Van Dyke Parks Remembers Harry Nilsson
Los Angeles - 2/8/05Inveterate punster Harry got married at the Marriot. It just sounded good to him, I guess. Natch, it was convenient for a quick Honeymoon getaway, adjacent to LAX. We were there with his true and famous friends. A picture of that wedding ceremony hangs on the wall of our home, there's Ringo, playing the gypsy violin,and Una, clothed in white, obviously in her second trimester.
The priest beams down. He suggests he'd better wing it. It is a Rite most legal and tender.
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Harry met Una, the Irish teen, when she was plying ice cream in a posh Parlor (Rumplemeyer's) on the upper west side, N.Y.C.
Harry said ".we have two things in common: You're a virgin and I've never had one."
Since Harry fell in love at first sight, he let her know right off they were engaged, then and there.
Like any proper suitor, Harry explained his prospects for success. He was famous, but not yet in the public eye. He let her know he was a millionaire and a most eligible bachelor.said he'd come back the next day for their first date.
In twenty-four hours, Una was out of her shift and apron, for the front door. Harry had lined the entire sidewalk with flowers, to lead her up to his hired car, where he sat smoking within, by the open door.
Then he whisked her off to a nearby rooftop, to a helicopter to Washington D.C., for a weekend romance in a suite at the fabled Watergate Hotel.
More bravura than bravado, it won her over.
Harry hadn't had it that easy forever. Born in Brooklyn in a tenement slum. He took me out to visit his birthplace once, well after his mighty pen had made him wealthy. There was a sign by the front door steps that said "Starve a rat! Cover your garbage!" We sat there in the limo, pondering the arc of his meteoric career. What makes the caged bird sing? Whatever it is, Harry was fueled by it as well.
By the time I met and learned how to spell Nilsson, he was on the hit parade. His songs were so downright performable, his songs were being covered by comers who made it to the top.
As a vocalist? Flawless intonation, multi-tracked with the Élan of a Beach Boy. Unequalled extemporary talent, it seemed, armed with the kind of preparation only a musician with perfect Pitch and detailed memory could serve up.
During "duit on mon dei" and "sandman" recording sessions at RCA Studios in Hollywood, Harry would often walk in to a room filled with full rhythm and horn sections reminiscent of the Big Band era, bringing only a winsome melody in his head, and a handful of bar napkins, scawled with lyrical outlines from the night before.
Other times, Harry's sessions were the result of an a array of meetings with arrangers who pre-calculated great events. To get an idea of this musical compass, listen to his work with legendary arrangers Gordon Jenkins and Perry Botkin, Jr.
It's through Botkin that Nilsson got his real start. Perry provided studio time for Harry so he could cut his first demos, and connected him to the fat chance that Harry dared quit his job as a computer-savvy bank teller and concentrate on Harry Nilsson, the man and his music. Thanks Perry!
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Harry died in 1994. That's when we had the last great L.A. earthquake. His headstone is there in the West Hills Cemetary. George Harrison crossed the pond for this. Harry was known as "The Fifth Beatle" after all. A Nilsson toddler caressed the casket under the incantation of the 23rd Psalm.
Una had asked me to notate the first three notes of "Remember" (from "The Point"). It's there on his stone now, etched from my own hand. Once while I was in Tokyo, I met the President of Warner Brothers Records in a parking lot after a concert I'd just done. Tokugen Yamamoto was looking for his limo too. Having spotted it, he offered me a ride back to my hotel. Soon he was rhapsodizing about his affection for Vladimir and Wanda Horowitz and other "serious" musicians. I admitted I like all kinds of music, and was serious about the unserious music too.
"Who's among your favorite colleagues?" he asked. "Yes, Mr. Yamamoto" I said, "I know". ================================== |