Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.
The members of the Beatles were early champions of Harry Nilsson’s music, and the Brooklyn-born singer-songwriter’s early albums spun off massive chart hits like 1969’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” and 1971’s “Without You.” Over the next few years, however, Nilsson’s star faded, and 1975’s Duit on Mon Dei and 1976’s Sandman both peaked in the lower half of the Billboard 200. The British label BGO Records released a double CD collection on August 29 featuring digital remasters of both albums with extensive new liner notes, shedding light on an underrated period in Nilsson’s career.
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Duit on Mon Dei was Nilsson’s first self-produced album, and features him at his most whimsical and eclectic. The album opens with a brief demo of the song “Jesus Christ You’re Tall” that would appear in a more complete form on Sandman. Nilsson had ruptured a vocal cord during the chaotic sessions for his John Lennon-produced 1974 album Pussy Cats, but his expansive vocal range is on full display on Duit on Mon Dei. The album features an all-star cast of backing musicians and vocalists including Dr. John, Ringo Starr, Gloria Jones, and Van Dyke Parks. But Trinidadian steel drum player Robert Greenidge is a particularly memorable presence, playing on eight of Duit on Mon Dei’s 11 tracks.
Greenidge frequently guested on calypso and reggae-influenced tracks by American stars such as Carly Simon and Robert Palmer. On Duit on Mon Dei, however, Greenidge’s steelpan adds an unexpected texture to a whole range of songs, some with overt Caribbean flavors and some without. “It’s a Jungle Out There” is driven by a funky, unpredictable beat by legendary session drummer Jim Keltner, and its dense arrangement features saxophone, harp, flute, and marimba in addition to the steel drums. Greenidge played on Nilsson’s next two albums and later joined Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, which he continues to tour with today. Nilsson’s career never recovered from his mid-’70s commercial slump, and he stopped releasing music in the ’80s. The album he was working on when he died of heart failure in 1994 was eventually released under the title Losst and Founnd in 2019.
Three more essential Harry Nilsson deep album cuts:
“1941”
“1941” was the song that Beatles publicist Derek Taylor heard that inspired him to buy many copies of Nilsson’s second album, 1967’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, and give them to everyone he knew, including the Fab Four. Taylor later produced Nillson’s 1973 album A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night.
“Gotta Get Up”
The opening track from the 1971 classic Nilsson Schmilsson experienced a resurgence in 2019 when it became a recurring musical theme in the first season of Netflix’s hit time loop comedy series Russian Doll.
“You’re Breakin’ My Heart”
One of the most popular songs from 1972’s Son of Schmilsson didn’t get much radio play because its opening lines get right to the point pretty bluntly: “You’re breakin’ my heart, you’re tearin’ it apart, so fuck you.”
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