Everybody’s Talkin’
HARRY NILSSON’S career was forever tied, for better or worse, to the Beatles.
The good was often wonderful. Born Harry Nelson, Nilsson was a bank clerk in Los Angeles when he started writing songs, selling some – none of them hits – to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the men who wrote “Hound Dog”.
Nilsson entered pop consciousness in 1968 when, at the launch of the Beatles’ company Apple Corps, John Lennon was asked who his favourite group was. He replied “Nilsson.” He may have been teasing about the group part, but it wasn’t a flip remark. Lennon had been given a copy of Nilsson’s breakthrough 1967 album Pandemonium Shadow Show, and was so impressed he listened to it non-stop for two days.
For several
