This Day in Pop Music History (Harry Nilsson, Golden Voice of ‘Without You,’ Dies)

Jan. 15, 1994— Harry Nilsson, a singer-songwriter of rare versatility and virtuosity, died at age 52 in his sleep at his Agoura Hills, Calif., home, two decades after his manic lifestyle ruined his voice, shortened his career and wrecked his health.

I first became aware of this musician’s work through watching TV as a child around 1970. An ABC animated “Movie of the Week” called The Point, narrated by Dustin Hoffman, featured stories and music created by Nilsson, with the musician singing his own songs. Moreover, the theme of the Bill Bixby sitcom The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, “Best Friend,” was an adaptation of a song from Nilsson’s Aerial Ballet LP, “Girlfriend.” 

A self-taught musician who learned piano chords from rock ‘n’ rollers who performed at L.A.’s Paramount Theater, where he worked as assistant manager, Nilsson was soon building a solid catalog of his own work (enough to eventually lead him to being recognized as one of Rolling Stone Magazine’s “100 Greatest Songwriters”), notably “I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City,” “Jump Into the Fire,” “Gotta Get Up,” “You’re Breakin’ My Heart,” and “One” (soon covered by Three Dog Night). 

Ironically, though, Nilsson achieved his greatest commercial success as an interpreter of other’s songs, especially with Fred Neal’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” (featured in the Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy) and Badfinger’s “Without You.”

Even now, it is only dimly appreciated how innovative Nilsson could be. More than a decade before Carly Simon and Linda Ronstadt, entering their “legacy years” as performers, tried out the Great American Songbook, Nilsson was experimenting with this rich (and, by now, neglected) mine of music with A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night. Furthermore, he compensated for his stage anxiety by taping a forerunner of MTV with his tune “Coconuts.”

John Lennon may have helped make Nilsson’s career with an enthusiastic endorsement of his talent (“Nilsson for President!”), but also helped ruin it with shared drug-and-alcohol-fueled hijinx several years later. 

When the ex-Beatle and wife Yoko Ono had a trial separation in the mod-1970s, Lennon entered a period often referred to as his “lost weekend.” The phrase only began to capture the intense, incomprehensible benders on which Lennon took his friend Nilsson —misadventures that led another Nilsson friend, songwriter Jimmy Webb, to describe their “mutually destructive aerial ballet” in his memoir, The Cake and the Rain.

Even more insane than their night-owl antics (Lennon narrowly escaped charges of assaulting a female photographer) were their studio sessions for Nilsson’s Pussycats LP, produced by Lennon. 

At one point, Webb, alarmed to hear Nilsson croak out a greeting and to see him vomiting blood into Webb’s kitchen sink, asked what had happened to his vocal chords. The laughing response: “I left it on the microphone.” Nilsson’s magnificent singing voice was never the same again.

Nilsson’s career was shorter than it should have been, but he made the most of his short window of time. I love this quotation from songwriter and admirer Randy Newman on this talent: “He had a gift for melody. Which is a rare, inexplicable talent to have. People like McCartney have it, Schubert, Elton John has it. Harry had that gift."