NILSSON: the true one: Pussy Cats and Lennon's Lost Weekend

Pussy Cats and John Lennon's Lost Weekend
Special color vinyl edition 2018

Limited to 1500 copies, it’s the first-ever reissue on LP vinyl, today is on special hardwood color vinyl edition issued for the Record Store Day 2018.

Harry Nilsson and John Lennon's "Lost Weekend" Album

Hardwood Vinyl Edition

Limited to 1500 copies

First-Ever LP Reissue

A collaboration between Harry Nilsson and John Lennon during his famous 18 month Lost Weekend, as John Lennon used to call it, in year 1973/1974.

An album recorded in Los Angeles with a bunch of friends (Ringo Starr, Klaus Voormann, Jesse Ed Davis, Keith Moon, Jim Keltner...) and mixed in New York in Record Plant Studios.

Harry and John are on the cover as two cute little kittens in a funny and kitch looking montage from a child's postcard that Harry found in a pharmacy in New York.

And for a joke (and provocation towards RCA), there will be Harry's final coded addition with the two children letter blocks "D" and "S" placed on each side of the kittens' rug, thereby spelling out "d-rug-s".

During the recording sessions in L.A., Harry and John were hanging out in clubs with John’s girlfriend May Pang (as Yoko was in New York) and another friend, Brandy Alexander, made famous through the Troubadour Club episode.

Harry recalls that night:
"Get one Beatle drunk and look what happens!

The incident ruined my reputation for 10 years. It still haunts me.

People think I'm an asshole and a mean guy. They still think I'm a rowdy bum from the '70s who happened to get drunk with John Lennon, that's all. I drank because they did. I just introduced John and Ringo to Brandy Alexanders, that was my problem."

May Pang recalls: Harry said to John "you gotta try this drink." It was a Brandy Alexander. John said "wow, it's like a milkshake."

Raising hell with Harry...

Harry explains: "I don't know when it happened. It just sort of happened.
"Raising hell with Harry" became the catchphrase of the month.

I think it was probably during the period with John when he was bounced out of the Troubadour for being a naughty boy and blaming it all on me, because I wasn't as famous as him, the bum!

I was associated then with drinking and carousing, because I think Keith Moon was a friend, Ringo was a friend, and we had good times, and people assume you're raising hell if you're having a good time.

I promise you folks — we don't raise hell, but we do have a good time!"

(BBC Radio interviewed
by Stuart Grundy - 1977)

Harry with Ringo and Keith Moon attending the West Coast premiere of Claude Watham's musical film That'll Be The Day, February 1977

L.A. is also the place where those two buddies formed a drinking team with Alice Cooper, Ringo Starr, Micky Dolenz and Keith Moon.
They called themselves the Hollywood Vampires and this very private club has its own private loft at the Rainbow Bar.

Alice was the president, Keith was vice-president ....and Harry, John and Ringo were among the members as you can see on the plaque that still remains and that reads "Lair of the Hollywood Vampires".

In the aftermath of the Troubadour incident, Harry and John agreed that they had to do something more positive than spend all their time going out on wild benders.

In due course, it was settled that Harry would start to record his next album for RCA and that John would produce it.

This was not an entirely new idea, because John had announced somewhat garrulously to Phil Spector and a room full of spectators at the 'Rock and Roll' sessions the previous fall that he wanted to produce a record by Harry.

After that evening with John and Phil, Harry thought, "Oh, he's drunk, he'll forget about it."

But the idea refused to go away, as May Pang recalled: "John and I used to talk about what a magnificent voice he had.
When John said, 'I want to produce you, Harry,' he didn't think in a million years that John was going to do it. Then he got really nervous".

As John later said, "I think it was psychosomatic. I think he was nervous because I was producing him. You know, he was an old Beatle fan when he was in the bank... But I was commited to the thing, the band was there and the guy had no voice. So we made the best of it".

May Pang recalled: "In L.A. they had more of a lax attitude when making records. It was a tough situation. Harry would do one thing to make his voice back, and at night, he'd be out there drinking again, and it would undo everything. And it was a cycle.

Finally, John said, "We can't do it here. We'll have to redo all the vocals back to New York. I can't be in L.A. any longer.""

Don't Forget Me is one song on the album that displays something of the tone, clarity, and range of his former voice. And this was dubbed in during May or June 1974 in New York, when his vocal cords had had time to recover from the ravages of early April in L.A..

(some excerpts from Alyn Shipton's book NILSSON The Life of a Singer-Songwriter)

John with his engineer Roy Cicala in Studio C on the tenth floor of the Manhattan Record Plant while Harry quietly watching.

"Everything is the opposite of
what it is."
Dr. Winston O'Boogie M.D. (Manic Depressive)

"But somehow it isn't only not just the words, isn't it?"
Prof. Schmilsson M.E. (Me)