View Full Version : Nilsson's Bad Luck Apartment


tentoze
02-09-2008, 10:40 AM
I never knew this until just now:



Nilsson's 1970s London flat, located in the building at 12 Curzon Street on the pricey edge of Mayfair, was a two-bedroom place decorated by the design company that ex-Beatle Ringo Starr and Robin Cruikshank owned at that time. Although Nilsson cumulatively spent several years at the flat, which was convenient to Apple Records, the Playboy Club, Tramps disco and the homes of friends and business associates, his work and interests took him to the U.S. for extended periods, and while he was away he lent his place to numerous musician friends. During one of his absences, ex-Mamas and Papas singer Cass Elliot and a few members of her tour group stayed at the flat while she performed solo at the London Palladium, headlining with her Torch Songs and "Don't Call Me Mama Anymore". Following a strenuous performance with encores, Elliot returned to the flat to relax and sleep and was discovered in one of the bedrooms, dead of heart failure, on July 29, 1974. Four years later, on September 7, 1978, The Who's drummer Keith Moon returned to the same room in the flat after a night out, and died from an overdose of chlormethiazole, a prescribed anti-alcohol drug. Nilsson, distraught over another friend's death taking place in his flat, and with little remaining need for the property, quickly sold it to Moon's bandmate Pete Townshend and consolidated his life in Los Angeles.

similost
02-09-2008, 10:44 AM
Very interesting... I also didn't know this..

"Ellen Cohen was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up there and in Alexandria, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, DC)"

Too cool.. Alexandria is also the place Jim Morrison also get a start playing at bars in the area...

ampegdan
02-09-2008, 12:42 PM
I just read about that place in Moon's biography "Moon", but I didn't know Townshend had bought it. That's morbid as hell, but consider the source.
L.A. ultimately didn't do Harry a hell of a lot of good, either.

tentoze
02-09-2008, 12:46 PM
I just read about that place in Moon's biography "Moon", but I didn't know Townshend had bought it. That's morbid as hell, but consider the source.
L.A. ultimately didn't do Harry a hell of a lot of good, either.

That's for sure. I knew his mom a little in 69/70, and she wasn't optimistic about his surviving even then.

Celt
02-09-2008, 12:49 PM
Wow, that's just plain eerie. :para: