Goodfellas – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Harry Nilsson – Jump Into The Fire

I remember this song most in Goodfellas in the scene where Henry is doing cocaine, then walking out the door, placing guns in the car trunk while a helicopter circles above. The song has a Stones feel to it. It would have not have been out of place on one of their albums.

The song was released in 1971 on his album Nilsson Schmilsson. It also contained the Badfinger cover Without You and Coconut. Jump into the Fire peaked at#27 in the Billboard 100 and #16 in Canada. This song was more rock than he usually released. From the man who wrote Coconut, Me and My Arrow, and the Puppy Song… this was a departure.

Harry’s voice was one of a kind. That is said a lot about singers but with Nilsson it was true. Just one listen to how he reimaged Without You tells you all you need to know. He was also a great songwriter on top of that. This song was the follow up to Without You.

The song featured Chris Spedding’s driving guitar, Jim Keltner’s drums and a cool bass solo by Herbie Flowers. The bass alone on the track is worth the price of admission.

In 1968 John Lennon and Paul McCartney were asked who their favorite American group was…they said “Nilsson.” John Lennon would later produce Nilsson’s 1974 album Pussy Cats.

Harry Nilsson: “I’ve had a lot of publicity out of the fact that the Beatles liked my album Pandemonium Shadow Show, and named me as their favorite singer. But I didn’t really like that. Obviously I was very pleased and very flattered – and now I’ve got to know John and Paul quite well, and we get on well together. They’re both very gentle people. But I wasn’t keen on getting all that publicity because of them. It made me feel that I was riding on someone else’s back – in other words it was because of them that I was being talked about, and not because of me. But I think the whole thing was blown up a bit out of proportion by the Press.”

Al Kooper: “I went to visit him at his home in L.A. That first day we smoked a lot of pot and just laughed. Then we went swimming in his pool, with our clothes on, for what was the first and only ‘Brian Jones Memorial Swim Party.’ Later on, we sat down at his piano and traded songs. His voice and songs were fantastic, some of the greatest I’d ever heard.”

He never performed before a live audience during his entire recording career. Shortly before his death, however, he did join Ringo Starr on stage one night during the ex-Beatle’s tour.

Here is the Goodfellas scene where Jump Into The Fire goes into a Stones song

“Jump Into The Fire”

You can climb a mountain
You can swim the sea
You can jump into the fire
But you’ll never be free

You can shake me up
Or I can break you down
Whoa-o-o-o-, whoa-o-o-o-

We can make each other happy [4X]
[Repeat entire 3 times more]
You can jump into the fire [4X]

Donovan – Atlantis

I first heard this song while watching Goodfellas as Joe Pesci is beating Billy Batts. Donovan is reading a poem and then the song really kicks in with it’s sixties goodness around the 1:50 mark with Way down below the ocean…

Atlantis peaked at #7 in the Billboard 100 in 1969. The background vocals are credited as “Donovan’s fans.” It was rumored that Paul McCartney, who had earlier contributed to Donovan’s hit “Mellow Yellow,” sang backing vocals,It has since been discredited by Mark Lewisohn (Beatle historian), McCartney spent the month of November 1968 mostly at his farm in Scotland.

The song was originally the B side in America to To Susan on the West Coast Waiting.

From Songfacts

This song begins as a long narrative poem in which Donovan tells of the legendary island of Atlantis. Exotic and mythological images were on the minds of many Hippies in the ’60s, and Atlantis was the symbol of the counterculture moment with the hope that if true love is found, Atlantis will be reached. The only sung lines in the song are:

Way down beneath the ocean
Where I wanna be she may be

The song was used in a violent scene in the movie Goodfellas.

Donovan re-recorded the song as a parody “Hail Atlantis” on the animated series Futurama. He also redid the song with the German group No Angels for the German soundtrack of Atlantis: The Lost Empire entitled “Atlantis 2002.”

Atlantis

The continent of Atlantis was an island
Which lay before the great flood
In the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean
So great an area of land, that from her western shores
Those beautiful sailors journeyed
To the South and the North Americas with ease
In their ships with painted sails

To the east, Africa was a neighbor
Across a short strait of sea miles
The great Egyptian age is but a remnant of The Atlantian culture
The antediluvian kings colonized the world
All the gods who play in the mythological dramas
In all legends from all lands were from fair Atlantis
Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth
On board were the Twelve
The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist
The magician and the other so-called gods of our legends
Though gods they were
And as the elders of our time choose to remain blind
Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new
Hail Atlantis!

Way down below the ocean
Where I wanna be, she may be
Way down below the ocean
Where I wanna be, she may be
Way down below the ocean
Where I wanna be, she may be

Way down below the ocean
Where I wanna be, she may be
Way down below the ocean (she may, she may, she may)
(She may, she may, she may)
Where I wanna be, she may be (she may, she may, she may)

My antediluvian baby (she may, she may, she may)
Oh yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah
(She may, she may, she may)
I want to see you some day (she may, she may, she may)
Where I wanna be, she may be
My antediluvian baby (she may, she may, she may)
Oh yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah (she may, she may, she may)
(She may, she may, she may)
My antediluvian baby

Way down below the ocean (she may, she may, she may)
(She may, she may, she may)
Where I wanna be, she may be (she may, she may, she may)
My antediluvian baby
Way down below the ocean
I love you, girl
I want to see you some day (she may, she may, she may)
Where I wanna be
My antediluvian baby, oh yeah
Way down below the ocean
I want to see you some day (she may, she may, she may)
Where I wanna be
My antediluvian baby
Way down below the ocean
(She may, she may, she may)
Where I wanna be, she may be
My antediluvian baby
Way down below the ocean
I want to see you
Where I wanna be, she may be
My antediluvian baby
You gotta tell me where she gone
I want to see you some day
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, oh yeah
Oh glub glub, down down, yeah
Where I wanna be
My antediluvian baby

Movie Quotes

Here are some random movie quotes. I’ll leave the more known ones off like “May the Force Be With You”, “If you build it, he will come”, and I’ll Be Back.

Animal House – Oh no! Seven years of college down the drain!

High Fidelity – What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

Jurassic Park – “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Citizen Kane – You’re right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in… 60 years.

Annie Hall – “I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”

Napoleon Dynomite – “Napoleon, don’t be jealous ’cause I’ve been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I’m training to become a cage fighter.”

The Big Lebowski – I had a rough night and I hate the f**king Eagles, man.

Superfly – You’re gunna give all this up? Eight Track Stereo, color T.V. in every room, and can snort a half a piece of dope everyday?! That’s the American Dream

Reservoir Dogs – ” If you beat him long enough he’ll say he started the G**damn Chicago fire, but that don’t necessarily make it f**king so!”

Goodfellas – Whenever we needed money, we’d rob the airport. To us, it was better than Citibank.

Goldfinger – “A martini. Shaken, not stirred.”