The Nelsons -- Gunnar, left, and Matthew Nelson, right, the twin sons of Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Ricky Nelson, will perform Sept. 12 at URSB Carteret Performing Arts & Events Center. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NELSONS
From the moment they burst onto the scene with their self-penned 1990 debut album, "After the Rain," Matthew and Gunnar Nelson -- twin sons of Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Ricky Nelson -- captivated audiences with their striking good looks and trademark long blonde hair. However, it was their exceptional songwriting and commercially savvy rock sound that catapulted them to stardom, solidifying their status as third-generation torchbearers of the Nelson family legacy that also produced "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" television and radio shows.
The Nelsons will bring a show that pays tribute to that legacy, while also chronicling their career as a sibling duo on Sept. 11 at American Music Theatre in Lancaster, Pa.; Sept. 12, URSB Carteret Performing Arts & Events Center, Carteret, and Sept. 13, Patchouge Theatre for the Performing Arts, Patchouge, N.Y.
They also will be publishing a memoir, “What Happened to Your Hair: How We Played Loud, Loved Crowds and Never Backed Down Together,” via the Simon & Schuster imprint, Hotel Press. The Amazon pre-orders of the book will be shipped to homes on Oct. 15, and it will hit stores on Dec. 15.
When I was offered an interview with The Nelsons, I must admit I wasn’t thrilled, but as I started to research their story, I was pleasantly surprised how fascinating it is, not only with celebrities on their dad’s side but also their mom’s. Besides Ricky, Ozzie, Harriet and older sister, Tracy Nelson, there’s the Harmon clan of actress mom Kristin, including dad Tom Harmon, a Heisman Trophy winner who’s a member of the College Football Hall of Fame; brother Mark Harmon of NCIS fame; sister Kelly Harmon, a model-actress, and sister-in-law Pam Dawber (“Mork & Mindy”).
I chatted with Matthew about his famous family, as well as The Nelsons’ upcoming shows and book. Enjoy!
So the Nelson family has a strong connection to New Jersey with your dad born in Teaneck and Ozzie born in Jersey City and growing up in Ridgefield Park, where his parents, your great-grandparents, were very active in the arts. When you play in Carteret in September, do you have any relatives from New Jersey coming to see you and/or do you plan to visit any while you’re here?
We wrote a book. It’s very fascinating.
We would like to visit the Nelson Family Home. We haven’t been there. Every time we head to Jersey, we always have family at shows, and they show us pictures and photos, especially of Dad growing up. I would love to hang out there. That was in Tenafly. The hospital where our father was born is Holy Name. I believe there’s a dental wing named after my Grandpa Ozzie’s brother Alfred. There’s an awful lot of history there for us.
People don’t know, but Gunnar and I spent a lot of time in South Jersey with our good friend who just pass away, songwriter-producer Jack Ponte. I was one of the guys who was among his dearest friends. We knew he was ill the past couple of years, but we were ordered not tell anybody. I spoke frequently with Jack.
So we understand the Jersey thing quite a bit. We have musical roots there. Jack was truly a professional, a great songwriter. We moved into his house with his family about a year after the explosion of our success so that it would be real and down to earth, and we wouldn’t get bothered.
Via the Simon & Schuster imprint, Hotel Press, Matthew and Gunnar Nelson will publish a humorous memoir about growing up in Hollywood and the music business entitled “What Happened to Your Hair: How We Played Loud, Loved Crowds and Never Backed Down Together.” The Amazon pre-orders of the book will be shipped to homes on Oct. 15, and it will hit stores on Dec. 15. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NELSONS
You, your brothers, and your sister, Tracy, are fourth generation entertainers. I know about three generations. What can you tell me about the first generation of Nelson entertainers?
Our great grandma (Hazel) was a twin, and they had a vaudeville act: Hazel and Hattie McNutt, The McNutt Sisters. Gunnar and I dug up a pic on the Internet of her promo photo. That’s going in the book as well.
Ozzie’s parents did summer stock. They loved being a part of that. Our Grandpa Ozzie’s mom also was a pianist.
As little boys, we were really into music. In the book, you see a lot of what Gunnar and I went through playing music that young. We didn’t know if we were going to be able to do it for a living, but we were already songwriting and playing multiple instruments. As they say, ‘He’s got it.’
The book is not about the Nelson family history. It’s about my brother and my adventures in this world. There are several biographies on our father and grandfather. Ozzie wrote one himself. Our book is more a light-hearted, semi- comedic journey through the tragedy of growing up in Hollywood and the music business.
So we wrote a book. Gunnar wrote half, and I wrote half. We chose different stories in our lives.
The hard cover is a division of Simon & Schuster that’s putting it out, Hotel Press. It’s available for purchase now on Amazon as a pre-order. It’ll be shipped to homes Oct. 15. Barnes & Noble is going to push it for the holiday season. I’m pretty proud of it. Dec. 15 it’ll be available everywhere.
It’s entitled, ‘What Happened to Your Hair: How We Played Loud, Loved Crowds and Never Backed Down Together.’ The title comes from people always asking, ‘What happened to your hair.’ We released 18 albums, had a number of hits, and that’s the first question people ask. We just say, ‘It’s a little shorter,’ that type of thing.
The book is very self-effacing. Usually, on a back cover they put all kinds of superlatives that inflate the writer’s ego, but we’ve got people who gave us the absolute worst reviews and comments that people made about us in the music business. It’s hysterical. They range from the head of a record company to Beavis and Butt-Head. It looks at the hypocrisy and idiocrasy that is entertainment.
The Nelsons are the only unsigned band to play “Saturday Night Live,” which was in 1986. PHOTO BY JENN CATHCART
Things seem to have come full circle for The Nelsons as a band. After your punk band, The Strange Agents, you played as The Nelsons, becoming the only unsigned band ever to play ‘Saturday Night Live,’ which was in 1986. Then Gunnar came up front with you as Nelson, releasing hits from many albums. Now you’re The Nelsons again. What is the difference between The Nelsons and Nelson, and do you record and perform as both acts or just The Nelsons now?
Gunnar and I do for the most part live a couple of different presentations just the two of us telling stories playing and singing. It’s an acoustic storytellers night. That’s dubbed as The Nelsons. We play our stuff our dad’s tunes and couple other things. We love to talk to the audience.
The difference between us and our father is he didn’t speak much to the audience. Gunnar and I communicate with the audience and feel like we’re in the connection business. ‘You’re not in the music business,’ Grandma Harriet would say. ‘You’re in the connection business, boys. The thing is we might be a television family or radio or music, but we’re not in show business. We’re in the connection business.’ That’s something Gunnar and I take to heart, and it works for us as well.
Nelson is a rock band. We dusted off the old rock band three years ago to play big rock concerts with it, but we’ve gone away from it. We play smaller places.
Then we have a show that’s just our father’s music, ‘Ricky Nelson Remembered.’ It’s multimedia through his whole life.
Are you playing any new songs on this current tour? If so, can you tell me about them?
Yeah we do. It’s a really good balance whatever show we do.
We’re probably going to do a couple of big ones of our father’s, and fans of his love it, but we have a few new ones. We have a project called First Born Sons that’s a different band ready to launch. We talk to the audience about where we’re at musically on this journey as songwriters and entertainers. It’s coming full circle to take people on this journey.
A certain thing that Gunnar and I do is a vocal blend that’s unique, that’s got that twin brother going on, so it’s the same but different. It’s not like The Smother Brothers, who had their own type of humor that goes between the songs, but it’s a duet in the truest sense. The closest thing to it is Ozzie and Harriet when they were radio stars. Gunnar and I have a chemistry, something symbiotic that makes a unique sound.
It’s amazing that Gunnar and I still get along. I feel God brought us into the world together because we needed each other. We didn’t really expect to get that type of success that quickly.
When Gunnar moved up front, we changed vocal roles. I was the main melody, and he was the harmony on the drums. But we were in the studio one day watching the end of a ‘Star Trek’ episode, and he threw a vocal down. Then I walked in on what was going on. We were like, ‘Let’s try a harmony on this,’ and our sound was born. We completely flipped our vocal style. It’s fun to talk about those type of stories.
But we never knew we would have success that quickly that big. It was a mess. It got to the point where on our days off, we couldn’t go out together because it would cause riots. It was a little bit scary there. The success was making me have a different relationship with my brother. We’d get paid to be onstage together, then we’d have to go to our own corners and recover because we were super athletic and lost a lot of weight. Touring never stopped: six shows a week in arenas and big concert venues for 13 months straight.
And it was the proverbial thing: everybody got rich but us. We came home, and we were a million dollars in debt … for years. It was an amazing experience of triumph and then loneliness and then health stuff to the point of killing yourself to pay off this massive debt. People disappoint you and betray you, but in the process, the songs became known all over the world to be able to heal a lot of people.
I like what I do with my brother. It makes me happy to do this for a living where you sing for money, but if it was just the money, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. But we hear stories of fans telling us that we were their first concert, and now they’re bring their grandchildren. That’s so rewarding. It’s pretty amazing.
We’ll meet people after shows and stay for two or three hours talking to fans and taking pictures. We make people happy for a living, and I don’t think there’s anything better.
Do you have any recording plans coming up?
The release plans right now are for First Born Sons at the end of the year. We’re tied up with the book until then. We’re timing that out.
We had an appearance on James Gunn’s ‘Peacemaker.’ He wrote into the season two finale that the star, John Cena, goes to a Nelson concert on a paddlewheel ship. Fans came in for two nights to shoot concert footage for this show. James Gunn is a big Nelson fan. He loves a song we did on an indie release in 2010, ‘To Get Back to You.’
First Born Sons has two new albums coming out on a label in California, the Licorice Pizza label, which is owned by Kerry Brown, who produced and mixed Smashing Pumpkins. The first release will be heavy pop influence.
Licorice Pizza has a big vinyl record store. They’re a vinyl label that appeals to audiophiles and vinyl lovers. It’ll be a global release in coordination with Licorice Pizza.
And we’re definitely going to be doing a big promotional tour for the book with Q&A’s and sit downs with audiences to talk about the book.
Who’s older, you or Gunnar, and by how long?
I’m older by 20 minutes. Gunnar almost didn’t make it. His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck because he was breach. It got scary there. I was supposed to be called Gunnar, but when he was born, they gave it to him because they felt he deserved it. There was a Bible lying around, so I got the first book of the New Testament. I’m just glad we’re not Frick and Frack.
Another accomplishment by you and Gunnar no one else has done is three No. 1 hits in as many generations. Ozzie had a No. 1 with 1935’s ‘And Then Some.’ Dad had two No. 1s with 1958’s ‘Poor Little Fool’ and 1961’s ‘Travelin’ Man.’ And, of course, Nelson had a No. 1 with 1990’s ‘(Can’t Live without Your) Love and Affection.’ How does it feel to represent your family in a way that no one else has before?
I’m certainly proud of everybody who came before us. The way we work on our dad’s legacy speaks to that. We were close to our grandparents. We got a lot of advice from Harriet. Ozzie passed when we were 10. Harriet was there for the Nelson launch and success. She joined us on a video. It was great to get perspective from someone like Harriet, like how Ozzie’s big band would make an entire album in three hours, then go back and a play a second show. Their talent was immense. Dad was the same way.
Our dad was a pioneer of music on television. Gunnar and I had MTV, always something to reach the masses, to work on getting our message out there.
What’s amazing about it is after reading our grandfather’s book and talking with Harriet, Gunnar and I had this feeling that despite their success, all three of them were shunned by the industry.
A long time ago, Ozzie went to Rutgers, was captain of the football team, and then started a big band. The band was doing great. Grandpa went on to do 436 episodes of a TV show and wasn’t even nominated for an Emmy. Hollywood executives would make comments about how Grandma Harriet should wear her hair. They’d smile through it. Eventually, the industry wasn’t allowed on the set.
Dad sold a half billion singles throughout his career. He’s an all-time huge, giant star, but he never got a Grammy.
Gunnar and I had to go through this too because we didn’t’ play ball with the industry. You’ll find out in the book that it wasn’t like open wallets for us. People might be surprised by that.
We had a lot of voting for our first video on ‘Dial MTV,’ which Gunnar and I hosted. We were the No. 1 most requested band in America. People would call and request us much to the chagrin of our label. Most people didn’t realize that we signed with Geffen Records, which had Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, Whitesnake, Cher, Peter Gabriel. We went along for the ride, sold a million albums, but had to fight to have our tour supported.
We learned a lot from Grandpa Ozzie, who was very much a businessman. What I’m proud we have in common with our grandfather is we have a knack for talking to real, average, ordinary people.
Our Dad got a boost when Grandpa directed his career at a young age. Then he took over and did his own thing. He reinvented himself within the country- rock movement.
A lot of artists in rock ‘n’ roll are not making exceptional art as far as I’m concerned. Yet, they explode! What’s missing here? If I had to choose between making people happy and critical success, I’ll take making people happy. It’s very rare that those two come together.
A lot of people see now that the entertainment industry is not wonderful. My family is really good, but we’re in a horrible business. Still I have people I’m working with come up and tell me that they worked on ‘Ozzie & Harriet.’ I hear lots of stories about my dad.
Our family reputation is we don’t have that ‘I’m better than you, I’m a star’ kind of thing. Dad clearly engrained that in us. Fans are everything, he said. You’re not better than them. That worked for Ozzie and our dad. Three rules work for us and worked for our family:
* Be undeniably good
* Never lose your sense of humor because you’re going to need it
* Don’t be a jerk
That’s why we relate to people well. We understand that everybody we meet has something going on we know nothing about. We feel fortunate we do what we do for a living and make people happy. It’s that simple.
There’s an amazing amount of celebrities in your family, not just on your dad’s side but also your moms with the Harmons. What are the pros and cons of having so many celebrities in your family?
The pro is having a reference that achievement is possible. If I had nickel every time someone said, ‘Why are you even trying? You’ll never be successful like your dad and grandfather.’ My opinion was, why not? That’s the way I look at it. Why would I teach my 10-year-kid, you can’t do this, when there are thousands doing it? I make that connection.
It helps that Gunnar and I went to John Wooden’s basketball camp, which had something called the Pyramid of Success. Uncle Mark (Harmon) has it over his desk. We were influenced by that. A lot of it has to do with catching a dream and following it through. You have to believe it. That type of achievement comes together on the stage and screen but also in life. To be able to see it on both sides of my family is great.
I didn’t talk to my grandfather Tom a whole lot. He was the polar opposite of Ozzie except for the achievement thing. He came out of the Midwest from a tough neighborhood in Indiana. He set high school track and field records that still stand to this day. He was a two-year All-American and a broadcaster. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps, flew bombers and was lost in enemy territory. He was a different type of man. Tough as nails. Most of our lives, the Nelsons were different, showing emotion. Ozzie had no problem kissing boys on the cheek and saying, ‘I love you.’ Grandpa Tom shook hands. Instead of saying, ‘I love you,’ he’d say, ‘Good luck.’ That was his way his whole life.
He was a very smart guy. Very much about achievement. Two years before we lost him in our late teens, we were making our first album, and he had an aortic aneurism. It was the most painful thing. He was burned up in a fighter plane in China, but this was more painful than that. It changed his personality miraculously. Gunnar and I were leaving his house. We jumped in the car and said, ‘I love you Grandpa,’ but instead of him saying, ‘Good luck, he said, ‘I love you too.’ Gunnar and I stopped in our tracks. It was like we got struck by a lightning bolt. That’s the miracle. For the rest of his life, he wore the Star of David on his neck. He was still Tom Harmon, but humanity was infused in him that just wasn’t there before. It was a miracle. He had such achievements as the Heisman Trophy and the Broadcasting Hall of Fame. This was one last piece to make him a wonderful, complete man at the end of his life. I always admired him. He was all about working hard, following through, and practice, practice, practice. When he was going to the University of Michigan, he was a lifeguard in the summer so he could run wind sprints in the sand on Lake Michigan. Push, push, push!
Uncle Mark before he was Gibbs on ‘NCIS’ was at UCLA as a quarterback. He followed my grandfather Ozzie to work on the show (‘Ozzie’s Girls’), fell in love with it, and became involved with it.
He had that spirit of achievement. His father was so proud of him. He talked about him all the time when we were growing up.
Years ago, a kid was car wreck. He crashed into a stone fence, and the car caught on fire. Uncle Mark broke the kid out of the car and drag him out. This was like movie-level stuff. He save the kid’s life. He stays in touch with the kids although he’s not a kid anymore. He has a family. But that kids wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Uncle Mark. A lot of other kids would have run away, but Uncle Mark too care of business.
Gunnar and I have that too with people. We run toward where people need us. As entertainers at times it’s not 100 percent easy.
We were at the Iowa State Fair. The FBI was there and pulled is into a room. ‘Somebody is here in the crowd tonight,’ they said, ‘and the FBI thinks they have a gun and is trying to kill you. You have to make a decision whether to cancel the show.’ There were thousands of people there. There was no metal detector so anyone could have hid in a crowd like that. And there was no way to search everybody. So I said a prayer. I’m close to God. That helped, but we went on stage knowing that could be it.
Everybody in my family has done that one way or another, had those moments where have to decide what you were born for, if you’re a healer. Achievement is the underlying thing, but it’s not that great to be famous. The motivator is how can I do a great job and make a bunch of people happy. Maybe something will come of it as a product, but what made achievement possible is bigger than us.
After your dad died, did you draw closer to your uncles David Nelson and Mark Harmon?
No, we didn’t (with David). It was the opposite. David was the executor of Dad’s estate. We were living with our father at the time. David allowed us to stay in the house for a month and half, and then we had to pack our bags and get out. We had just turned 18 and had nowhere to go. I know he had a lot to deal with dad’s estate, but the reality is that David made ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ his own personal piggy bank. We had issues with that. We go into in the book a little bit.
My dad and David were very different. The last time Dad saw David, we pulled them off each other fighting on the floor of the living room. David was a little shady. My dad’s kids were all on our own. There was not a tremendous amount of money coming in and not a single penny for 25 years. Looking back, I see what it was. He’s gone now.
I’m not saying he was a completely horrible or evil guy, but it’s not like we got closer. He said, ‘Worry about you own family.’ We said, ‘What family is that?’ And he said, ‘You know, the Harmons.’ I said, ‘I am your brother’s son. Nelson is my last name. We are family. You are my family.’ He didn’t see Gunnar and me as family.
Uncle Mark was different. He was so busy doing his own thing. A lot of people thought, ‘Oh, they’re 18. The boys have each other.’ I look at the way God works. He strengthened our bonds for each other. I had Gunnar, and he had me.
So what can folks expect to experience on Sept. 12 at URSB Carteret Performing Arts & Events Center?
It’s a storyteller show. It’s our favorite show to do bar none. It’s a high-energy show, real visceral in an age of AI and smoke & mirrors.
I’m looking forward to coming back to New Jersey. New Jersey is about being real. If people have a problem with you, they tell you. We got a lot of that from family, a Jersey family.
Bob Makin has produced Makin Waves since 1988. Follow Makin Waves on Facebook and contact Bob at makinwaves64@yahoo.com.
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