Duke Special and friends present a night of songs written or made famous by this late, great American songwriter in Number 1, Mullingar on Sunday October 20.
Nilsson was described as the ‘missing Beatle’ and John Lennon named him as his favourite American singer. He achieved success on both sides of the Atlantic as a recording artist, songwriter for hire and interpreter of other people’s songs and was one of the few major pop-rock recording artists of his era to achieve significant commercial success without ever performing many major public concerts or regularly touring. He was feted by, worked with, or was friends with The Beatles, Phil Spector, The Monkees, Randy Newman, Glen Campbell, songwriter Jimmy Webb, and many other stars of the day.
Duke explains why he was inspired to put this show together. “Harry Nilsson is an artist whose music has always been on the periphery of my world. He is someone who I’d known as a songwriter and piano player and I knew some of his better known material, but I was excited by the thought of exploring his music properly. I love the learning curve of delving into another artist’s work and mining for hidden gems or forgotten treasures and finding myself absorbing and responding to all this music which is new to me or which echoes somewhere at the edges of my memory. As I immerse myself in his music and life, I’m sure I’ll discover many of the ups and downs which had an impact on his songwriting and talent. For the most part however, I want the concerts to be a showcase of Nilsson's music and my hope is that the audience will hear many songs they are familiar with as well as being introduced to lesser known Nilsson. I’d love people to go away feeling satisfied, entertained, and intrigued to go exploring Harry’s work for themselves.”
Duke will perform with a band, which will feature Paul Pilot (guitarist and producer on many Duke records ) and hopefully some special guest singers, joining him for a night of celebration of inspirational songwriting.
