Another rather nifty artefact – Harry Nilsson’s handwritten lyrics to ‘Men At Sea’. The song was written by Harry for the 1983 Graham Chapman/Peter Cook film, ‘Yellowbeard’. While the song does not appear in the film, it does feature at the end of “Group Madness”, a documentary about the filming of Yellowbeard. The lyrics were gifted to Harry’s friend Bob Borgen. As Bob shared with me,

… I was just over one night and saw the sheet on a table — I think he played me a cassette and then just picked up the paper and signed it, and handed it over. He was hoping it would be used in Yellowbeard, but if you heard it you can see that it is rough and not really finished. I’m glad they at least used it in the documentary about the film.

If you’ve never heard the track take a click over here and jump to the 18:05 mark.

Here’s an interesting bit of Nilssonian history from January 20, 1965. The original Capitol/Tower Booking Request and Recording Work Order for four Harry titles. The four tracks included, You Can’t Take Your Love Away From Me, So You Think You Got Troubles, Granada and Do You Believe would all be used (along with their respective B-Sides) to generate an album of sorts by dropping in a couple of then as yet unreleased tracks. Spotlight on Nilsson is controversially referred to as Harry’s “debut album” as it is technically the first Nilsson LP released but it’s really just a compilation of singles from Harry’s Tower years.

The documents themselves are a real historical treat, telling us the call time, the number of instruments used, studio number etc etc. Exciting to think that these simple pieces of paper, in part, mark the launch of such an incredible talent.