was the first irony -that his first success was with someone else's song. 

This song aslo made his previous albums more salable. 

Arguable Nilsson's greatest success was also a cover song written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans of the wonderful Welsh group Badfinger. The song in "Without You."  
Badfinger itself did very nice job with their song:
but Nilsson's cover was as if he injected steroids:

So Nilsson's two greatest successes were with someone else's songs.

Conversely, (another irony) is that of the songs he'd written, the most successful was released by someone ese:

While Nilsson's own, and superior, version languished.

Nilsson, after his rise following his first success with "Everybody's Talking" only got better until his second success with "Without You" which was featured on his 1971 album, "Nilsson Schmilsson."   From this point on, it was all downhill.   Those demons that possessed Harry Nilsson led him on a path of hedonism and self-destruction.  His ultra-excessive cigarette habit, his continually indulged alcoholism, heroin and cocaine use eroded his ability to produce great music and finally even helped destroy his unique singing talent.  
Nilsson never, ever, performed before a live audience.  One of the remarkable testaments to his talent was that he achieved success without performing or touring.  But in September 1992, Ring Starr convinced him to perform "Without You" on stage at Caesar's Palace. Nilsson's voice had deteriorated by then, so Todd Rundgren helped fill in the high notes.  A few months later, February 1993, Nilsson had a massive heart attack which was the start of a downhill slide towards his death less than a year later, in January 1994.

To me, Nilsson's greatest songs were those inspired by the tragic elements of his life, such his father's abandonment of him as a child, his failed relationships and his insecurities.

Here are what I consider among his best:

This last song isn't sad at all.  it's been mentioned that Good Old Desk (GOD) was Nilsson's search for spiritual meaning.