So there is a Point! - An acid influenced children's classic!!

A few weeks ago I posted an article about the documentary Who is Harry Nilsson (you can find the article HERE ). The documentary got me interested in Nilsson and after buying several albums I found myself constantly playing the albums Nilsson Scmilsson and Harry - the music really got under my skin and I wanted to know more about Nilsson who I really only knew from his mega hits, Without you and Everybody's talking.

Regular Archive reader Davieboy directed me to an album called, The Point  and I immediately took a trip up the Amazon and bought the album. After the first few listens I thought what the hell is this? What's the point of this? What has Davieboy been smoking? But it soon grew on me and now the album is also on constant rotation.

The Point, certainly isn't a regular album.On the face of it it seems to be aimed at children, which it is  but after a few listens it starts to get to you and you realise that there is, after all, a point to The Point. And far from being sickly sweet there is a real darkness and depth to several of the tracks. It may in fact be a hippy daydream but the album is focused and extremely tight, so whilst new listeners may fear it is a work of an artist over indulging it soon becomes apparent that this is not the case. Making the album was not the most commercial move for Nilsson but it was a work that occupied his thoughts and one that he was going to record no matter what the bosses at the record company said - there's an integrity in that and something that should be applauded. The Point certainly isn't pointless.

"I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, "Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn't, then there's a point to it." – Harry Nilsson.


Nilsson was a unique artist and his catalog is truly eclectic, and his vocal range and harmonies are truly incredible.

The Point is unlike any album I've heard before and among all the madness it features some great tracks - "Everything's Got 'Em," "Me and My Arrow," "Think About Your Troubles," and "Are You Sleeping?" - and the whimsical story, narrated on the album by Harry himself, is quite charming and can be enjoyed on many levels. I like the album because of its wackiness and it's wonderful melodies but I tried it out on my ten year old daughter and she was quickly checking out the animated movie of The Point which can be found on You Tube. So even now, all these years later, the album still works with children and adults alike. Popular Music at the moment is probably in the worse state it's ever been, thanks to people like Simon Cowell brainwashing the masses into buying frothy nonsense by performers who are largely nothing more than glorified karaoke singers, and vapid obnoxious teens who are here today, forgotten by the afternoon and gone tomorrow. But it doesn't really matter when there's so much music still to be discovered from years gone by.


They sure don't make em like this anymore. There's more creativity and originality in this one album than an entire years worth of what passes for pop music these days.

So if you get The Point then enjoy it for what it is and now I leave you with the thought that we all have a point and that's as hippy as I'm 'gonna get. As Ringo Starr, who actually narrated the animated movie made from the album,  would say - peace and love....and I'm not signing any bloody autographs!

Who the F**k is Harry Nilsson

"When you mention Harry Nilsson people either love him or look with a blank expression - who?' So says Mickey Dolenz at the start of the documentary movie, Who is Harry Nilsson which comes from the same team who brought us last year's, John Lennon V the USA.

I must admit I sort of knew of Nilsson - well I knew the mega hits, Everybody's Talking and Without You and I knew he had been a drinking and hell-raising buddy of John Lennon, but other than that zilch. However since catching the documentary, which is now available on Netflix, I found myself so interested in checking out more that I picked up six Nilsson albums this past week. The reason I checked out the documentary was because I heard Nilsson's version of the Beatles, You Can't Do That in the Breakfast with the Beatles radio show. Nilsson does something clever with this song - not only does he give us a pretty good reading of the song but he also manages to reference 20 other Beatle lyrics in the backing vocals. It was this song,  Beatle nut that I am, that drove me towards Nilsson.

The documentary is brilliant - it shows us a man born into terrible poverty who has an incredible talent - an awesome vocal range, but this boy grows into a man who is never going to toe the line. He frustrates his producers and record company by refusing to play it safe. His early albums did OK but it was the 1971 effort, Nilsson Schmillson that  went into the stratosphere. There were three hit singles from the album, Without You, Let the Good Times Roll and the insanely catchy The Coconut Song. The record company wanted a follow up that would follow the same pattern but Nilsson delivered Son of Schmillson which was an altogether stranger record - one track, I'd Rather be Dead has a chorus provided by a bunch of old age pensioners singing, I'd rather be dead than wet my bed. And another song went, you're breaking my heart, you're tearing it apart so fuck you. Can you imagine the executives faces? They had seen Harry give them a worldwide smash with his reading of Without You and now he's putting the phrase, Fuck You onto a major release but not only that he's belting out a tune with a group of old foggies from a retirement home in the UK.

Nilsson also refused to tour which was unheard of at the time - even The Beatles had to go through years of hard touring to achieve success, and yet Nilsson became a major artist without ever touring. Harry seemed to do everything different. The documentary covers the infamous antics of Nilsson's lost weekend with John Lennon - actually an eighteenth month period in which Lennon separated from Yoko Ono would often hit the bars and clubs and drink and drug themselves into senselessness.They were famously thrown out of a Smothers Brothers show at the Troubadour club in Hollywood. Both Nilsson and Lennon were acting like complete dicks, but we've always known Lennon had a wild side and by the sound of it Nilsson did too.

Lennon and Harry

"John Lennon and Harry Nilsson - a friendship made in Hell!"

Ultimately the documentary charts a tragic course of missed opportunities and a death at an absurdly young age - a death that was mostly self inflicted by a lifestyle of drink and drugs, but that was Harry and he couldn't be anyone else. And, I suppose, he did ultimately get his wish and manage to get out of it before he wet the bed.

"He committed suicide," one of the talking heads in the documentary points out. 'It might have taken him twenty years but he killed himself." Eric Idle provides the theory that Harry didn't think he deserves his massive success and became an alcoholic in order to cope. While Mickey Dolenz said Harry moved at five hundred miles an hour until he simply stopped - dead.

It's well worth checking out the documentary especially if, like me, you move onto discover some of the great music - Harry gives us a great reading of the Beatles She's Leaving Home on his album, Pandemonium Shadow Show and then on Harry gives us a direct sequel in the song Mournin' Glory. Other Beatle songs covered include a great reading of Mother Nature's Son. There may be more but I've only got the six Nilsson albums so I'm not sure - I can't be arsed to Google the track listings of the albums I've not yet got. I will be getting more though - I love Nilssson Schmilsson, Pandemonium Shadow Show, Ariel Ballet and Harry. A Touch of Schmillson in the Night, not so much, but Son of Schmillson is growing on me.

Anyway the next time someone asks who is Harry Nilsson, I'll say he was that guy who.....

and remember you putt-da lime in de-cocount