Garden Party

As a child, Nelson starred with his parents on The Ozzie And Harriet Show and became a teen idol as a singer in the '50s. He had a string of hits, but by the mid '60s he was no longer in demand as The Beatles were dominating the American music scene. In 1971, he played a show with other stars from the '50s at Madison Square Garden in New York City. He was expected to play his hits, but when he played his newer material, the crowd booed him badly. This experience unnerved the former teen idol and prompted him to write this song, which became his first US Top Ten hit since 1963's "For You." After that show, Nelson stopped playing nostalgia shows. He died in a plane crash in 1985 at age 45.

This was one of the few songs Nelson wrote himself, and it was very important to him. Rick's son Gunnar wrote in a Chicken Soup for the Soul article: "After a lifetime of pretending to be a character he wasn't - wearing the sweater on Monday on the set of Ozzie and Harriet after being a real rock star on the weekends - he was writing and performing for his own pleasure and satisfaction. The song was based on his experience at Madison Square Garden.

He turned what could have remained the darkest day of his life into his brightest shining moment. Just when the music industry considered him a relic, filing him away as yesterday's news, he had the biggest hit of his career and it was totally autobiographical.

As I was becoming musical as a kid, he told me that he would have given away all of his #1 records for success like this because it was a piece of his life, of his heart. The victory belonged to him alone. He told me then that the best thing in the world to be as an artist is a songwriter first and foremost."

This was Nelson's last hit. Before 1965, he had 34 Top-40 hits in the US.

Looking back on Nelson's experience at Madison Square Garden, it's clear that Nelson did not get into the spirit of the event, as instead of giving the crowd his old hits they had come to enjoy, he showed up with long hair, a sequined outfit, and new songs. Kent Kotal at Forgotten Hits puts it in perspective: "Nelson wasn't one of the artists typically invited to these Oldies Revival Shows, and since he had been playing all along with his Stone Canyon Band (featuring an odd 'oldie' here and there as part of his act, including a somewhat 'countrified' version of 'Hello Mary Lou'), he REALLY didn't know what to expect, or fully understand what the crowd had come to hear. Ironically, a decade later his stage show was virtually non-stop back-to-back oldies hits, very true to their original arrangements, and Ricky's voice truly did improve with age. The good news was that one of the biggest songs of his entire career came out of the experience."

Rick's twin sons, Gunnar and Matthew, are a musical duo called Nelson. They had some hits in the early '90s, including the US #1 hit "(Can't Live Without Your) Love And Affection ," and while their father stopped playing his old songs when he faded from glory, Nelson not only continued to play their old songs at state fairs and other shows, but their father's as well.

Al Kooper's memoir Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards devotes a few pages to the experience of working with Rick Nelson. Nelson had signed with Epic Records shortly after Garden Party, and Al Kooper relished the opportunity to produce him. At first Kooper wanted to reunite Nelson with his guitarist from the 1950s, James Burton. But Burton wanted too much money and Epic balked. Next Kooper had to scramble for a back-up plan, and ended up producing an album of Nelson singing covers of a diverse series of hits from other bands. Epic Records was less than enchanted with this decision, to say the least, and refused to release the album. Even after Nelson's death!