September 9, 2021 • 33 mins
Was Harry Nilsson a bad influence on John Lennon? Or was John Lennon a bad influence on Harry Nilsson? Harry ponders this very question as he takes a very inebriated stroll down a memory lane. It’s on this journey that John and Harry consume far too many Brandy Alexanders, Harry tries to get Paul McCartney to take a horse tranquilizer, Harry literally shreds his vocal cords, and John makes a heroic stand at RCA Records.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Blood on the Tracks is a production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. John Lennon was a musical genius
and one of the most beloved cultural figures of the
twentieth century. His songs inspired dreamers to imagine, his search
for the truth gave power to the people. But some
thought he dreamed too much. Others thought he was too powerful.
(00:23):
So he was followed, he was threatened, he was declared
a danger to the United States, and in night he
was assassinated. This is his story told by his so
called friends. This is Special Agent Jim Steele with the
(00:45):
Federal Bureau of Investigation work in case number double own
mind dash zero eight dash zero four one. Case subject
is Lennon, John Winston, Oh No. This information pertains to
a period end in June four in view subject as
Nielsen Harry Edward the third interview number one dash zero
five Dash seven six one dash recall number one December.
(01:19):
Was I about influence on John Lennon or was he
a bad influence on me? Take your pick. I didn't
force any foul tasting liquids down his throat. In my eyes,
I was the one hanging out with them, the Beatles,
And you can commit murder with that group. I thought, well,
if they drink, I'll drink. And at the same time
(01:42):
they're thinking, well, Harry is this big drinker, so we'll
live like Harry. We laughed like hell all night long
and not know what we were laughing about. Ringo would
call me the next day and asked, can you remember
one thing? One thing that we laughed about last night?
It became a problem in all our lives. I think
(02:04):
when you get to self pity and suicidal thoughts, you know,
I'm no good, nobody likes me, who who? You have
no friends except for the ones who are drinking with you,
and you simply cannot see things for the way they
truly are. I think that's when you quit. That's when
you stop, look back, take stock, and realize that you've
(02:27):
left all this blood on the tracks. Chapter five, John
(02:53):
Lennon and Harry Nilson. I'll admit it. I wasn't the
best influence on John Lennon. Influence on John Lennon. I'm
(03:15):
not about to take responsibility for all the crazy shit
he did in nine four, but you know I didn't
exactly help the situations. When you spent the night drinking
your weight and Brandy Alexander's There's really nothing you can
do to help any situation, not a thing me. I
didn't know it at the time, but I was on
(03:36):
the cusp of going from good to bad to worse.
That's a well documented fact. I had some solid successes
with Everybody's Talking Coconut Without You, Nielsen Schmilsen was nominated
for some Grammys, even one, but I didn't make it
easy to keep the hits coming. Look, man, I didn't
tour or form live, and I wasn't exactly David Cassidy
(04:00):
peering out at you on my album covers with acute
smile and feathered hair. In fact, I looked frumpy as
hell in my fucking bathrobe on the one that we
called Nilsen Schmilsen, which is also a great big fuck
you to the very notion of album titles. While on
the subject of fuck you, when I want to gram
(04:21):
you for without You, I immediately followed that record up
with a song that said fuck you in the chorus
and you simply cannot see things for the way they
truly are. And then I followed that with a little
touch of Schmilsen in the Night, an album entirely of
standards from the Great American Songbook. I wasn't exactly gunning
for sales or radio play, more like fueling up for
(04:44):
self destruction life, Am I right? Give it a few
years and things will funk right up, just nicely on
their own. It was just the Beatles gave that press
conference in New York when they formed Apple Records. Some
reporter asked them who their favorite American singer was, and
John and Paul both answered Nielsen. My phone rang off
(05:07):
the hook for days. You couldn't ask for a better press.
It was better than airplane, better than a decent record review.
And then before I knew it, I was everywhere, not
as a famous celebrity. Understand many people knew me simply
as Nielsen. Since I didn't do the promotional circuit, there
was a bit of mystery as to who or what
(05:28):
I really was. But I mean I was everywhere. I
was in the studio when the Beatles cut Piggies. I
recommended this new songwriter, Randy Newman, and even performed an
entire album of his songs. I watched Carly Simon as
she tracked her vocal for Your So Vain, while Mick
Jagger sang back up. I'm not overstating it when I
(05:48):
say that the Beatles made my career, but I didn't
need a little help from my friends to unmake it.
I could do that on my own, just fine. My
point is life, man, you go from receiving public accolades
from the Beatles of all people, to what some would
reasonably call a low point just a few years later,
(06:09):
when you're hungover, eyes blood shot, offering angel dust to
the same people who once sang your praises no ship.
I asked Paul McCartney if he wanted to smoke some
angel dust, or maybe it was a horse tranquilizer. I
was at the beach house in Santa Monica, the one
(06:31):
that John rented and we were all crashing at while
we were making Pussycats. John was passed out in bed
with May and then Paul and Linda just showed up
in four Who is the last person you would expect
to show up at a house that John Lennon is renting.
Paul McCartney, right fucking a man, Because at this point,
(06:52):
the word on the street is that John and Paul
hate each other's guts. They're suing each other they're taking
cheap shots at each other on their soul albums. But
after Yoko had sent John to Los Angeles on this
soul searching walk about or whatever the hell it was,
when Yoko finally decided she was ready to welcome John
back into her life and to try to repair their
marriage and you know, start over. Yoko is the one
(07:16):
who went directly to Paul and asked Paul to play
the role of intermediary peacekeeper. So Paul flies out to
l A and hunts John down at the Santa Monica
Beach House. John sleeping. It's late morning or early afternoon,
and I'm drinking and smoking whatever I can get my
hands on because my mouth tastes like a dumpster. My
(07:36):
head's on fire from whatever we did the night before,
and there's all kinds of stuff floating around grass coke PCP.
I asked Paul if he wants some angel dust while
he's waiting for John to wake up. He goes, what
is it? And I say, I don't know, man, Maybe
(07:57):
it's a horse tranquilizer. I mean, honestly, some and told
me it was angel does, But what the hell do
I know? And so Paul asks, is it fun. I
thought long and hard about that. It was a fair question.
I think at that point I knew what we were
doing was not sustainable, that it was destructive, that it
was wrong, became a problem with our lives. But of
(08:21):
course every day we just started right up again, drinking
and drugging to drown out those sorts of thoughts. But
this was still early enough in the day, and I
could respond with some truth. NAH might tell Paul it's
really not fun at all. Paul passed on the angel dust.
Once John woke up, he was surprised to see Paul
(08:42):
waiting for him. I honestly don't know how long it
had been since they had seen each other. Paul passed
on Yoko's message that John should come back to New York,
but he needed to get his own place at first quarter.
Send her flowers, take her out, really make an effort,
and of course John did it. He played by the
rules because John loved Joko. I truly believe that. And
(09:06):
it was John's first steps out of the haze we
had all found ourselves in. I even went with him
to New York, where, for the second time in my life,
John Lennon had a profound effect on my career. But first,
before John accepted Yoko's invitation to head home, there was
unfinished business. Unfinished monkey business. That is to put in
(09:28):
Beatles terms, because when you look into the future and
see nothing but calm, domestic bliss, you tend to realize
that you have limited time left to break bad. It
(10:10):
was spring of seventy Burbank Cocaine was going around a
wired his ship in that recording studio, me John, Paul, Linda, Jesse,
Ed Davis on the guitar, the Great Bobby Keys on saxophone,
May Hang on tambourine, and Stevie Wonder on keys. Paul
(10:30):
played ringos, drums and ringos. Pissed the next day when
he found out Bobby Keys was probably coming up for
air after partying with the Stones. But man, I have
no idea how Stevie Wonder, of all people ended up
in there with us, he was probably the only one
who stayed straight for the entire session. He passed on
grass Man. He just said no to John Lennon, if
(10:53):
you want a snort, Steve, it's going around. It seems
like the right thing to do. Since Paul was in
town and he and John were talking and all, let's
all go into the studio and have a laugh. You
would think with a lineup like that, it would have
just killed a supergroup. That's what they call those things
(11:17):
back in the day. Can you imagine what something like
that would have sold if it was released. But the
results were really more of a nightmare, sloppy playing, sloppy singing, mangled,
bungled covers. We recorded it on tape while we were
in there, but none of us was that idiotic to
actually release it, so it circulated as a rumor and
(11:40):
then as a bootleg for years. It's too bad too,
because it's the first and last time that John and
Paul played together between when the Beatles broke up and
John was shot. A missed opportunity. Really, none of us
had the mental stability in that moment to recognize that.
Of course, well maybe Stevie wonder that studio in Burbank
(12:04):
was one of the studios we were using to make Pussycats,
my album that John was producing. Well, Rise Up, Get
Yourself Harry Nielsen's new album Pussycats, produced by John Lennon.
Nielsen's latest Pussycats on our CIA Records and Tapes. At
the time, we were making it. We were calling it
strange pussies. Hey, our Cia had let me put funk
(12:28):
you in the chorus of a song. I figured it
was worth a shot. Me ow. And now people used
to call my voice boyish and angelic. They said I
was a delightful mimic, and that my voice seemed to
spring fully formed from this blanky, dorky body that was
simply a vessel for this beautiful gift from God. But
(12:49):
when John and I were making strange pussies, my voice
was anything but angelic. I don't know if it was
the bottomless brandy Alexander's or the cocaine or the cigarettes.
I don't know if it was the angel dust or
horse tranquilizer or whatever the funk that ship was. I
(13:11):
don't think it was the L S D. Because I've
never heard of that stuff messing with your throat. My
neighbor Timothy Leary told me there was absolutely nothing wrong
with acid. But my voice was getting worse. Gravel it
horse like stretched leather man. I couldn't hit the upper register.
(13:32):
I had reached for it, and it was like a
shelf just out of reach. I tried over and over again.
I tried John called for another take and another, and
I kept on trying. I kept trying to get there,
and he shimply, can't see things for the way they
truly are. Maybe I was trying to impress John, show
(13:53):
him that I was really as good as he thought
I was. And as soon as I pushed it as
far as I could possibly push it, I fasted at
the blood They're on the back of my throat. I
coughed and blood splattered all over the mic. The doctor
said my vocal cords had hemorrhaged. He told me to
stopped talking for two weeks, that I had to write
(14:14):
everything down. That's when you stop look back. But of
course that was easier said than done, because when you're
driving John Lennon around Los Angeles and the Volkswagen Cure Wagon,
this military style jeep I owned, you basically had to
scream to be heard above the rumble of the engine
(14:34):
and the howl of the wind. There's a crazy new
thing from Volkswagen, and that comes with the top up
the top down. I always had the top down. It
was like having a conversation on a fucking runway. People
called it the thing. And I showed for John any
chance I could get where to tonight John influence on
(14:59):
John Lennon. Yeah, shall we see if there's trouble to
be had tonight John, Another brandy Alexander John. Maybe I
did try a little too hard to impress John. It
was well past midnight one night when just out of
the blue, John told me he wished he had a
couple of girls and a handful of acid. It's like
(15:22):
two three in the morning, and you're just now having
this burning desire. I had a hunch that I could deliver.
I called up a friend of mine, a girl I
figured would be game. She just happened to be awake,
and she happened to have a friend with her, and
that friend happened to have some asset on her, like
(15:43):
it was meant to be friend. So I drove John
over her place. In the thing, we all dropped acid,
and then we all baled for days, literally days. I
think it was the acid that sustained us. You ever
bald for two days straight on LSD. I don't think
I even knew my fucking name after that. My body
(16:05):
was as ravaged as my voice was barely keeping it together.
Strange pussies was getting stranger. I think that's where you quit.
At some point I just looked over at John and
told him I needed a break. I asked him when
he was leaving for New York, and then I asked
if I could go with him. We'll be right back.
(16:28):
After this, word word word, John Lennon saved my ass.
It happened like this. Our CIA Records didn't want me anymore.
I hadn't made a hit in Ages and after that
(16:48):
album Standards, which r c A saw as a turkey
top brass at the label just wanted to cut their
losses and move on without me. I think when you
get to self pity and suicide thoughts. My contract was
expiring and r c A we're not quiet about unceremoniously
passing on the renewal option. And then they heard about
my voice getting out. You know, the one thing that
(17:11):
I had that could potentially make them money. They were
gonna bail. Nobody likes me and pussycats, which is what
we were now calling strange pussies. Well, I don't know, man,
that was destined to mold away in some dusty vault,
like the tapes of that wild recording session with Paul
and Stevie Wonder all I'd wanted to do was make
(17:34):
a record with John Lennon. Was a bad influence on
John Lennon? Was he a bad influencelfhy It was one
thing to play on Ringo's records, and Ringo had played
on mine, but John was a tougher nut for me
to crack. Ringo and I were mates, but there was
something unknowable about John. This is gonna sound weird since
(17:54):
we spent so much time out on the town together,
but it's true. But John was John. He was a walking,
talking myth and icon, and not just a beatle but
a cultural force. This was never more obvious than when
he moved back to New York City upon Yoko's invitation. Now,
(18:15):
John and Yoko didn't immediately get back together. People think
this last weekend period of his was a few months
out in l A. No, the last Weekend lasted something
like eighteen months and spanned his time in l A
and New York City. When he got back East, he
and May got their own place at Sutton Place over
on East fifty second. Weird that John was courting Yoko
(18:37):
but still carrying on with May. None of my business,
I suppose. And in New York John became a legend
again among the city's night clubs. The guy was a
social butterfly man. He was a regular at Ashley's, a
disco club at Fifth Avenue and thirteenth Street, where the
staff gave him the royal treatment, drinks on the house
(19:00):
drugs gratis. They let him stay after hours, smoke whatever
was left, and snort the rest. My lord, he didn't
tell me personally about all the times he visited that
brothel on twenty th Street, but I read later that
he was a regular. It's crazy to think someone who's
famous as John Lennon, and the city is big and
as loud as New York, that he could keep those
(19:21):
brothel visits hush hush for so many years. Even now,
I'm sure some people don't want to believe that it's true.
There's a lot about our heroes that we don't want
to know about. But here's one thing about John that's true,
and this gets back to my story. John was loyal.
He knew that our c A was preparing to dump me,
and he put his name in his career on the
(19:43):
line to go to bad for me. That was in
the spring of nine. We've been out all night and
the morning was cruel as usual. I don't know if
I could have gone to sleep if I wanted to.
I was telling John about how I reached out to
our CIA to get a new contract signed and how
(20:03):
they were continuing to ignore me, and it just lit
this fire under his ass. Let's go over there, John said, where.
I asked him our CIA records. John responded, let's go
on over to Rockefeller Center and take a meeting with
Kenneth Glancy. The get we'll get him to resign you. Now,
(20:26):
Kenneth Glancy was perhaps the root of my problem. He
had been recently appointed as the new head of our CIA,
and he didn't like me. The guy before him, Rocko
lagan Estra. Now he liked me. John didn't give a fuck.
It was mid morning, We've been up all night, and
he had a plan to save my ass. So we
(20:46):
went over to Rockefeller Plaza up to our CIA offices,
both of us wearing dark sunglasses and hats to conceal
whatever the night before it done to us, though I'm
sure the smell of us announced our presence a mile away.
John walked right up to the receptionist and said, I'm
John Lennon. I'm here with Harry Nilson and we need
to speak with Kenneth Glancy. The girl practically hyperventilated. The
(21:11):
look in her eyes said that she couldn't believe that
John Lennon was talking to her. I still didn't know
what John was planning, what he could say to this guy. Besides,
I'm John Lennon and you should resign Nielsen. He could
use his fame and legend to get free drinks and
drugs at Ashley's. He could make an eighteen year old
receptionist blushed just by smiling. But these corporate music guys
(21:34):
are fucking stone man. Obviously, even I was underestimating John
at the moment. So we were ushered inside this lavish
office overlooking Rockefeller Plaza. Someone shoved cigars and glasses of
brandy in our hands. We sat down in these pristine
(21:55):
leather chairs across from the head of our c a.
John looked this guy dead in the eyes and says, look,
you've got two good artists on this piece of ship label,
Elvis Presley and Harry Nilson. Obviously at this point he'd
yet to befriend my labelmate David Bowie. But I digress.
Glancey raised his finger like he wanted to beg to differ,
(22:17):
but John told him he wasn't done yet. And then
John pulled the ace out of his back pocket. He
told Glancy that if our ci A resigned me for
five million dollars, then John would sign with our c
A too, and he'd do it cheap. Glance he couldn't
pick up the phone fast enough. He should have known better,
(22:38):
because who knows what kind of contract John was tied
up in at the moment. John didn't really have the
knowledge or the ability to be offering himself to any
label at that moment, but Glance he bought it, book
line and sinc. Within minutes, the receptionist walked that contract
inside the office and we signed on the bottom line
for five million. Did John ever intend to sign with
(23:00):
darci A? Hell no, So we went through the motions
of the whole thing, shaking that dope's hand as we
left the office. Yes, yes, very good. I'll have my
people call your people, quite right, great things. All that
just smoke smoke right up that corporate bastard's ass. That's
(23:20):
how John Lennon saved me. And he wasn't bullshitting either.
He thought that Elvis and I were the only two
notable artists on that label. And then Elvis died just
two years later, slumped over on his porcelain throne. He's
got no friends except for the ones who were drinking
with you. I remember that day clearly because I immediately
(23:41):
thought of John and what he had said to Kenneth
Glancy at our c A about me and Elvis, and
how I owed everything to him. That's when you stopped
look back stock. I owed him my career when I
first started, and then I owed him again when it
looked like I had sucked everything up beyond repair. And
I'm not sure that I was ever in the right
(24:02):
state of mind at that time properly communicate to John
just what all that meant to me? Yeah, Auguste. As
(24:38):
far as John Lennon was concerned, Elvis Presley had died
years ago, Marty eight, to be exact. That was the
day that Elvis put rock and roll on hold to
join the United States Army in Memphis, Tennessee. That's when
they killed him. A disillusion John said. The rest was
a living death. There was time when Elvis had been
(25:01):
John's religion. John was nearly struck dumb when he first
heard Heartbreak Hotel as a teenager, Elvis was everything. Elvis
was it. Elvis Presley showed John Lennon what he would be.
But later, after the Beatles had broken up and after
he had returned from the service, Elvis turned his back
on John when he said what he really thought about
(25:22):
the liverpoody and lads who had once idolized him. He
told these things directly to President Richard Nixon. He sold
out John as an anti American rabble rouser. He said
John abused to drugs. He said John planted conspiratorial ideas
in the minds of America's impressionable youth. Of course, the
irony of that conversation is that the king of rock
(25:45):
and roll could have been describing himself. If Nixon didn't
know it at the time, he likely figured it out
on August sixte n seventy seven, when Elvis Aaron Presley
was found dead on his toilet, his bloated body loaded
on us in his legacy one of filling the impressionable
young minds of American youth with hip twisting, naughty thoughts.
(26:07):
And Elvis's obituary for The Village Voice Rock critic and
perennial kurmudgeon Lester Bangs wrote that we will never again
agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. That's a quote.
Lester Bangs was right, just like John was right that
Elvis was never the same after he returned from serving
in the army, and in the late nineties seventies, rock
(26:30):
and roll was in itself anymore. Rock was no longer king.
Rock now had to share room on the radio dial
with disco, punk, prague and funk, and fans became zealous
who defended their chosen genre to the death. R c
A Records, on the other hand, went all in on Elvis.
In the wake of Elvis's death, the entire world clamored
(26:53):
for Elvis Presley Records. This was a time long before
streaming music, long before instant music, a time where you
had to have a physical copy of a twelve into
slab of wax of the title you long to hear.
Retail stores sold out of Elvis's entire catalog. R CIA's
pressing plants operated twenty four hours a day to meet
(27:14):
the demand and even subcontracted other plants to help. One
third of all albums sold in America between the fall
of nineteen seventy seven. In the fall of nineteen seventy eight,
where Elvis Presley Albums and so with our CI a
Laser focused on around the clock operation to keep Elvis
(27:35):
Pressley's memory alive, they forgot about the other guy, The
guy who, according to John Lennon, was the only other
artist of consequence on that label. Harry Nilson wasn't long
for the r c A stables anyway. His final r
CIA album, Cannilson that's his surname, but spelled with a
whole bunch of ends in a k at the beginning
(27:55):
that shouldn't be there, was released in the summer of
nineteen seventy seven before Elvis's heart gave out. As a result,
our Cier shifted all the money and resources they had
planned to use to promote Harry's record over to repressing
and replenishing Elvis's catalog from coast to coast. The timing
was absolute ship, but Harry had a laugh that it
(28:17):
was absurdly poetic. Nelson was intended to be Harry's triumphant return.
He was focused again, His vocal cords had healed, and
his voice, while not the sublime instrument it once was
was on the men, but triumph was not in the
cards for Harry Nelson. He received no support from his
label and there was no going away party. When his
(28:37):
contract came to an unceremonious end. Harry hadn't seen his
old friend and asked saver John Lennon in years when
in nine eighty he landed an opportunity to write songs
for a new movie by American autour director Robert Altman.
Popeye was a truly bizarre, yet undeniably endearing adaptation of
(28:59):
the popular A comic strip starring Robin Williams as the
spinach chomping Sailor and Shelley Duval as Olive Oil. Harry
injected more than a little of that lost weekend spirit
into the tipsy melodies of the soundtrack, which sounded even
otter in the actual film because the cast members sang
the songs live instead of in post production as was
(29:19):
usually the case. Harry's Puppeye soundtrack was a stark contrast
to John and Yoko's latest album, which was released a
month earlier. Double Fantasy presented some of John's most lucid
domestic music of his entire career. Harry and John were
still fellow pussycats. It's just that one of them still
(29:39):
preferred an occasional stroll down a back alley while the
other was content growing up in front of a fireplace.
John was playing the part of the house bound pussycat
at the Dakota in New York City on Saturday, December six,
when Popeye made as much anticipated premiere in Los Angeles.
John never did get a chance to see the film
(30:01):
where here Harry's delightfully skewed soundtrack, because two days later,
on December eighth, the unthinkable happened and the entire world
changed in a blink. The news would travel fast and
hit Harry hard. He wouldn't be able to think about
anything else for years, not music, not pussycatty. He would
turn from cat to bulldog and take on the n
(30:23):
r A to lobby for sweeping gun control reform. But
before that, Harry spent the weekend of December six, then
a darkened movie theater in l A, watching Robin Williams
and Shelley Duval sing his songs on the big screen.
He became caught up in Van dyke parks evocative orchestrations
and was swept away to a place that was part
fantasy in part reality, the kind of place that only
(30:47):
music or a movie can take you, the kind of
place where you could dance till a quarter to three,
the kind of place where the good times would never end,
and no one got old, no one grew cold. There
was no pain or a struggle or conflict or strife,
and there's certainly there's no Blood on the Tracks, right,
(31:19):
all right, everybody, thanks for listening to Blood on the Tracks.
If you like what you hear, be sure to find
and follow Blood on the Tracks on Apple podcast, I
Heart Radio, app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On this season two of Blood on the Tracks, we'll
be releasing ten episodes on the incredible life of John Lennon,
with a new episode every Thursday. You can also binge
(31:39):
all ten episodes of season one on the insane story
of the notorious record producer Phil Spector right now. It's
available wherever you get your podcast. This episode of Blood
on the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundie and hosted
an executive produced by me Jake Brennan, also executive produced
by Brady sad Story and copy editing by Pat Heally.
This episode was mixed by Colin Fleming. Additional music and
(32:03):
score elements by Ryan Spraaker. This episode featured Chris ANZELONEI
has Harry Nilson. Blood on the Tracks is produced by
Double Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for
this episode are available at double Elvis dot com on
the Blood on the Track series page. If you want
to chat about this show or hear more about the
other shows, we're making a Double Elvis tap in on
(32:24):
Instagram at double Elvis, on Twitter at double Elvis FM,
and now on Twitch, where we're streaming three days a
week at twitch dot tv slash Double Elvis Podcasts, and finally,
be sure to check out disgrace Land, the award winning
music and true crime podcast that I also host. Disgraceland
is available only on the free Amazon Music. To hear
(32:45):
tons of insane stories about your favorite musicians getting away
with murder and behaving very badly, go to Amazon dot
com slash disgrace lamb, or if you have an Echo device,
just say Alexa play the disgrace Land podcast. Rock Alone,
(33:05):
Dytegrages our dand
Blood on the Tracks is a production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. John Lennon was a musical genius
and one of the most beloved cultural figures of the
twentieth century. His songs inspired dreamers to imagine, his search
for the truth gave power to the people. But some
thought he dreamed too much. Others thought he was too powerful.
(00:23):
So he was followed, he was threatened, he was declared
a danger to the United States, and in night he
was assassinated. This is his story told by his so
called friends. This is Special Agent Jim Steele with the
(00:45):
Federal Bureau of Investigation work in case number double own
mind dash zero eight dash zero four one. Case subject
is Lennon, John Winston, Oh No. This information pertains to
a period end in June four in view subject as
Nielsen Harry Edward the third interview number one dash zero
five Dash seven six one dash recall number one December.
(01:19):
Was I about influence on John Lennon or was he
a bad influence on me? Take your pick. I didn't
force any foul tasting liquids down his throat. In my eyes,
I was the one hanging out with them, the Beatles,
And you can commit murder with that group. I thought, well,
if they drink, I'll drink. And at the same time
(01:42):
they're thinking, well, Harry is this big drinker, so we'll
live like Harry. We laughed like hell all night long
and not know what we were laughing about. Ringo would
call me the next day and asked, can you remember
one thing? One thing that we laughed about last night?
It became a problem in all our lives. I think
(02:04):
when you get to self pity and suicidal thoughts, you know,
I'm no good, nobody likes me, who who? You have
no friends except for the ones who are drinking with you,
and you simply cannot see things for the way they
truly are. I think that's when you quit. That's when
you stop, look back, take stock, and realize that you've
(02:27):
left all this blood on the tracks. Chapter five, John
(02:53):
Lennon and Harry Nilson. I'll admit it. I wasn't the
best influence on John Lennon. Influence on John Lennon. I'm
(03:15):
not about to take responsibility for all the crazy shit
he did in nine four, but you know I didn't
exactly help the situations. When you spent the night drinking
your weight and Brandy Alexander's There's really nothing you can
do to help any situation, not a thing me. I
didn't know it at the time, but I was on
(03:36):
the cusp of going from good to bad to worse.
That's a well documented fact. I had some solid successes
with Everybody's Talking Coconut Without You, Nielsen Schmilsen was nominated
for some Grammys, even one, but I didn't make it
easy to keep the hits coming. Look, man, I didn't
tour or form live, and I wasn't exactly David Cassidy
(04:00):
peering out at you on my album covers with acute
smile and feathered hair. In fact, I looked frumpy as
hell in my fucking bathrobe on the one that we
called Nilsen Schmilsen, which is also a great big fuck
you to the very notion of album titles. While on
the subject of fuck you, when I want to gram
(04:21):
you for without You, I immediately followed that record up
with a song that said fuck you in the chorus
and you simply cannot see things for the way they
truly are. And then I followed that with a little
touch of Schmilsen in the Night, an album entirely of
standards from the Great American Songbook. I wasn't exactly gunning
for sales or radio play, more like fueling up for
(04:44):
self destruction life, Am I right? Give it a few
years and things will funk right up, just nicely on
their own. It was just the Beatles gave that press
conference in New York when they formed Apple Records. Some
reporter asked them who their favorite American singer was, and
John and Paul both answered Nielsen. My phone rang off
(05:07):
the hook for days. You couldn't ask for a better press.
It was better than airplane, better than a decent record review.
And then before I knew it, I was everywhere, not
as a famous celebrity. Understand many people knew me simply
as Nielsen. Since I didn't do the promotional circuit, there
was a bit of mystery as to who or what
(05:28):
I really was. But I mean I was everywhere. I
was in the studio when the Beatles cut Piggies. I
recommended this new songwriter, Randy Newman, and even performed an
entire album of his songs. I watched Carly Simon as
she tracked her vocal for Your So Vain, while Mick
Jagger sang back up. I'm not overstating it when I
(05:48):
say that the Beatles made my career, but I didn't
need a little help from my friends to unmake it.
I could do that on my own, just fine. My
point is life, man, you go from receiving public accolades
from the Beatles of all people, to what some would
reasonably call a low point just a few years later,
(06:09):
when you're hungover, eyes blood shot, offering angel dust to
the same people who once sang your praises no ship.
I asked Paul McCartney if he wanted to smoke some
angel dust, or maybe it was a horse tranquilizer. I
was at the beach house in Santa Monica, the one
(06:31):
that John rented and we were all crashing at while
we were making Pussycats. John was passed out in bed
with May and then Paul and Linda just showed up
in four Who is the last person you would expect
to show up at a house that John Lennon is renting.
Paul McCartney, right fucking a man, Because at this point,
(06:52):
the word on the street is that John and Paul
hate each other's guts. They're suing each other they're taking
cheap shots at each other on their soul albums. But
after Yoko had sent John to Los Angeles on this
soul searching walk about or whatever the hell it was,
when Yoko finally decided she was ready to welcome John
back into her life and to try to repair their
marriage and you know, start over. Yoko is the one
(07:16):
who went directly to Paul and asked Paul to play
the role of intermediary peacekeeper. So Paul flies out to
l A and hunts John down at the Santa Monica
Beach House. John sleeping. It's late morning or early afternoon,
and I'm drinking and smoking whatever I can get my
hands on because my mouth tastes like a dumpster. My
(07:36):
head's on fire from whatever we did the night before,
and there's all kinds of stuff floating around grass coke PCP.
I asked Paul if he wants some angel dust while
he's waiting for John to wake up. He goes, what
is it? And I say, I don't know, man, Maybe
(07:57):
it's a horse tranquilizer. I mean, honestly, some and told
me it was angel does, But what the hell do
I know? And so Paul asks, is it fun. I
thought long and hard about that. It was a fair question.
I think at that point I knew what we were
doing was not sustainable, that it was destructive, that it
was wrong, became a problem with our lives. But of
(08:21):
course every day we just started right up again, drinking
and drugging to drown out those sorts of thoughts. But
this was still early enough in the day, and I
could respond with some truth. NAH might tell Paul it's
really not fun at all. Paul passed on the angel dust.
Once John woke up, he was surprised to see Paul
(08:42):
waiting for him. I honestly don't know how long it
had been since they had seen each other. Paul passed
on Yoko's message that John should come back to New York,
but he needed to get his own place at first quarter.
Send her flowers, take her out, really make an effort,
and of course John did it. He played by the
rules because John loved Joko. I truly believe that. And
(09:06):
it was John's first steps out of the haze we
had all found ourselves in. I even went with him
to New York, where, for the second time in my life,
John Lennon had a profound effect on my career. But first,
before John accepted Yoko's invitation to head home, there was
unfinished business. Unfinished monkey business. That is to put in
(09:28):
Beatles terms, because when you look into the future and
see nothing but calm, domestic bliss, you tend to realize
that you have limited time left to break bad. It
(10:10):
was spring of seventy Burbank Cocaine was going around a
wired his ship in that recording studio, me John, Paul, Linda, Jesse,
Ed Davis on the guitar, the Great Bobby Keys on saxophone,
May Hang on tambourine, and Stevie Wonder on keys. Paul
(10:30):
played ringos, drums and ringos. Pissed the next day when
he found out Bobby Keys was probably coming up for
air after partying with the Stones. But man, I have
no idea how Stevie Wonder, of all people ended up
in there with us, he was probably the only one
who stayed straight for the entire session. He passed on
grass Man. He just said no to John Lennon, if
(10:53):
you want a snort, Steve, it's going around. It seems
like the right thing to do. Since Paul was in
town and he and John were talking and all, let's
all go into the studio and have a laugh. You
would think with a lineup like that, it would have
just killed a supergroup. That's what they call those things
(11:17):
back in the day. Can you imagine what something like
that would have sold if it was released. But the
results were really more of a nightmare, sloppy playing, sloppy singing, mangled,
bungled covers. We recorded it on tape while we were
in there, but none of us was that idiotic to
actually release it, so it circulated as a rumor and
(11:40):
then as a bootleg for years. It's too bad too,
because it's the first and last time that John and
Paul played together between when the Beatles broke up and
John was shot. A missed opportunity. Really, none of us
had the mental stability in that moment to recognize that.
Of course, well maybe Stevie wonder that studio in Burbank
(12:04):
was one of the studios we were using to make Pussycats,
my album that John was producing. Well, Rise Up, Get
Yourself Harry Nielsen's new album Pussycats, produced by John Lennon.
Nielsen's latest Pussycats on our CIA Records and Tapes. At
the time, we were making it. We were calling it
strange pussies. Hey, our Cia had let me put funk
(12:28):
you in the chorus of a song. I figured it
was worth a shot. Me ow. And now people used
to call my voice boyish and angelic. They said I
was a delightful mimic, and that my voice seemed to
spring fully formed from this blanky, dorky body that was
simply a vessel for this beautiful gift from God. But
(12:49):
when John and I were making strange pussies, my voice
was anything but angelic. I don't know if it was
the bottomless brandy Alexander's or the cocaine or the cigarettes.
I don't know if it was the angel dust or
horse tranquilizer or whatever the funk that ship was. I
(13:11):
don't think it was the L S D. Because I've
never heard of that stuff messing with your throat. My
neighbor Timothy Leary told me there was absolutely nothing wrong
with acid. But my voice was getting worse. Gravel it
horse like stretched leather man. I couldn't hit the upper register.
(13:32):
I had reached for it, and it was like a
shelf just out of reach. I tried over and over again.
I tried John called for another take and another, and
I kept on trying. I kept trying to get there,
and he shimply, can't see things for the way they
truly are. Maybe I was trying to impress John, show
(13:53):
him that I was really as good as he thought
I was. And as soon as I pushed it as
far as I could possibly push it, I fasted at
the blood They're on the back of my throat. I
coughed and blood splattered all over the mic. The doctor
said my vocal cords had hemorrhaged. He told me to
stopped talking for two weeks, that I had to write
(14:14):
everything down. That's when you stop look back. But of
course that was easier said than done, because when you're
driving John Lennon around Los Angeles and the Volkswagen Cure Wagon,
this military style jeep I owned, you basically had to
scream to be heard above the rumble of the engine
(14:34):
and the howl of the wind. There's a crazy new
thing from Volkswagen, and that comes with the top up
the top down. I always had the top down. It
was like having a conversation on a fucking runway. People
called it the thing. And I showed for John any
chance I could get where to tonight John influence on
(14:59):
John Lennon. Yeah, shall we see if there's trouble to
be had tonight John, Another brandy Alexander John. Maybe I
did try a little too hard to impress John. It
was well past midnight one night when just out of
the blue, John told me he wished he had a
couple of girls and a handful of acid. It's like
(15:22):
two three in the morning, and you're just now having
this burning desire. I had a hunch that I could deliver.
I called up a friend of mine, a girl I
figured would be game. She just happened to be awake,
and she happened to have a friend with her, and
that friend happened to have some asset on her, like
(15:43):
it was meant to be friend. So I drove John
over her place. In the thing, we all dropped acid,
and then we all baled for days, literally days. I
think it was the acid that sustained us. You ever
bald for two days straight on LSD. I don't think
I even knew my fucking name after that. My body
(16:05):
was as ravaged as my voice was barely keeping it together.
Strange pussies was getting stranger. I think that's where you quit.
At some point I just looked over at John and
told him I needed a break. I asked him when
he was leaving for New York, and then I asked
if I could go with him. We'll be right back.
(16:28):
After this, word word word, John Lennon saved my ass.
It happened like this. Our CIA Records didn't want me anymore.
I hadn't made a hit in Ages and after that
(16:48):
album Standards, which r c A saw as a turkey
top brass at the label just wanted to cut their
losses and move on without me. I think when you
get to self pity and suicide thoughts. My contract was
expiring and r c A we're not quiet about unceremoniously
passing on the renewal option. And then they heard about
my voice getting out. You know, the one thing that
(17:11):
I had that could potentially make them money. They were
gonna bail. Nobody likes me and pussycats, which is what
we were now calling strange pussies. Well, I don't know, man,
that was destined to mold away in some dusty vault,
like the tapes of that wild recording session with Paul
and Stevie Wonder all I'd wanted to do was make
(17:34):
a record with John Lennon. Was a bad influence on
John Lennon? Was he a bad influencelfhy It was one
thing to play on Ringo's records, and Ringo had played
on mine, but John was a tougher nut for me
to crack. Ringo and I were mates, but there was
something unknowable about John. This is gonna sound weird since
(17:54):
we spent so much time out on the town together,
but it's true. But John was John. He was a walking,
talking myth and icon, and not just a beatle but
a cultural force. This was never more obvious than when
he moved back to New York City upon Yoko's invitation. Now,
(18:15):
John and Yoko didn't immediately get back together. People think
this last weekend period of his was a few months
out in l A. No, the last Weekend lasted something
like eighteen months and spanned his time in l A
and New York City. When he got back East, he
and May got their own place at Sutton Place over
on East fifty second. Weird that John was courting Yoko
(18:37):
but still carrying on with May. None of my business,
I suppose. And in New York John became a legend
again among the city's night clubs. The guy was a
social butterfly man. He was a regular at Ashley's, a
disco club at Fifth Avenue and thirteenth Street, where the
staff gave him the royal treatment, drinks on the house
(19:00):
drugs gratis. They let him stay after hours, smoke whatever
was left, and snort the rest. My lord, he didn't
tell me personally about all the times he visited that
brothel on twenty th Street, but I read later that
he was a regular. It's crazy to think someone who's
famous as John Lennon, and the city is big and
as loud as New York, that he could keep those
(19:21):
brothel visits hush hush for so many years. Even now,
I'm sure some people don't want to believe that it's true.
There's a lot about our heroes that we don't want
to know about. But here's one thing about John that's true,
and this gets back to my story. John was loyal.
He knew that our c A was preparing to dump me,
and he put his name in his career on the
(19:43):
line to go to bad for me. That was in
the spring of nine. We've been out all night and
the morning was cruel as usual. I don't know if
I could have gone to sleep if I wanted to.
I was telling John about how I reached out to
our CIA to get a new contract signed and how
(20:03):
they were continuing to ignore me, and it just lit
this fire under his ass. Let's go over there, John said, where.
I asked him our CIA records. John responded, let's go
on over to Rockefeller Center and take a meeting with
Kenneth Glancy. The get we'll get him to resign you. Now,
(20:26):
Kenneth Glancy was perhaps the root of my problem. He
had been recently appointed as the new head of our CIA,
and he didn't like me. The guy before him, Rocko
lagan Estra. Now he liked me. John didn't give a fuck.
It was mid morning, We've been up all night, and
he had a plan to save my ass. So we
(20:46):
went over to Rockefeller Plaza up to our CIA offices,
both of us wearing dark sunglasses and hats to conceal
whatever the night before it done to us, though I'm
sure the smell of us announced our presence a mile away.
John walked right up to the receptionist and said, I'm
John Lennon. I'm here with Harry Nilson and we need
to speak with Kenneth Glancy. The girl practically hyperventilated. The
(21:11):
look in her eyes said that she couldn't believe that
John Lennon was talking to her. I still didn't know
what John was planning, what he could say to this guy. Besides,
I'm John Lennon and you should resign Nielsen. He could
use his fame and legend to get free drinks and
drugs at Ashley's. He could make an eighteen year old
receptionist blushed just by smiling. But these corporate music guys
(21:34):
are fucking stone man. Obviously, even I was underestimating John
at the moment. So we were ushered inside this lavish
office overlooking Rockefeller Plaza. Someone shoved cigars and glasses of
brandy in our hands. We sat down in these pristine
(21:55):
leather chairs across from the head of our c a.
John looked this guy dead in the eyes and says, look,
you've got two good artists on this piece of ship label,
Elvis Presley and Harry Nilson. Obviously at this point he'd
yet to befriend my labelmate David Bowie. But I digress.
Glancey raised his finger like he wanted to beg to differ,
(22:17):
but John told him he wasn't done yet. And then
John pulled the ace out of his back pocket. He
told Glancy that if our ci A resigned me for
five million dollars, then John would sign with our c
A too, and he'd do it cheap. Glance he couldn't
pick up the phone fast enough. He should have known better,
(22:38):
because who knows what kind of contract John was tied
up in at the moment. John didn't really have the
knowledge or the ability to be offering himself to any
label at that moment, but Glance he bought it, book
line and sinc. Within minutes, the receptionist walked that contract
inside the office and we signed on the bottom line
for five million. Did John ever intend to sign with
(23:00):
darci A? Hell no, So we went through the motions
of the whole thing, shaking that dope's hand as we
left the office. Yes, yes, very good. I'll have my
people call your people, quite right, great things. All that
just smoke smoke right up that corporate bastard's ass. That's
(23:20):
how John Lennon saved me. And he wasn't bullshitting either.
He thought that Elvis and I were the only two
notable artists on that label. And then Elvis died just
two years later, slumped over on his porcelain throne. He's
got no friends except for the ones who were drinking
with you. I remember that day clearly because I immediately
(23:41):
thought of John and what he had said to Kenneth
Glancy at our c A about me and Elvis, and
how I owed everything to him. That's when you stopped
look back stock. I owed him my career when I
first started, and then I owed him again when it
looked like I had sucked everything up beyond repair. And
I'm not sure that I was ever in the right
(24:02):
state of mind at that time properly communicate to John
just what all that meant to me? Yeah, Auguste. As
(24:38):
far as John Lennon was concerned, Elvis Presley had died
years ago, Marty eight, to be exact. That was the
day that Elvis put rock and roll on hold to
join the United States Army in Memphis, Tennessee. That's when
they killed him. A disillusion John said. The rest was
a living death. There was time when Elvis had been
(25:01):
John's religion. John was nearly struck dumb when he first
heard Heartbreak Hotel as a teenager, Elvis was everything. Elvis
was it. Elvis Presley showed John Lennon what he would be.
But later, after the Beatles had broken up and after
he had returned from the service, Elvis turned his back
on John when he said what he really thought about
(25:22):
the liverpoody and lads who had once idolized him. He
told these things directly to President Richard Nixon. He sold
out John as an anti American rabble rouser. He said
John abused to drugs. He said John planted conspiratorial ideas
in the minds of America's impressionable youth. Of course, the
irony of that conversation is that the king of rock
(25:45):
and roll could have been describing himself. If Nixon didn't
know it at the time, he likely figured it out
on August sixte n seventy seven, when Elvis Aaron Presley
was found dead on his toilet, his bloated body loaded
on us in his legacy one of filling the impressionable
young minds of American youth with hip twisting, naughty thoughts.
(26:07):
And Elvis's obituary for The Village Voice Rock critic and
perennial kurmudgeon Lester Bangs wrote that we will never again
agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. That's a quote.
Lester Bangs was right, just like John was right that
Elvis was never the same after he returned from serving
in the army, and in the late nineties seventies, rock
(26:30):
and roll was in itself anymore. Rock was no longer king.
Rock now had to share room on the radio dial
with disco, punk, prague and funk, and fans became zealous
who defended their chosen genre to the death. R c
A Records, on the other hand, went all in on Elvis.
In the wake of Elvis's death, the entire world clamored
(26:53):
for Elvis Presley Records. This was a time long before
streaming music, long before instant music, a time where you
had to have a physical copy of a twelve into
slab of wax of the title you long to hear.
Retail stores sold out of Elvis's entire catalog. R CIA's
pressing plants operated twenty four hours a day to meet
(27:14):
the demand and even subcontracted other plants to help. One
third of all albums sold in America between the fall
of nineteen seventy seven. In the fall of nineteen seventy eight,
where Elvis Presley Albums and so with our CI a
Laser focused on around the clock operation to keep Elvis
(27:35):
Pressley's memory alive, they forgot about the other guy, The
guy who, according to John Lennon, was the only other
artist of consequence on that label. Harry Nilson wasn't long
for the r c A stables anyway. His final r
CIA album, Cannilson that's his surname, but spelled with a
whole bunch of ends in a k at the beginning
(27:55):
that shouldn't be there, was released in the summer of
nineteen seventy seven before Elvis's heart gave out. As a result,
our Cier shifted all the money and resources they had
planned to use to promote Harry's record over to repressing
and replenishing Elvis's catalog from coast to coast. The timing
was absolute ship, but Harry had a laugh that it
(28:17):
was absurdly poetic. Nelson was intended to be Harry's triumphant return.
He was focused again, His vocal cords had healed, and
his voice, while not the sublime instrument it once was
was on the men, but triumph was not in the
cards for Harry Nelson. He received no support from his
label and there was no going away party. When his
(28:37):
contract came to an unceremonious end. Harry hadn't seen his
old friend and asked saver John Lennon in years when
in nine eighty he landed an opportunity to write songs
for a new movie by American autour director Robert Altman.
Popeye was a truly bizarre, yet undeniably endearing adaptation of
(28:59):
the popular A comic strip starring Robin Williams as the
spinach chomping Sailor and Shelley Duval as Olive Oil. Harry
injected more than a little of that lost weekend spirit
into the tipsy melodies of the soundtrack, which sounded even
otter in the actual film because the cast members sang
the songs live instead of in post production as was
(29:19):
usually the case. Harry's Puppeye soundtrack was a stark contrast
to John and Yoko's latest album, which was released a
month earlier. Double Fantasy presented some of John's most lucid
domestic music of his entire career. Harry and John were
still fellow pussycats. It's just that one of them still
(29:39):
preferred an occasional stroll down a back alley while the
other was content growing up in front of a fireplace.
John was playing the part of the house bound pussycat
at the Dakota in New York City on Saturday, December six,
when Popeye made as much anticipated premiere in Los Angeles.
John never did get a chance to see the film
(30:01):
where here Harry's delightfully skewed soundtrack, because two days later,
on December eighth, the unthinkable happened and the entire world
changed in a blink. The news would travel fast and
hit Harry hard. He wouldn't be able to think about
anything else for years, not music, not pussycatty. He would
turn from cat to bulldog and take on the n
(30:23):
r A to lobby for sweeping gun control reform. But
before that, Harry spent the weekend of December six, then
a darkened movie theater in l A, watching Robin Williams
and Shelley Duval sing his songs on the big screen.
He became caught up in Van dyke parks evocative orchestrations
and was swept away to a place that was part
fantasy in part reality, the kind of place that only
(30:47):
music or a movie can take you, the kind of
place where you could dance till a quarter to three,
the kind of place where the good times would never end,
and no one got old, no one grew cold. There
was no pain or a struggle or conflict or strife,
and there's certainly there's no Blood on the Tracks, right,
(31:19):
all right, everybody, thanks for listening to Blood on the Tracks.
If you like what you hear, be sure to find
and follow Blood on the Tracks on Apple podcast, I
Heart Radio, app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On this season two of Blood on the Tracks, we'll
be releasing ten episodes on the incredible life of John Lennon,
with a new episode every Thursday. You can also binge
(31:39):
all ten episodes of season one on the insane story
of the notorious record producer Phil Spector right now. It's
available wherever you get your podcast. This episode of Blood
on the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundie and hosted
an executive produced by me Jake Brennan, also executive produced
by Brady sad Story and copy editing by Pat Heally.
This episode was mixed by Colin Fleming. Additional music and
(32:03):
score elements by Ryan Spraaker. This episode featured Chris ANZELONEI
has Harry Nilson. Blood on the Tracks is produced by
Double Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for
this episode are available at double Elvis dot com on
the Blood on the Track series page. If you want
to chat about this show or hear more about the
other shows, we're making a Double Elvis tap in on
(32:24):
Instagram at double Elvis, on Twitter at double Elvis FM,
and now on Twitch, where we're streaming three days a
week at twitch dot tv slash Double Elvis Podcasts, and finally,
be sure to check out disgrace Land, the award winning
music and true crime podcast that I also host. Disgraceland
is available only on the free Amazon Music. To hear
(32:45):
tons of insane stories about your favorite musicians getting away
with murder and behaving very badly, go to Amazon dot
com slash disgrace lamb, or if you have an Echo device,
just say Alexa play the disgrace Land podcast. Rock Alone,
(33:05):
Dytegrages our dand
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Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!