LOSST NILSSON
Featuring an idiosyncratically spelled title that evokes memories of his 1977 LP Knnillssonn, singer and songwriter Harry Nilsson has returned with Losst and Founnd, his first album of new music in 40 years. That’s an amazing feat for a man who passed away in 1994, but it’s in keeping with his unpredictable nature.
Harry Nilsson had a curious career. He got his start as a songwriter, and went on to write songs that would become hits for The Monkees (“Cuddly Toy”) and Three Dog Night (“One”). Other Nilsson songs were recorded by a diverse list of artists that includes Glen Campbell, Blood Sweat & Tears, Ella Fitzgerald, Aimee Mann, The Walkmen, Jellyfish and many others.
But he’s perhaps best known as a singer: a tenor with a three-and-a-half octave range, Nilsson applied his considerable talents to songs written by others. His cover of Badfinger’s “Without You” was a worldwide smash, and his reading of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” was immortalized in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. A generation grew up hearing him sing “Best Friend,” the theme song from the TV series The Courtship of Eddie’s Father.
The restlessly creative Nilsson also had a modest acting career, and his children’s fable was a highly successful animated feature. He had a starring role in 1974’s (a film produced by costar and close friend Ringo Starr); the movie may have been a commercial and critical disaster, but by all accounts everyone involved had great fit in with Nilsson’s growing reputation for overindulgence. His vocal cords hemorrhaged during the making of his 1974 LP (produced by his pal John Lennon); it would take years for Nilsson’s voice to recover fully. By the time he died of a heart attack in 1994 at the age of 52, many of Harry Nilsson’s achievements had faded from the public’s consciousness; too often he would be recalled chiefly not as a composer, singer and musician but merely as one of the “Hollywood Vampires,” as a carousing comrade of John Lennon during the former Beatle’s infamous “lost weekend” in L.A.
