(2006) My favorite song in this wonderfully touching documentary by writer/director John Scheinfeld, other than those by Nilsson, is "Harry" from Eric Idle (composer and performer). The rise and fall of Harry Nilsson, pop singer and songwriter, ironically best known for singing Fred Neil's tune, "Eveybody's Talkin'" in the film Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, began in 1941 on Father's Day.

Abandoned three years later by his dad - a reprise ("walked out the door") he'd perform thirty years later with his second wife Diane and son Zak - he grew up tasting poverty with his alcoholic mother, taken in by his aunt and uncle and cousins in Brooklyn, before setting out on his own at 15 for Los Angeles. Working in a bank during the day and writing songs at night, the eighteen-year-old dropout (expecting to be discovered) got a job writing songs for a publishing firm.

His first commercial hit was "Cuddly Toy" for The Monkees; next Three Dog Night performed his "One (Is the Loneliest Number)." After going to England, where he became a mate of the Beatles, he abandoned his producer Rick Jarrard and teamed up with Richard Perry for his masterpiece album, Nilsson Schmilsson. The extraordinary cut "Without You" (which puts me in mind of "The Air That I Breathe" as performed by the Hollies) displays Nilsson's "soft, velvety" voice (Yoko Ono), with a Paul McCartney sound quality, climbing to the summit without failing.

Friend and fellow singer/songwriter Jimmy Webb says that Harry was "the best singer of my generation." John Lennon said: "Nilsson's my favorite group." (Nilsson supplied his own backup harmonies.) A "musical poet" of whimsical lyrics and experimental melodist with a gift for melodies who "pushed the envelope" with an amazing variety of compositions - he also wrote the animated musical The Point for children and songs for the soundtrack of Popeye (with Robin Williams in his first feature film) - but Nilsson never performed live or toured to promote his albums.

"Most insecure person I've ever known," Diane says of her former husband, who otherwise was athletic, cheerful, fun to be around, while others concur he was "terrified" of being on the stage. He could be normal and sweet one moment and eccentric or nasty the next.

Following the huge success of Nilsson Schmilsson, Harry retreated into a self-indulgent, self-destructive vortex of alcoholism, drugs, and cigarettes: "I'm going down to the bottom of the hole." Composer Perry Botkin Jr, who'd known Nilsson from his earliest days in LA, believes Harry ("I'd rather be dead than wet my bed") developed a death wish. Yet along the way - raising hell all the way down - he left behind further evidence of his talent: Nilsson Sings Newman (singing from Randy Newman's songbook), Son of Schmilsson (his divorce inspiring "You've broken my heart/ You're tearing it apart/ So fuck you" - also selected by friends to sing at his gravesite), A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (a collection of standards), and Pussy Cats (collaboration with Lennon during which Harry blew out his vocal chords).

In the aftermath of RCA's buying out his contract from the chaos of Duit on Mon Dei and Lennon's assassination, Nilsson committed himself to gun control, abandoning his craft. In 1973 he'd met in an ice-cream parlor and wed (Ringo Starr as best man) then 19-year-old Una to whom he remained devoted, spending time with their children and resurrecting his finances from bankruptcy (result of embezzlement by a trusted accountant). He died, voice broken and body bloated, of heart failure on January 15th, 1994.

On-camera interviews include Van Dyke Parks, Micky Dolenz, Brian Wilson, Paul Williams, Al Kooper, Gerry Beckley, Terry Gilliam, and the Smothers Brothers.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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