HARRY NILSSON's "PUSSY CATS" Heard in Ages and Manages to Take a Few Mild Satiric Pot Shots at Carly Simon, Among ...And How They Sounded Others)
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communicate all that much, and although I can dig it on its own recycling level, I can't help preferring the kind of artist who deals in more bedrock human concerns than pop music and its creator's relationship to it. So what about the new album? Well, as you may have gathered by now, it contains nothing I'm going to be listening to after my three or four times through it for the sake of my reviewer's conscience. It opens with a passable rendition of Jimmy Cliff's beautiful Many Rivers to Cross,which has a nice neo- Spector production from John (in the vein of hislast album), dead catchy guitar figures, and a vocal by Harry that is an obvious par- ody of John's Primal Screaming-at once hilariously accurate and inappropriate to the song. There's a remake ofRock Around the Clock thatis both 1974 -heavy and almost slavishly accurate but stillwill not cause anyone to rip out theater seats, a Dylan tune treated in the manner ofJump into the Fire asheavy-metal jungle boogie, a symphonic work-out ofSave the Last Dance for Me that in its own way is equally as dreadful and sans soul as the recent hit cover version by the (gasp!) DeFranco Family, and some light bits of whimsey penned by Harry that have made next to no impression on me at all (except forBlack Sails,which has one of the most gorgeous string arrangements I've HARRY NILSSON'S "PUSSY CATS" heard in ages and manages to take a few mild satiric pot shots at Carly Simon, among ...and how they sounded others). It's all very agreeable, good fun, highly sophisticated, immaculately done. and in the final analysis terribly, terribly ginally sentimental tune salvaged by a spare cold. So, for me anyway, it is dispensable. ...to Steve Simels and stately arrangement) into a piece of romantic schlock unmatched for sheer er- HEY say confession is good for the satz grandiosity by anything this side ofIl...to Noel Coppage soul. Well, that may well be, but what Tro vatore. they don't say is whether or not confession More likely, my lack of appreciation for HARRY NILSSON'S "Pussy Cats"isa is good for job security. You see, I have the what he's done stems from his basic stance celebrity album. Like "Ringo" and new Nilsson album before me for review, as a writer and performer, which to my mind other recent results of a need among pop and it seems there's no way out . .I have reduces itself to a kind of ironic detachment stars to belong to a fraternity, it presents it- to confess. I know my colleagues are going (it is a stance, by the way, that Harry shares self mainly as a social event. The producer. to hate me for this (Harry having been one with his good buddy Randy Newman, whom John Lennon, is a man who likes being en- of last year's cover boys, a great favorite Isimilarly mistrust).It manifests itself in vied, and he takes co-star billing upon him- around the office and all), but here goes: I do lots of ways: in his attitude of "give me five self to the point of putting his picture on the not now, and have never at any time, partic- minutes and I can write a song about any- cover along with Nilsson's. A whole slew of ularly cared for Harry Nilsson, and this new thing," in his continued disavowal of live pictures-of John, Harry, the ubiquitous album "Pussy Cats" (produced by no less a performance, and even in the sheer exper- Ringo, and the others at work and play in hero of my youth than John Lennon) has tise of his studio technique and his choice of the studio-is provided in the fold -out jack- altered my opinion not a whit. At the same material. You can tell me all you want, for et. These are Polaroid snaps of studiously time, Iwillfess to being as awed as the next example, how "authentic" his "Little Touch poor quality, the kind (we are apparently guy by the sheer breadth of Harry's demon- of Schmilsson" album was, in which he at- expected to assume) a fan might take, the strated musical and technical talents. He's a tempted the "standard" (translate pre -pre - kind Paul McCartney recently provided virtuoso vocalist who can sound like any rock) pop repertoire, but the fact of the mat- withhisalbum (which depicted such musi- singer, past or present, if he sets his mind to ter is that Harry Nilsson represents some- cally irrelevant celebrities as James Coburn it; he knows his way around a recording thing totally different from Frank Sinatra, on its cover). The packaging also involves studio atleastas well as, say, Todd Rund- and even though he approaches those scngs liner notes by Derek Taylor, who goes out gren; and he's a songwriter of impressive with seeming reverence and faithfulness to of his way to admit (twice) that he had time facility and cleverness. Further, he's a gen- the genre's conventions, it's impossible for in his busy schedule to hear only one of the uine Loon (it's no accident that Keith Moon, someone like Harry to sing them without songs before the deadline made him do the the most authentic nutcake in all of rock, making some kind of oblique (unflattering) notes. plays with him on this album), and if there's comment on what they meantoday.Harry, Nobody makes any bones about empha- anything that rock needs more of at this being nothing if not subtle, is well aware of sizing personalities over music- nobody, point in its history, it's Genuine Loons. this, and, I maintain, fully intended this kind that is, except Harry Nilsson. Once the rec- So why, then, you're probably wondering, of implied condescension- despite the fact ord starts, his approach is as private and don't I get off on him? I'm not quite sure. that, unintentionally and on a purely musical subtle as it usually is, and that's probably AM radio, I suspect, has something to do level, the record wasn't a hell of a lot better what keeps the odor of ego balm from over- with it;I defy anyone who listens to that than the album Ringo Starr (another of his powering the whole works. Harry has never increasingly moribund institutionnotto old buddies) put out a few years ago, which had any identity problems as a singer- his develop an almost pathological aversion to was a charmingly naïve and totally sincere voice is too idiosyncratic for that-and so, such Nilssonian piffle as that goddamnCo- run-through of a suspiciously similar reper- having to prove nothing, he does wind up conutsong, or his unspeakably hideous toire. Ultimately, what Harry is dishing out serving the music as well as using it. He also transmogrification of Badfinger'sWithout is defeated by its own sophistication. Irony has a strange sense of humor and a true You(which in their hands had been a mar- isall very well and good, but itdoesn't composer's skill at teasing melodic ideas 106 STEREO REVIEW.