NILSSON – AERIAL PANDEMONIUM BALLET LP – Nr MINT UK 1972 ORIG

Nilsson – Aerial Pandemonium Ballet
(RCA Records  1972  SF8326)
UK Pressing

Front Laminated Sleeve in Nr MINT condition

Vinyl in Nr MINT condition

Harry Edward Nilsson III (June 15, 1941 – January 15, 1994), usually credited as Nilsson, was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. His work is characterized by pioneering vocal overdub experiments, returns to the Great American Songbook, and fusions of Caribbean sounds. A tenor with a three-and-a-half octave range, Nilsson was one of the few major pop-rock recording artists of his era to achieve significant commercial success without ever performing major public concerts or undertaking regular tours. The craft of his songs and the defiant attitude he projected remains a touchstone for later generations of indie rock musicians.

Born in Brooklyn, Nilsson moved to Los Angeles as a teenager to escape his family’s poor financial situation. While working as a computer programmer at a bank, he grew interested in musical composition and close-harmony singing, and was successful in having some of his songs recorded by various artists such as the Monkees. In 1967, he debuted on RCA Victor with the LP Pandemonium Shadow Show, followed with a variety of releases that include a collaboration with Randy Newman (Nilsson Sings Newman, 1970) and the original children’s story The Point! (1971). His most commercially successful albums, Nilsson Schmilsson (1971) and Son of Schmilsson (1972), bore the international top 10 singles “Without You” (1971) and “Coconut” (1972). His other top 10 hit, “Everybody’s Talkin’” (1968), was the theme song of the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, that year’s Academy Award Best Picture. A version of Nilsson’s “One”, released by Three Dog Night in 1969, also reached the U.S. top 10.

During a 1968 press conference, the Beatles were asked what their favorite American group was and answered “Nilsson”. He soon formed close friendships with the band’s John Lennon and Ringo Starr. In the 1970s, Nilsson and Lennon were members of the Hollywood Vampires drinking club, embroiling themselves in a number of widely publicized, alcohol-fueled incidents. At the same time, they produced one collaborative album, Pussy Cats (1974). After 1977, Nilsson left RCA, and his record output diminished. In response to Lennon’s 1980 death by shooting, he took a hiatus from the music industry to campaign for gun control. For the rest of his life, he recorded only sporadically.

Nilsson was voted No. 62 in Rolling Stone‘s 2015 list of the “100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time”, where he was described as “a pioneer of the Los Angeles studio sound, a crucial bridge between the baroque psychedelic pop of the late Sixties and the more personal singer-songwriter era of the Seventies”. The RIAA certified Nilsson Schmilsson and Son of Schmilsson as gold records, indicating over 500,000 units sold each. His honors include Grammy Awards for two of his recordings; Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male in 1970 for “Everybody’s Talkin’” and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male in 1973 for “Without You”. In 1994, Nilsson died of a heart attack while in the midst of recording new material for a since-unreleased comeback album.

Aerial Pandemonium Ballet is a 1971 album by Harry Nilsson, and one of the first-ever remix albums, years before they became commonplace.

With the successes of Everybody’s Talkin’ and The Point! creating demand for Nilsson recordings, a reissue of his first two RCA Victor albums (Pandemonium Shadow Show and Aerial Ballet), then out of print, was considered. Nilsson thought that his early albums already sounded a bit dated by 1971. So he went back into the studio with the master tapes, remixed, tweaked, and re-recorded vocals, and came up with a new consolidation which he titled Aerial Pandemonium Ballet.

It is a matter of intense debate among Nilsson fans whether this was a good idea. Reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine, on allmusic.com, describes the result as “just old tunes presented in slightly new, slightly off-putting ways.”

Track listing

All music and lyrics by Harry Nilsson except where noted

1. Introduction – :09
2. “1941” – 2:37 (slowed down track & remixed)
3. “Daddy’s Song” – 2:07 (new vocals, guitar/piano/out of sync)
4. “Mr. Richland’s Favorite Song” – 2:07 (new bg vocals & remixed)
5. “Good Old Desk” – 2:30 (slowed down track & remixed)
6. “Everybody’s Talkin'” (Fred Neil) – 2:42 (dumped second voice & remixed)
7. “Bath” – 1:50 (re-EQ’d original tracks)
8. “River Deep – Mountain High” (Phil Spector, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich – 3:57 (new vocals & remixed)
9. “Sleep Late, My Lady Friend” – 2:37 (remixed)
10. “Don’t Leave Me” – 2:12 (remixed)
11. “Without Her” – 2:08 (new vocals & remixed)
12. “Together” – 1:37 (new vocals, edited out bridge & remixed)
13. “One” – 2:18 (remixed)
14. Closing – :20