The concept of "pairing," where one identifies flavors that go well together, commonly applies to food and drink. Music is just the same, working with whatever is going on in front of you, like singing “Try a Little Tenderness” while cooking chuck roast. In Album Pairings, I note the charms of a great album, then recommend particular activities to pair such albums to. All album pairings have been tested first-hand by the author, but does not necessarily promise the same level of joy for the reader. Also included are hypothetical bad pairings, because no album or song works in every context and, if paired poorly, can ruin both song(s) and event at hand. Such well-known examples include singing “The Sweater Song” while wearing a sweater and breaking up with someone (don’t try it!) and shouting the lyrics to “Rocket Man” while in the middle of heated negotiations with North Korea.
Nilsson Schmilsson by Harry Nilsson (Released November 1971)
One nice thing about existing is you don’t know all the things that do exist, therefore there’s always more great things to discover. This is different than exploring things you know exist, and will “get around to it eventually,” just after one more YouTube video about how to ____. As philosopher and war criminal Donald Rumsfeld once famously said in a 2002 press briefing:
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones."
Harry Nilsson fit into the latter category so expertly that, if there was a contest, he’d win all three medals. A singer with a three and a half octave range, a songwriter who combined Lennon’s sardonic rock edge with McCartney’s melodic wonder with his own American Tin Pan alley soul, Harry was in a class of his own, and one of the premiere masters of pop songcraft in the latter half of the twentieth century. He is, for the most part, a forgotten figure in the wider pop lexicon. There have been concerted efforts to heighten his status, and appearances in popular media such as Russian Doll have increased his notoriety, but he remains, for the most part, a cult figure on the edges of popular awareness.
Nilsson Schmilsson, his best and most popular album, begins as a challenge. Think of early 1970’s albums by serious artists like Blue by Joni Mitchell or What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye. These are serious works by serious artists, and while there is joy, power, spirituality, a good case can be made that, with the exception of Randy Newman, goofiness was low on the commercial radar. Now let us look at Nilsson Schmilsson. There is, first and foremost, the title. Nilsson Schmilsson. Saying a word, then using the same word while adding the consonant “schm” as a rhyme is as primal a flippant shrug as any, and will be until long after we have patio furniture on the Moon. The yellow “Schmillson” text is the only thing with color, emblazoned over an iconic black-and-white photo. And what a photo.
There is a man on the cover wearing a bathrobe in a kitchen. His face is a frazzled deer in the headlights. There is a blur in his face but nowhere else in the shot, like his aura leapt out from his body into the lenses and muddled the shot. He looks hot and cold simultaneously. It is the gaze searing through the hangover.
Nilsson’s career could be encapsulated in that cover. He sang beautifully, until he no longer could, about both the beautiful and perverse. Neither celebratory or gritty, the perverseness was a turn of phrase, an acknowledgment that life sure could be crummy. They were smirks, darkness in the fields of tulips, a recognition of the pain of life while the band played on.
He knew the material. Harry Edward Nilsson III was born to poverty in Brooklyn to an alcoholic mother and a father who abandoned both of them when Harry was three. He only finished ninth grade after hitchhiking across the country at the age of fourteen to California. There, he worked as a bank computer operator at night and hustled for a music career by day. When the head of the bank found out Nilsson lacked even a high school diploma, Nilsson argued he was the only one who could run the computers. He was right. He was the only one. They let him stay.
He played gigs around L.A. and sold songs to publishing companies. In 1963 he helped co-wrote a song for Little Richard. "My!” Little Richard exclaimed, "You sing good for a white boy!” He signed with RCA Victor in 1966 and released his debut album, Pandemonium Shadow Show, the following year. One song, “Cuddly Toy,” was covered by the Monkees for their very 1967-sounding fourth album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. The very 60’s, loving sounds of “Cuddy Toy”- its melody, its jauntiness, and its singing- are at complete odds with its harsh, flippant lyrics:
La la la la ... You're not only cuddly toy that was ever enjoyed by any boy You're not the only choo-choo train that was left out in the rain The day after Santa came You're not the only cherry delight that was left out in the night And gave up without a fight You're not the only cuddly toy that was ever enjoyed by any boy
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. hit number one on the Billboard 200 and Nilsson pocketed 40,000 dollars. He quit the bank for good.
Pandemonium Shadow Show contains a cover of the Beatles song, “You Can’t Do That,” but cover is the wrong word altogether. In referencing over eighteen other Beatles songs in a little over two minutes, it could be argued to be the first ever mash-up. At a Beatles press conference in 1968, both John Lennon and Paul McCartney were asked separately who were their favorite group.
“Nilsson!” they both responded.
Sales for Nilsson’s work immediately shot up, and in 1968 he released his sophomore album Ariel Ballet, which contained two songs you may immediately recognize: “Everybody’s Talkin’,” a cover of a Fred O’Neil song that later would later be featured in the classic film Midnight Cowboy and snag Nilsson his first Grammy, and “One,” a song covered by Three Dog Night.
Nilsson releases kept coming. Harry in 1969 sold well and received critical praise, Nilsson Sings Newman, only received praise. There are parallels to Nilsson and Newman’s styles, far too much to go into here. I recommend the piece “LA Weirdos” by Mike Powell for interested parties.
Then came The Point! An animated film broadcasted in early ‘71 on ABC with help from legendary animation director Fred Wolf, and a self-produced album of the same name. One song, “Me and My Arrow,” reached 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. It was later memorably sampled by Blackalicious on the title track of their 2002 album Blazing Arrow.
So, Nilsson’s stock was way, way high by the time he made Nilsson Schmilsson. So was his drug and alcohol usage. You can see where this is going. It’s where it always goes. More on that later.
Nilsson Schmilsson is simultaneously Nilsson’s best album, his best-selling, and critically acclaimed. There is a generous, extravagant quality to the recording. Lush mics, great instrumentation. It’s a pure 70’s studio album in that way, full of little ear candies and perfect fidelity. It’s the sound of money at time when the industry had a whole lot of it.
The opening song, “Gotta Get Up,” starts with a c note hit repeatedly. There’s a good reason the piano itself sounds familiar. Parts of Nilsson Schmillson were recorded at Trident Studios in London, home to a handmade Bechstein grand piano over 100 years old with very stiff hammers. This forced the player to really have to hit the keys. It’s quite possibly the most important instrument in rock and roll’s history, with songs featuring its distinct tone including “Hey Jude” by the Beatles, “Life on Mars” by David Bowie, “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John, and “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen.
The Trident Studios piano
“Gotta Get Up” is far less grand. Barely over two minutes, the song is a jaunty lament for the process of aging and creeping responsibility with verses, just a series of choruses and bridges:
Gotta get up, gotta get out Gotta get home before the mornin' comes What if I'm late? Gotta big date Gotta get home before the sun comes up
Up and away, got a big day Sorry, can't stay, I gotta run, run, yeah Gotta get home, pick up the phone I gotta let the people know I'm gonna be late
One bridge enters, lamenting about how there was a time we used to dance until a quarter to ten, how we never thought it end, how we used to carry on and drink and do the rock and roll. “We never thought we’d grow older,” sings Harry, “we never thought we’d grow cold, but now…”
And back to the chorus.
In some ways “Gotta Get Up” is a perfect representation of Nilsson’s worldview in miniature. That line, about growing cold in the face of responsibilities, in haunting in retrospect to the damage wrought by Nilsson’s later two decades of partying and alcoholism. If other rock stars partied because of youth and hedonistic image, later quitting from choice or from all choices ending, Nilsson was of an entirely different breed. All addiction is democratic in that it picks whoever it chooses, and Nilsson, who’s mother had been an awful drunk, took up the mantle.
There is the Tin Pan Alley nature, the simple lyrics that owe very little to Bob Dylan. Out of all his 60’s peers, Nilsson seems to be the least affected by Dylan’s massive influence interms of word choice and structures. His is the world of Brooklyn and standards, of 1950’s rock and Swedish folktales. After another chorus repeats, about needing to the leave the (probably) bar to go to work he knows he’ll already be late to, the second bridge enters with an out-of-place, crude and seemingly random aside about a sailor’s relationship with a hapless woman:
Down by the sea, she knew a sailor who had been to war She never even knew a sailor before She never even knew his name He'd come to town and he would pound her for a couple of days And then he'd sail across the bubbly waves And those were happier days, but now
That’s all purely autobiographical. Harry’s dad, Harry Edward Nilsson, Jr., served in the Navy during WWII from 1942 to late 1945, where he was discharged and soon abandoned his family. This was a traumatic event for Harry, the black cloud that followed him the rest of his life and, while he rarely discussed it in person, found its way into many songs.
“Well, in 1941,” sang Harry on a previous album, “the happy father had a son/ and by 1944, the father walked right out the door.”
The next song starts with strumming guitar. We hear a vehicle starter struggle, revs increasing, until, finally, the miracle of life. The car drives off. Nilsson’s voice comes in, double tracked: “Driving along you can see all the people/ Who seem to have nothing to say to each other/ Each day they grow farther and farther away from each other.” It’s a very pretty, Beatlesque tune. Harry loved the Beatles.
PART TWO COMING SOON
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