It is with great sadness that we have learned of the passing of Gary Nilsson.
Gary was a supporter of this website, providing photographs, news articles, and personal anecdotes about his half-brother, Harry Nilsson. Gary was a fan of popular music and Harry's music in particular. His Facebook page is full of photos of him with pop stars from the 1960s and '70s. As a featured guest at Harryfest 2002 he shared stories of growing up as both a fan and relative of Harry Nilsson and about his, and Harry's, father who shared Harry's love of baseball and was once a scout for the Cincinnati Reds.
But, beyond all of that, Gary was a friend. He will be missed.
Harry Nilsson News (2025-02-20)
Newly-Released Film of Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr at the Son Of Dracula Premiere
On September 19, 2024, the Kamala Harris presidential campaign released a video showing clips of rival Donald Trump praising Mark Robinson a gubernatorial candidate under scrutiny for posting inflammatory comments on a pornography website. Nilsson's "Best Friend" plays throughout the short video.
We were good friends. We were roommates twice, once in New York and once in L.A. But all those stories you hear, they were a little blown out of proportion.[2]
A "Mini-Documentary" about John Lennon and Harry Nilsson's Recording of the Album Pussy Cats
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer-songwriter, musician and activist. He gained global fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. Lennon's songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in history.
Born in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1956, he formed the Quarrymen, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Lennon initially was the group's de facto leader, a role he gradually seemed to cede to McCartney, writing and co-writing songs with increasing innovation, including "Strawberry Fields Forever", which he later cited as his finest work with the band. Lennon soon expanded his work into other media by participating in numerous films, including How I Won the War, and authoring In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works, both collections of nonsense writings and line drawings. Starting with "All You Need Is Love", his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the counterculture of the 1960s.
In 1969, he started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, multimedia artist Yoko Ono, held the two-week-long anti-war demonstration bed-in for peace, and left the Beatles to embark on a solo career. Lennon and Ono collaborated on many works, including a trilogy of avant-garde albums and several more films. After the Beatles disbanded, Lennon released his solo debut John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and the international top-10 singles "Give Peace a Chance", "Instant Karma!", "Imagine", and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". Moving to New York City in 1971, his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a three-year deportation attempt by the Nixon administration. Lennon and Ono separated from 1973 to 1975, during which time he produced Harry Nilsson's album Pussy Cats. He also had chart-topping collaborations with Elton John ("Whatever Gets You thru the Night") and David Bowie ("Fame"). Following a five-year hiatus, Lennon returned to music in 1980 with the Ono collaboration Double Fantasy. He was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman, three weeks after the album's release.
As a performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number-one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Double Fantasy, his second-best-selling non-Beatles album, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. That year, he won the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC history poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer and 38th-greatest artist of all time. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (in 1997) and the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame (twice, as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1994).
This site is dedicated to the music and memory of Harry Nilsson. From the late 1960s through the early '90s, Nilsson produced music that both challenged norms and celebrated the past - often within the same song.
On first listen, his early Pandemonium Shadow Show is just an appealing collection of bouncy pop songs, a product of the time when it was released. But, on closer listen songs like "1941" and "Without Her" feature poignant and wistful lyrics on top of their upbeat, pop melodies. To the listener in the late 1960s, the melodies and songs, such as “Freckles” sometimes invoked what would have seemed a nostalgic air, but they still sound fresh more than fifty years later.
Nilsson remained unconventional throughout his career. He never toured to support an album and he made few TV appearances. He released an album of songs which were all written by another songwriter. He recorded an album of standards in front of an orchestra. He followed up his best selling album and song with an album featuring a song pretty much guaranteed to surprise, if not offend, his new fans.
Harry ventured into movies and TV, creating a classic animated story (“The Point!”) and writing the music and songs for the once-panned, but now cult favorite, film Popeye starring Robin Williams.
In the last years of his life, after his friend John Lennon was shot and killed, Harry stepped back from music and, ironically perhaps, more into the public eye as the spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence advocating for sensible gun laws in America.
