“Jump Into the Fire” by Harry Nilsson

"Jump into the Fire" sits on Harry Nilsson's 1971 album Nilsson Schmilsson, and when it followed "Without You" out as the second single it was a hard left turn: a hard-rock stomp from a songwriter who hadn't gone there before. Richard Perry produced, and the room is stacked, with Jim Gordon on drums, Herbie Flowers on bass, Chris Spedding, John Uribe and Klaus Voormann on guitars, Jimmy Webb on piano and Nilsson himself on electric piano.

The best trick is Flowers detuning his bass right there on the tape, the whole bottom end sagging like a drunk sliding down a banister. Nilsson performed it in the 1974 film Son of Dracula, and in 1990 Martin Scorsese handed it a second life in a pivotal scene of Goodfellas.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.