harry nilsson quotes double feature: fact or fiction?
"Someone told me a few minutes ago they saw John walking on the street [once] wearing a sign saying – a button, rather, saying 'I Love Paul'. And this girl who told me that said she asked him, 'Why are you wearing the button that says ‘I Love Paul’?' He said, 'Because I love Paul.'" -Harry Nilsson
"I'm just like everybody else, Harry, I fell for Paul's looks." Harry Nilsson (on John)
these quotes get passed around unsourced, or wrongly sourced, constantly. so...
are these harry nilsson quotes about john lennon real?
shockingly, after getting an anon correction on the first one and then discovering myself on the second one through the world's most random search engine imaginable bc SOMETHING felt unfinished...... the final verdict for both?
...ish? the second one is sort of neutral bc it's taken a bit out of context but i'll get to that
let's get into it, because this one took me on a journey!
(and btw the sources on these were SUCH a pain in the ass to find due to lack of sourcing & wrong sourcing so i am on my hands and knees for these to get passed around w the proper sources now that they're in one place bc they're so good)
first of all, these quotes keep getting mixed up and messed around with different wording. which was my first road block on finding a proper source. second of all, they have been wrongly attributed to a) one single interview together and/or b) a rolling stone interview with nilsson. this made things aggravating. but in the end, an anon sent me the audio for the first quote and for the second one i FINALLY found someone a looong while back actually naming the book it's in & successfully found it!
made a post earlier concluding both were fake, but we just had to go a little deeper folks.
anyway, onto the good shit
who was harry nilsson? he was a friend of john's, specifically during his 1974 lost weekend era. they lived together for a while (along with others, including ringo!) and were pretty close.
"because i love paul"
this one gets misquoted the Most honestly like you'll find a bunch of different variations of it, but you can find it in a 1984 interview with geoffrey giuliano as such:
GIULIANO: Did he miss the Beatles? Was he mournful about what happened, over the, you know—?
HARRY: Someone told me a few minutes ago they saw John walking on the street [once] wearing a sign saying – a button, rather, saying ‘I Love Paul’. And this girl who told me that said she asked him, “Why are you wearing the button that says ‘I Love Paul’?” He said, “Because I love Paul.” [laughs]
(source) (and again, it's a tumblr blog, but given that it's audio, i'm marking it trustworthy. i just uploaded it to archive.org in case it ever gets deleted)
"i fell for paul's looks"
this one. this one was a goddamn journey and a half. this sent me on several rabbit holes and dead ends. the author of the last source said "nope it's definitely not from the tapes i found this audio from or i would've posted it too" and couldn't find the source either. no one had a source. until finally i found someone on a forum saying it was in the ballad of john and yoko published by rolling stone in 1984, in an essay titled "harry remembers" and thank christ it was on archive.org
so here's the full quote, found on page 236
"He spoke the way James Joyce wrote. And to me he was the Beatles. He was always the spark. In a late wee-hours-of-the-morning talk, he once told me: 'I'm just like everybody else, Harry. I fell for Paul's looks. George knew more chords, so he was in. And Ringo, he's just Ringo.'"
(source)
so this one gets a... true/neutral rating from me. why neutral? well, the "i fell for paul's looks" part is certainly there. but in the full context, he's talking about why he wanted each member in the beatles. basically, paul was the pretty face. however, he did say that verbatim and it is incredibly fucking gay imo. like specifically the "i fell for" wording is craaaaazy to me. but i do think the full context should be included if we're talking about it, as well as the actual source.
so no, they were not indeed both from the same interview. one isn't even FROM an interview. but they are both true! which is great bc i love both of these quotes and truly thought they were fake! pleasantly surprised on this one
now, take these with a grain of salt. the first quote is a third-hand source. it's nilsson recounting what some random fan told him john had done YEARS prior. the second one is a second-hand source and nilsson and john were like pretty infamous for getting drunk/high together. but the quotes themselves? certainly exist from harry nilsson, and that's the question. believe them if you want to, or leave them! i'm certainly taking them lmao
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