The troubadour and the Irish girl who stole his heart
Dubliner Una O’Keeffe was waitressing in NY when Harry Nilsson walked in... changing both their lives
BY any reckoning, they were an unlikely couple. He was a hard-living rock star with two failed marriages behind him, she was a fresh-faced college girl from Ireland. Yet the relationship between Harry Nilsson and Una O’Keeffe turned out to be one of the great romances.
It all began one Sunday evening in August 1973 when Nilsson went for a stroll around his native New York. At the age of 32, he already had a string of critically acclaimed albums to his name.
With a vocal range that stretched to three-and-a-half octaves, he was widely regarded as one of the finest singers of the 20th Century. He was also considered to be a consummate songwriter, even though his two biggest hits – Everybody’s Talkin’ and Without You – had been written by other people.
Perhaps the most persuasive evidence of his cultural importance, though, is the fact that The Beatles had named him as their favourite performer. None of this was known to the teenage Una when Nilsson walked into Rumpelmeyer’s, the Central Park ice cream parlour where she was working for the summer. The singer had a rolled-up newspaper in one jacket pocket and a flask of hard liquor in the other.
After ordering a brandy and an ice cream, Nilsson fell into conversation with Una and another Irish girl also working there as a waitress. According to author Alyn Shipton’s biography of the singer, the future Mrs Nilsson was ‘quite unprepared for what happened next’.
Una, originally from Mount Merrion in south Dublin, later recalled: ‘He looked at me and he said, “You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen, will you marry me?”
‘Both my friend and I were at a very happy time in our life. We were 19 years old. We loved America, we loved Americans, we were having a great time. And we just sort of made a joke out of it. Banter back and forth.
‘Obviously no-one had ever said anything like that to me before, but it was very special. Then he said, “No, really, what can I do to prove my intent?” And we said, “Well, we like flowers and we like melons”.’
IT was intended as a throwaway remark, but Nilsson took it at face value. He returned to his hotel where he took a shower, changed his clothes and sobered up.
After hiring a limousine he crossed the city buying baskets of flowers and boxes of melons, as well as soft toys. He returned to Rumpelmeyer’s with his purchases and waited outside the kitchen door until closing time.
So began a love affair that was to last until the singer’s untimely death at the age of 52.
At the time of their meeting, Una was nearing the end of her twomonth stay and was due to return home. Ahead of her departure, though, she spent a week travelling across the States with her new boyfriend.
They attended a US Senate committee hearing into the Watergate scandal, before flying by private jet to Las Vegas where they were invited to a party hosted by Liza Minnelli. After a few days at Nilsson’s penthouse apartment in Los Angeles, Una returned to Ireland to continue her studies.
Upon finishing her degree the following year, she went back to the States and moved in with Nilsson. During her absence, he had spent much of his time carousing with John Lennon during the latter’s infamous 18-month ‘lost weekend’ in New York.
Nor did the booze-fuelled carry-on stop there. On one occasion, Nilsson – who would have marked his 75th birthday tomorrow, June 15 – ended up being fined £1.50 by magistrates in London after being held in a police cell overnight.
Even though he had been given a hefty dose of Valium at a Harley Street clinic, he had checked himself out and gone on a drinking spree. He was arrested after police spotted him urinating against a wall.
There was also the time that he appeared onstage as part of a sketch with Monty Python’s Flying Circus in a state of advanced intoxication. According to Michael Palin’s account, Nilsson was ‘coked to the eyeballs and full of booze’ and eventually ‘keeled over into the front row and lay helplessly astride the wooden edge of the orchestra pit’.
Even close friends admitted to having reservations about a night on the town with the singer. ‘It was fun,’ said legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb. ‘It’s just that you never knew when you were going to be coming home, when you left the house.’
Still, Nilsson’s relationship with Una survived all the drinking and hellraising. They got married in Los Angeles on August 12, 1976, when the bride was already expecting the first of their six children.
The day before the wedding, the groom had gone on a major boozeup with Ringo Starr – his best man – and some other pals.
Nilsson subsequently admitted to being so badly hungover the following morning that he drank several large brandies and took a number of lines of cocaine to stop himself from shaking.
Yet still the drinking continued. He spent so much time in the bar of the Bel Air Hotel that he referred to it as his ‘office’. Eventually the staff gave him a set of keys so he could close up after they had gone home for the night.
Nilsson was badly affected by the death of Who drummer Keith Moon – a close friend who was found in the singer’s London flat – in 1978. He was even more distressed by the murder of John Lennon two years later, which led him to become a tireless campaigner for stricter gun control laws.
By the time the Nineties dawned, trouble was brewing closer to home. It emerged that all his money had been embezzled by his business manager in a futile attempt to keep the business afloat.
In a court submission when he was forced to file for bankruptcy, Nilsson wrote: ‘We went to bed one night a financially secure family of eight and woke up the next morning with $300 in our checking account.’
Although the family home had to be sold, many people who had benefitted from the singer’s generosity were keen to return the favour.
RINGO Starr gave a $25,000 cash loan and also paid for a new family home, which the Nilssons bought off him when their situation improved. Meanwhile, Yoko Ono sent a substantial cheque.
But the shock of bankruptcy took its toll on Nilsson’s already precarious health. He was already overweight and suffering from the effects of too much alcohol and cocaine. He developed a number of other complaints, including blood clots, fullblown diabetes and clinical depression.
He survived a massive heart attack in February 1993, but remained seriously ill for the remainder of his life. ‘I think we did know the end was coming,’ reflected Una, now 62 and still living in California. ‘But somewhat for the children and somewhat for ourselves, we just decided to live every day as if we were going to live on together.’
Yet if poor health had an impact on his towering talent, it didn’t dim his devotion to the Irish girl who had stolen his heart.
On the night of January 15, 1994, they were watching TV in bed together when Una started falling asleep. She recalled: ‘And that’s when he rolled over to say goodnight and he said, “I want you to know I love you so much, so much.”
‘And that was the last thing he ever said.’
Nilsson: The Life Of A SingerSongwriter by Alyn Shipton is published by Oxford University Press