Apparently, Badfinger were also in the same studio building as Harry (And JWebb, message #6, it seems), he said “oh do you want to hear this version I did of your song?”

I can only imagine the opengobs…

Listening to the other (out-take) versions of Without You recorded by Nilsson, I suspect that what he nailed in the “proper” version was something he couldn’t have repeated, even if he wanted to. Given that he never played live, he didn’t need to. I think what also helped, getting into the rest of his back-catalogue, is the realisation that he never quite let rip in the same way with his other songs. More commonly, a playful underselling of his considerable talents was the Nilsson way.

I heard that Nilsson had a fatal heart attack while in the dentists chair (maybe the dentist was playing a promo of Mariah’s version). Anyway, they left him in situ overnight planning to move his body in the morning. Unfortunately, Burbank was hit by an earthquake that night, and the chair, with Nilsson, was destined to be swallowed up by a crevice, never to be seen again.

Quite possibly this is a story thought up by Harry in advance of his premature death, in the same way that Richard Burton planned to have “Gone for a Burton” written on his gravestone (I don’t think he got his wish). Burton and Nilsson, both enormous talents who frittered their talents away. Harry’s post Schmilsson output is so disappointing, just the odd pearl (1977’s minor hit All I Think About Is You is a hushed, ghostly counter to Without You but just as alarming and intense). Sandman is The Medusa Touch, Son Of Schmilsson is Villain. Terrible waste. Enough to put you off the booze.

Re 31: The Ian Branfoot years - 92nd out of 92 for a while, in ‘94/95 season I think. Saw a dire cup tie against Shrewsbury at Craven Cottage that year, but sadly missed the eerie Without You. Sounds beautiful.

Well into adulthood, it had the power to reduce me to mulch (much to my wife’s amusement; we once had to leave a bar in Brussels where it was playing on the jukebox). For years, I kept it at arm’s length, even as I became a bit of a fan of Nilsson’s other work, not daring to buy the album from which it came. Then, a couple of years ago, I picked up Nilsson Schmilsson cheap in Fopp. I got through track 6 (and track 11 too) without blubbing which maybe says something about what happens when you isolate the song at the centre of a web of accumulated memories and experience it as a fresh audio event - the act of deliberately listening to a record being so different to encountering it by chance.

It’s something to do with adding something strikingly different, and executing it perfectly, so that something that was originally latent in the song is brought to the fore.

I can just about remember the Badfinger original, and also hearing this and realising that what I just described is exacly what happened.

Ms Scareys hideous cover sums up everything I dislike about the woman.

Then again, maybe I just hate this song because it was on one of my mom’s compilations, along with such unlistenable dreck as “Those Were the Days” and “Seasons in the Sun.”