Nilsson Mania!

As of late, I have been rekindling my obsession with Harry Nilsson. The little blurb about Curtains in The Stranger got me back on the Nilsson track. The other day, I was saying to Melissa that, without a doubt, Nilsson is the artist who most influences the songwriting of the band. Matt and I are card-carrying disciples of Harry. In assembling all of our latest material for this next album, one thing keeps coming back in, and that is Nilsson. In going through my own material as of late, I have noticed that most of the piano work is directly inspired by those early albums of his. Matt has been making huge strides in learning the piano, and his piano driven work is very Nilsson as well. Just what is it about his body of work that is inspiring us so much? Let's dissect...

When Lennon said that Harry was the Beatles' favorite singer/songwriter, or (I'm bastardizing the quote) the Beatle across the water, he was dead on in his analysis. Nilsson was a one man Beatles in so many ways. The huge difference in their styles was that Nilsson embraced more of pop music's past than the Beatles. He added a certain panache and grace to '60s pop by maintaining the sound of tin pan alley and vaudeville. Even up to the last albums of his career (Knillssonn anyone?), he kept refining the sound of pop while still viewing it through the lens of popular music from the early half of the 20th century. While not our intention initially, Curtains For You has become something of an extension of Harry's skewed view of pop music. When people ask me what kind of music we play, the response is always "...umm, something like The Beatles, but different." The more I think about it, it should be " Something like The Beatles, along the lines of what Nilsson did."

Out of all of this, I am reminded of the fact that his final album has never been released. He finished recording the vocals the day before he died, and we still don't have it. Also, we are missing huge segments of his music on CD. His catalog reminds me of the way that Badfinger's music has been treated. We need someone who is passionate about the music of said artists to step in and arrange for proper re-releases with bonus tracks and liner notes for ALL of their albums. Sure, a couple of albums from each have been done this way, but there needs to be a proper re-release of these: