Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson (w/ guest Dan Drago)

The Great Albums

Bill Lambusta

Music, Music Commentary

4.3 • 760 Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2016

⏱️ 118 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brian and Bill are joined by podcaster Dan Drago (25oclockpod.com) to talk about Harry Nilsson's triumphant hit album, Nilsson Schmilsson (1971, RCA Victor). Nilsson started his career as both a recording artist and songwriter who finally broke when Three Dog Night covered his tune "One" in 1969. He enjoyed continued success with a series of unique albums through the 70s before retiring from the music business in the 80s. Dan shares how he knew Nilsson without knowing it, until he checked out this album after not getting an in-joke perpetuated by his brother and their friends' band. Bill, Brian, and Dan talk about Nilsson's influence on solo Beatles output, his collaboration with Randy Newman, the idiosyncratic humor found on this album, multi-Harry harmonies, the Bo Diddley beat, Badfinger and their sad story, how Nilsson wrote a song that feels like it wasn't written by anyone, Nilsson's continuing legacy, and much more as we make our way through the album track by track!

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The You can climb a mountain
0:42.1	You can swim to sea
0:45.4	You can jump into the fire
0:49.0	But you never need free
0:52.1	Hello and welcome to the great albums podcast I'm Bill And I'm Brian Who But you never need free.
0:56.5	Hello and welcome to the great album's podcast.
0:57.1	I'm Bill.
0:57.8	And I'm Brian.
0:59.7	What were we just listening to right there, Brian? It's Jump Into the Fire by Harry Nilsson.
1:03.4	Off of what album was that?
1:04.8	That was 1971's Nilsson Schmielsen, produced by Richard Perry.
1:10.4	Because if you've never listened to the podcast before, what we do here every week is take a
1:13.9	different album of music and talk about what makes it great. We're a fan appreciation podcast
1:20.1	where we're going to talk a little bit about why we love the artist and the album, and then
1:24.9	we're going to give a little bit of background and bio on the artist, and then we going to do a big track by track review all right that sounds good let's let's do it
1:32.3	yeah we're not going to do it alone brian is that with this pile of denim and plaid is doing here
1:37.8	that is the best description of me that i've ever heard and that is the voice of Dan Drago. Hi, Dan.
1:44.5	Hey, how are you guys?
1:45.7	Welcome to the podcast.
1:46.5	Oh, thanks for having me.
1:47.7	You are the host of the 25 o'clock podcast.
	...

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