WHEN HARRY NILSSON MEET JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE AND RINGO

The famous ‘Lost Weekend’. How Harry Nilsson, the hellraising singer of Without You, befriended and bewitched the Fab Four – and more

One long party: During the infamous 'lost weekend' Harry Nilsson with John Lennon and May Pang. 

Nilsson always slightly hero-worshipped John, and there was a shared love of the outrageous

Somewhere between three and four o’clock on a Monday morning in April 1968, the telephone rang in the little office at RCA Records in Los Angeles where an obscure singer-songwriter named Harry Nilsson was keeping his usual nocturnal hours.

‘I was half asleep,’ Nilsson recalled. ‘A voice says: “Hello, Harry. This is John. Man you’re too f***ing much, you’re just great. We’ve got to get together and do something.”

‘I said, “Who is this?”

‘“John Lennon.”

‘I said: “Yeah, right, who is this?”

‘“It’s John Lennon. I’m just trying to say you’re fantastic. Have a good night’s sleep. Speak to you soon. Goodbye.” ‘I thought, “Was that a dream?”’ Not a dream, but the start of an association that would change Nilsson’s life.The year before, Nilsson recorded The Beatles’ You Can’t Do That, cleverly using quotes from 14 other Beatles songs.

That had led to an invitation to a party at George Harrison’s rented house in the Hollywood Hills.

Harry recalled that the Beatle, ‘in a white windblown robe with a beard and long hair, looking like Christ with a camcorder’, had listened to his songs and been ‘very complimentary’.

Harrison took Nilsson’s demos away and played them to the other Beatles, who were now calling Harry in the middle of the night.

The Monday after John’s call, Paul rang. ‘Hello, Harry. Yeah, this is Paul. Just wanted to say you’re great, man! John gave me the album. It’s great; you’re terrific. Look forward to seeing you.’

The next Monday, Nilsson dressed and waited for a four o’clock call from Ringo. It didn’t come. But on May 14, John and Paul appeared at a press conference in New York.

Asked to name their favourite American artist, John replied ‘Nilsson’. The two gave the same response when asked their favourite group.

Later that day, when a journalist wondered what they thought about American music, Lennon replied, ‘Nilsson! Nilsson for president!’

A unique relationship would form between Nilsson and The Beatles. He would write a song for McCartney, make films and party through the 1970s with Ringo Starr, and record and raise hell with Lennon in the notorious 18-month ‘lost weekend’ period in 1973 and 1974, when John left Yoko Ono for a wild life in Los Angeles.

There was, it should be said, much more to Nilsson than his Beatles associations.

He was described by his producer Richard Perry as ‘the finest white male singer on the planet’, and was an accomplished songwriter who happened to have huge hits with two songs he did not write: Everybody’s Talkin’ and Without You.

Not long after Lennon and McCartney returned from New York, Derek Taylor, The Beatles’ press officer at Apple, made a call to Harry.

‘Derek says: “The lads, the boys, the Fabs would like you to come over and join them at a session,”’ Nilsson remembered. ‘“They’re recording at Abbey Road. They’re dying to see you.”’

Nilsson with Ringo and Lynsey de Paul. 'When he got to make records with John Lennon and be friends with Ringo Starr, his life was complete,' said legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb

Within a few days, Nilsson was sitting on a plane crossing the Atlantic.

Arriving at Heathrow, he found that Ringo had kindly left his Daimler limousine at the airport for him.

Suddenly famous, having been endorsed by the world’s biggest band, Nilsson went straight to a reception for his own record, where the other three Beatles were the stars of a guest list that included everybody who was anybody in swinging London.

That afternoon, another limo arrived to take Harry out to Lennon’s home in the Surrey commuter belt.

Nilsson was greeted warmly by Lennon, and a single look between them was the start of a lifelong friendship.‘We spent the entire night talking until dawn,’ said Nilsson.

‘Yoko ended up like a kitten at John’s feet, curled up. And John and I are on about marriage, life, death, divorce, women. And I’m thinking, “This is it! This is truthful. This is good. This is honest. This is exciting. It’s inspirational.”’

John gave Nilsson an Indian gold braided jacket with fur trim lining he had worn in Magical Mystery Tour.

The following day Paul announced he was coming over to Nilsson’s hotel, and he ran through rough versions of several of his newly written songs.

Nilsson sent down for a bottle or two of the best wine on the hotel’s room service list, and they carried on singing songs for one another into the small hours, until there was a thunderous banging on the door from the occupants of the room next door: ‘What the hell do you people think you’re doing? Don’t you know some people work for a living? Some people have to get up in the morning!’

Nilsson calmly introduced them to his visitors, and Paul gently apologised. The neighbours were impressed to find that the disturbance had been created by so famous a guest and made no further complaints. The evening ended with Paul driving Nilsson around London in his Aston Martin.

It laid the groundwork for future collaborations between Nilsson and all four members of the group.

The song Everybody’s Talkin’ had made Nilsson a star in his own right by the time his friendship with Ringo – soon to be one of the cornerstones of Nilsson’s life – blossomed in the early 1970s.

‘Ringo and I spent a thousand hours laughing,’ said Nilsson.

John and Nilsson are thrown out of the Troubador in LA on March 13, 1974, for heckling

Ringo, often sporting mirrored sunglasses that disguised the effects of the night before, was at the heart of a social set that enjoyed late nights, exclusive bars, nightclubs and brandy.

Along with Nilsson and Ringo, there would be Marc Bolan of T Rex, Keith Moon, and Graham Chapman of Monty Python.

When in London, they would meet in the afternoon, drinking brandy and swapping yarns, each new arrival dropping in with the catchphrase: ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything?’

‘We would drink until 9pm,’ Nilsson recalled. ‘That’s six hours of brandy. Then between 9 and 10, we would usually end up at Tramp, the most uproarious, exclusive disco-restaurant in the world.

'Royalty, movie stars, world champions all frequented the place. It was a ride, meeting luminaries and having blow-outs every night.’

Nilsson was back in Los Angeles by the time of John Lennon’s arrival in the city in the autumn of 1973. Ever since their time together at Lennon’s home, there had been a strong bond of friendship between the two of them.

However, unlike the camaraderie he enjoyed with Ringo, Nilsson always slightly hero-worshipped Lennon, and there was a shared love of the outrageous. This could, and often did, prove to be a destructive force.John was at a crossroads. His album Mind Games would be released in October to indifferent reviews, and in June he had split from Yoko. He and Ono’s former personal assistant, May Pang, eloped to the West Coast, where Lennon planned to make an album of rock classics, to be produced by Phil Spector.

John’s drinking was under control in New York, but in Los Angeles, away from Yoko, it increased dramatically as he began socialising with Nilsson.

As she watched Lennon match Nilsson’s intake of brandy and cocaine, May Pang felt powerless: ‘(Nilsson) had charm. We loved him. But he went to extremes.’

According to Spector, Nilsson was a hindrance to the sessions, and one of his more extreme pranks involved suggesting holding up a 7-Eleven store.Spector was no less outrageous.

He started arriving at the studio dressed up in various costumes, first as a doctor, then a karate instructor, and finally a cowboy, complete with loaded revolver.

Trying to assert his authority, Spector fired the gun into the air.

Covering his ears, Lennon quipped, ‘Listen Phil, if you’re going to kill me, kill me. But don’t f*** with me ears – I need ’em.’

The sessions broke down, leaving John to spend more time with Nilsson, who introduced him to all his nocturnal haunts.

These included the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Hollywood, where the upstairs room still has a plaque on the wall commemorating their late-night drinking club, ‘the Hollywood Vampires’, which included Micky Dolenz of The Monkees, Keith Moon and Alice Cooper.

On March 13, 1974, Nilsson took his friend to see comedians the Smothers Brothers at the Troubadour club. Lennon proceeded to get seriously drunk on Brandy Alexanders.

The press the next day reported: ‘Customers in the jammed nightclub complained Lennon made sarcastic comments and shouted obscenities during the show.

Said the Smothers’ manager, Ken Fritz: ‘I went over and asked Harry to try to shut up Lennon. Harry said: “I’m trying – don’t blame me!”'When Lennon continued, I told him to keep quiet. He swung and hit me in the jaw.’ The bouncers had John out in seconds.

Photographer Brenda Mary Perkins tried to snap him, but the enraged Lennon took a swing and his fist allegedly hit her right eye.

The Nixon administration had tried to have John returned to Britain because of an ancient drug charge. When Perkins filed charges at the sheriff’s office, a Nilsson cover-up and charm campaign quelled an investigation that could have got Lennon deported.

Lennon and Nilsson agreed they had to do something more positive than going out on wild benders. John announced his intention of producing an album for Nilsson, and they decided they and the musicians should rent a beach house close to Santa Monica.

The sessions yielded the disappointing Pussy Cats, but were notable for a rare reunion of the principal Beatles.

Round midnight on the first night, Paul McCartney appeared with Stevie Wonder. John was passing cocaine around, and his offer of a ‘toot’ to Stevie gave the subsequent bootleg album its title: A Toot And A Snore In ’74. It was the last time the two ex-Beatles would ever play together in a studio.

On December 8, 1980, Nilsson was in the studio when he heard Lennon had been shot – it brought his professional life to a complete stop.

He would never make another completed studio album of his own. But by the early 1990s, his weight, his drinking, and the years of cocaine intake had taken a serious toll on his wellbeing.

A business venture resulted in bankruptcy, and Ringo had to step in to provide Harry and his family with a house and spending money. Beset by ill health, Nilsson died on January 15, 1994, aged 52.

In most obituaries, Nilsson’s career was summed up by his two Grammy-winning records, with the suggestion that the rest was an inexorable downturn into self-destruction.

Nilsson seemed to agree: ‘Being relegated to Everybody’s Talkin’ and Without You ain’t exactly what I set out to do.’

‘When he got to make records with John Lennon and be friends with Ringo Starr, his life was complete,’ said close friend and legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb.

‘That’s all he ever wanted. He wanted to know those people, to be admired by them. Everything else was the small print.’