NILSSON: the true one: Harry's voice was gone! by Klaus Voormann

Harry’s voice was gone!

A short story by Klaus Voormann to recall this dramatic event in Harry’s life. And you need the eye and all the humour of Klaus to capture it all in pen and paper. It was in 1974, during John Lennon's Lost Weekend.

He took us along to see his Doctor

Funny because of all the friends get invited by Harry in the doctor’s office to watch the "swab procedure".

All studio pals as they were recording Pussy Cats album including John Lennon, Jesse Ed Davis, Jim Keltner, Bobby Keys, Klaus Voormann himself.

Dr. Eddie Kanter the throat man

Klaus called the drawing "Dr Eddie Kanter the throat man" with the name of this doctor (actually Dr. Kantor) called to examine Harry’s throat while they all worried about their friend and that voice beginning to be lost.

Harry was scarred

Harry was scared, Klaus recalls on his drawing. But maybe Harry couldn’t realize at that time all the damage it went further.
And after that, his voice was never been back again as it used to be. His best instrument gone forever.

That’s surely the most dramatic event in Harry’s life and career. Because he wouldn’t listen to the doctor, neither to his friends who told him to have rest. But he did not. Rest is history.

He burned his life like this. Like he tells in his song All My Life (well, I've had my share of bad times, I've been shooting 'em up, drinking 'em up, taking them pills, fooling around all my life; but I'm so tired of bad times, I'll have to change my way...) composed ironically for this Pussy Cats album. One of his most beautifull songs.

This drawing was recently posted by Van Dyke Parks, another Harry’s close friend

"Thrilled Klaus just presented this sketch to us for a trip down memory lane."

All My Life

- Oh Lord!

- What is it?

- I'm full of it!

- Good.

- Tonight!

- Right.

Well, I've had my share of bad times, I've been shooting 'em up, drinking 'em up, taking them pills, fooling around all my life; but I'm so tired of bad times, I'll have to change my way.

And I've had my share of good times, I've been moving around, living uptown, laughin' my ass off almost every night; but I'm so sore from laughing, I haven't got the will to fight.

All My Life (Nilsson) - 1974 Pussy Cats

Dr. Eddie Kantor the throat man

Dr. Edward A. Kantor was the best‐known throat doctor in Berverly Hills specializing in singers’ problems. His list of clients included many of the leading pop singers (Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Rod Stewart, Neil Young, Stevie Nicks, Grace Slick, Bonnie Raitt) and Harry was part of it in that period, April 1974.

Klaus Voormann remembers: He was worried about going there, so he said to all of us in the band, “Why don't you come along?” So we did.
I remember the doctor's name was Kantor, and as Harry was sitting in the chair with the doctor looking down in his throat.

We were all standing in the surgery [doctor's office], staring over his shoulder at was he was going on.
There was John Lennon, Jesse Ed, Van Dyke and myself.

The doctor said sternly to Nilsson, "You are not going to talk for two weeks. And you are not going to sing. If you have anything to say, write it down."
Of course, Nilsson didn't keep to that, or at least not for long.

But for a day or two, having gone to the store and got these little blocks of paper, we all kept quite and wrote notes to each others. Harry wrote some very funny things, but the most amusing event was when was when we all went with him to buy a pair of trousers. The sales people thougth we were completely nuts, because we did the whole thing entirely by using notes on these little pieces of paper, nobody actually said a word to each other from the moment we went into the store to the moment we left.

(interviewed by Alyn Shipton, February 24, 2012)

Dr. Eddie Kantor as appeared inside Pussy Cats gatefold album cover with other pictures from recording sessions.

With Harry beeing examined by Kantor and Ringo by his side helping his friend relaxing.

At the end of two weeks of similar high jinks, Lennon's self-preservation instincts kicked in. As May Pang recalls: In L.A., they had more than a lax attitude when making records. It was a tough situation. Harry would do one thing to make his vocals great or get his voice back, and at night he'd be out there drinking again, and it would undo everything.
And this was a cycle.

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

Lennon 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 committed to the thing, the band was there and the guy had no voice. So we made the best of it".

Record Plant East studios

Harry, John and his engineer Roy Cicala, a veteran of John's previous four albums who had been with them in L.A., retreated to the Record Plant East and the safety of its cutting room in Manhattan.

When John arrived back in New York toward the end of April 1974, his main thought was to make as serviceable a job as possible of finishing the album. He also started planning what would become his Walls and Bridges album, which he began rehearsing on July 13.

They installed themselves in Studio C on the tenth floor, and set about mixing the album, finalizing arrangements, overdubbing some instrumental parts, and adding less husky vocals.

Once the overdubs were finished, as John and Roy focused on the mix, Harry had some time to work on the cover, the title and the inside stuff. He found the idea of the cover artwork from a child's postcard he saw in a phamarcy, and then thought about calling the album "Strange Pussies" becoming "Pussy Cats" after RCA vetoed the original proposal.

John and Harry at Manhattan Record Plant with engineer Roy Cicala mixing for Pussy Cats album in May 1974.

In the middle of songs with those husky vocals recorded while his throat was becoming a painful, bleeding mess, there are some exceptions recorded before Harry's voice rapidly degraded.

Dylan's cover Subterranean Homesick Blues, featuring Harry in the heavy rocker mode of Jump Into The Fire, shows no obvious sign of damage to Harry's voice since it was the first track to be recorded on Thursday, March 28.

Don't Forget Me is one of the few Harry's own songs beside the many cover versions on the album. As on All My Life and Old Forgotten Soldier, it contains more than a touch of autobiography.

It is also the 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 in New York, when his vocal cords had had time to recover from the ravages of early April.

Harry remained in New York beyond the finishing of his own album to add some lyrics and a background vocal to Old Dirt Road on John's Walls and Bridges.

That August he would team up with Ringo and Richard Perry for the Goodnight Vienna album and, by coincidence, he once again found himself working with John on that disc, albeit slightly at arm's length. This was because, in July, John took time out from finishing Walls and Bridges to help Ringo by making demos of his contributions.

The cast list is almost identical to several tracks on Pussy Cats, but the difference in production values between Lennon's work and Perry's is immediately obvious, however passionate and committed Lennon may have been in the studio.

The difference lies in the discipline of Perry's rigorous and painstaking efforts to achieve as perfect a take as possible in the studio, and would end up with some meticulously balanced vocals.
While the Voormann's bass line is etched in sharp relief against Nicky Hopkins's discreet electric piano, some brilliantly detailed guitar interpolations from Jesse Ed Davis as can be heard on Hoyt Axton's No No Song with Harry's opening on a chorus of oohs and aahs before brilliantly shadowing Ringo's vocal.

In Harry's contributions to the Goodnight Vienna album, which were recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in L.A. during August, his voice had recovered remarkably from the ravages of Pussy Cats.

A good exemple is the cover version of Only You based on a demo recorded by John in New York.

Ringo having based his slighty tentative lead vocal on the demo, Harry added a quantity of backing vocals as he had done the previous year on You're Sixteen.

His range is more restricted, but the tone is more mellow and the control admirable.

In the talking part of the song, as Ringo speaks a basso profundo version of the lyric, Ink Spots style, Harry provides an impressive array of harmonic oohs and aahs.

Ringo was charmed, saying at the time, "Harry is the only backing vocal on it. He's like a man of a thousand voices, Harry, he's amazing what he can do."

Only You was a song John first planned for his Rock and roll album. But he finally gave it to Ringo for Goodnight Vienna album.

John already had all the arrangements and managed to make it in Ringo's key. He played it with the musicians to show them how he wanted to be done.

John also sang the guide vocal for Ringo so that Ringo had only to put his voice on it.

Then Harry did the backing vocals for the final touch that brings that very special sound and atmosphere.

The song was released prior to the album and reached number six on the pop single charts. The album reached number eight on the American album charts.

It showed Harry still on good terms with Richard Perry, who was able to conjure performances from him that seemed almost impossible, given what happened to his voice.

And again, Perry proved that his methods could create chart hits, both at album and single levels, whereas Nilsson and Lennon had failed to do this, despite no less suitable raw material, on Pussy Cats.