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Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

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Book of the Week: Alyn Shipton - Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter

Kerry Shale

Joanna Green

Libby Spurrier

Alyn Shipton

Book of the Week: Alyn Shipton - Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter: Episode 2

Factual: Life Stories

Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter

Episode 2

Alyn Shipton - Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Alyn Shipton - Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter, Episode 2

A financial stroke of luck enables Harry to give up his day job and focus on music.

A stroke of luck enables Harry Nilsson to give up his day job and focus on becoming a singer-songwriter. Biography read by Kerry Shale.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon described him as the Beatles' "favorite group," and yet no figure in popular music is as much of a paradox as Harry Nilsson. A major celebrity at a time when stadium rock was in its infancy and huge concerts and festivals were becoming the norm, Nilsson's instrument was the studio, his stage the dubbing booth, his greatest technical triumphs were masterful examples of studio craft, and he studiously avoided live performance.

He was a gifted composer of songs for a wide variety of performers, having created vivid flights of imagination for the Ronettes, the Yardbirds and the Monkees, yet Nilsson's own biggest hits were almost all written, ironically, by other composers and lyricists. He won two Grammies, had two top ten singles, and numerous album successes. Once described by his producer Richard Perry as "the finest white male singer on the planet," near the end of his life, his career was marked by voice-damaging substance abuse.

Kerry Shale reads extracts from this first ever full-length biography of Nilsson, in which author Alyn Shipton traces Nilsson's life from his Brooklyn childhood to his Los Angeles adolescence, and charts his gradual move into the spotlight as a talented songwriter. With interviews from Nilsson's friends, family and associates, and material drawn from an unfinished draft autobiography Nilsson was writing prior to his death, Shipton probes beneath the enigma and the paradox to discover the real Harry Nilsson, and reveals one of the most creative talents in 20th century popular music.

Read by Kerry Shale 

NILSSON: THE LIFE OF A SINGER-SONGWRITER
BY ALYN SHIPTON

Abridged by Libby Spurrier
PRODUCER: JOANNA GREEN
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

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By Alyn Shipton. Biography of American musician Harry Nilsson. Read by Kerry Shale

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