‘Mucho Mungo / Mt. Elga’: The Harry Nilsson song John Lennon insisted on changing
Harry Nilsson flies somewhat under the radar when discussing the pivotal names of 1970s music. While the spotlight of glitz and glamour largely shone on names like Elton John, Fleetwood Mac and Queen, Nilsson existed in the shadows, barefoot and with an acoustic guitar in hand.
His playful songwriting style foregrounded a voice encompassing a range of emotions between the tender and passionate. A voice that sang lyrics, both humorous and dark, on intricate melodic compositions made Nilsson a masterful artist who was revered by fellow musicians. His most famous admirers were John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who, upon being asked who their favourite musician was during a 1968 press conference, swiftly responded without hesitation, “Nilsson!”.
His 1971 album Nilsson Schmilsson was a catalogue of tracks that showcased his ability to tackle a breadth of ideas with nuance. Somehow, it was a record that seamlessly blended the playful pop of ‘Driving Along’ with the tenderness of ‘Without You’ and the downright esoteric on ‘Coconut’.
Jumping from such varying atmospheres was a skill mainly exhibited by his longtime fans McCartney and Lennon, on their preceding records Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road. But come 1974, when The Beatles were no longer in existence, and Harry Nilsson was riding the wave of creative freedom afforded to him by the success of his previous albums, Lennon stepped into the role of producer for a number of Nilsson tracks.
Nilsson’s 1974 album Pussy Cats features what would seemingly be a characteristically Nilsson song in the B-side. ‘Mucho Mungo / Mt. Elga’ feels like a typically sun-kissed cacophony of ideas that breaks for a somewhat tropical-sounding Mt Elga melody in the middle.
Despite feeling like a soundtrack befitting the scruffy-haired Nilsson, it was actually the genesis of John Lennon. Lennon wrote an early version of ‘Mucho Mungo’ with Phil Spector during the first sessions for Rock ‘N’ Roll in late 1973 but was instead recorded by Nilsson for Pussy Cats, an album that Lennon, in fact, produced.
Bringing the track to Nilsson in its original form, which Spector co-wrote, it featured a middle section that, to Lennon’s ear, didn’t fit the song. “I finished it once with Phil, but he [Nilsson] pointed out the bits he didn’t like, which are exactly the bits that Phil wrote, which I didn’t like,” Lennon remembered as Nilsson injected the ‘Mt. Elga’ section in.
While the lyrics now read “Sail upon the ocean, sail with me / Sail into tomorrow every day / Looking for the sunshine through the haze”, there are bootleg recordings of the rehearsal process where the original lyrics of “Sailing on the good ship Lollipop/Open up a drug store, a nice kind of shop” were sung.
The levels of Nilsson and Lennon’s songwriting ability can clearly be seen in their decision to abandon lyrics that are irreverent simply for the point of being irreverent and instead replace them with some arbitrary depth. Whereas the first draft sounds like a lyricist trying to capture the imagination of Nilsson and Lennon, the final notes sound appropriately poignant from the true generational poets.
During Lennon’s five-year absence from recording between 1975 and 1980, he taped another acoustic performance of ‘Mucho Mungo’. Eventually released on the John Lennon Anthology, it’s a more stripped-back version of the track where his son Sean can be heard crying in the background.
