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Guest, order your copy of the Herb Alpert Is... box set. Click for CD version or Vinyl version. The documentary video can be rented or purchased here.
🥂 50th WARM - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass (SP-4190)
- Thread starter Harry
- Start date
David, that's actually "Without You", Harry's only #1 US single, written by Peter Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger.
David S
Well-Known Member
confused!
thanks for correction…
As a songwriter it must be frustrating for Harry Nilsson to have his only #1 hit as a singer be written by somebody else!
Harry's been gone 28 years now. The one time I met him, that's a question I didn't think to ask. Actually, his two biggest hits were written by other songwriters. Fred Neil wrote "Everybody's Talkin'".
rockdoctor
Well-Known Member
Harry Nilsson shot himself in the foot by recording You're Breakin' My Heart. Nothing he did after the album Son of Schmilsson sold very well at all.
Well, it wasn't one song that did it. While 16-year-old me and my buddies thought "You're Breakin' My Heart" ruled, the fact is a lot of the SON OF SCHMILSSON album was a self-indulgent, self-destructive move ("Take 54", "Joy", the false beginning to "Remember (Christmas)" followed by a belch, the final line of "The Most Beautiful World In The World", the phony album promo spot and "I'd Rather Be Dead (Than Wet My Bed)").
Millions of people who discovered him through "Without You" and "Coconut" were waiting to hear what was next. Apart from "Spaceman", there wasn't an obvious single on the album ("Remember (Christmas)", "Turn On Your Radio" and "The Lottery Song" were nice enough, but not hits). And coming five months after Elton John's "Rocket Man", "Spaceman" wasn't going to work any better than it did (it peaked at #23).
The next year was A LITTLE TOUCH OF SCHMILSSON IN THE NIGHT with Gordon Jenkins, which is an absolutely lovely album and paved the way for every rock artist who's recorded standards since---but it was never going to sell in 1973 and I think Harry knew that.
He injured his vocal cords recording PUSSY CATS with John Lennon in '74 and after that, Harry had his excuse to be self-destructive. I've told the story of meeting him in 1980, when he was working as a bookkeeper for Scotti Bros. Records. He told me "Nobody wants me now that I can't sing pretty anymore."
He'd lost some range, but was still capable of a song like "All I Think About Is You". But the same guy who could do that also felt the need to put "Jesus Christ You're Tall" on an album----hell, to LEAD the album. Side one, cut one.
That was Harry. One minute he's giving us transcendent beauty. The next he and John Lennon are getting thrown out of the Troubadour for wearing Kotex sanitary napkins on their heads and heckling the Smothers Brothers.
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Steven J. Gross
Well-Known Member
"Without Her" is the far superior of the two songs in my opinion, best versions by Herb and Blood, Sweat and Tears..
Interesting that "The Sea is My Soil" is far and away the biggest vote getter, but was unavailable for so long since WARM was out of print for many decades, and the song had never been anthologized until the recent box set.
I am surprised that "Marjorine" didn't get more votes.
I am surprised that "Marjorine" didn't get more votes.
JOv2
Well-Known Member
Well, everyone I know prefers butter to marjorine...
