Vinyl L.P • RCA Records • CPL1-0570-A.
1974 • U.S.A.
Produced by John Lennon
Back cover.
Inner gatefold.
Inner gatefold.
Disc side 1.
Disc side 1.
Labels.
Harry Nilsson:
Lyric:
Mucho Mungo/Mt. Elga.
(J. Lennon)/(H. Nilsson—adaptation)
Mucho Mungo sweet thing
Sweetest little thing I’ve ever seen
Must have been a sweet dream
Brought you here
Brought you through the sorrow
And the tears
C’est la c’est la
C'est la vie
Sail upon the ocean
Sail into tomorrow
Every day
Just looking for the sunshine
Through the haze
But wait! What's this! I see
Could it be
Mount Elga Mount Elga
A high mountain
I climb as I’m dreaming
A-huh!
Mount Elga Mount Elga
A high mountain, I climb as I’m dreaming
Catching me hell
To climb this hill
The more I try to climb
I'm slipping still
Me body run down
Me feeling weak
The more I try to climb up
This mountain peak
Mucho Mungo sweet thing
Sweetest little thing
Since sweet sixteen
C'est la c’est la
C'est la vie
Sail across the ocean
Sail with me
Mucho Mungo: © copyright John Lennon 1974, All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission.
Mt. Elga: © copyright 1974 Blackwood Music, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Liner notes:
These are written at 78 and should be read at 33. I have one hour to catch the plane. You have all your lives. Lucky bastards.
Funny thing is, that when I was in New York last week with George Melly I remembered everything Harry and John said and did except that | had to write these notes.
Most of what Harry and John said and did was bloody funny and sometimes terrifying. They have been living a vampire timetable recently but have sucked no blood except each other’s and not so much of that. Anyway, the cross-transfusion works, so what the hell.
I am so glad they met; it is hard to convey it here. They are madmen in tandem but, as I’ve said before, very well brought-up so they'll get by without their apple pie so run rabbits run, goddam you; the brave men are taking over.
Our heroes, Lennon and Nilsson, met in 1968, in Surrey, very strange, both quite tentative with each other, like very little children at a birthday party handing gifts to each other and blushing.
The gifts they are exchanging now are without compare (sorry if you’ve read this before—it remains true and improves daily) and to see them the other night in a studio in New York the city in which Harry was born and to which John (like all Liverpudlians) belongs, one singing, the other producing was pretty (expletive deleted) marvelous.
I was with a few other people (Lord Melly and retinue) and only heard one song (Save the Last Dance for Me) and then John said that our non-stop chattering would put Harry off his stroke, So maybe we should go into another room and have a drink or something.
Actually, we hadn’t said a bloody word (hardly dared to breathe or strike a match) any of us, and well John knew it but he is nothing if not tactful and both he and Harry told me later that it was paranoia-avoidance and well I knew that and as recording studios are no places for people without real tasks to perform, | was glad to leave and wait for the real thing which you now have in your hands.
When | first heard Harry in 1968 (see liner notes for his ‘‘Aerial Ballet” album) and then later met him it was strong (heterosexual, if you don’t mind) love at first sight and | knew he should meet John.
(Later of course he met the fab other three; with Ringo too he has formed a magical team.) They are both tuffians (neither ruffians, nor very tough, but a bit of both) and able to exert terrific pressures on each other without either snapping. *
The consequent tension is one of the great wonders of the music business and if this album isn’t great and famous | will eat my (right) elbow. As | say, how can | say about the music when I haven't heard it and yet there are a couple of things | know about them you should know: For instance, their arrogance is a mask for unending warmth and enthusiasm, not only for the people they know and the things they need for their life-support systems (music, praise, a few dollars in their back pockets and pieces of paper down their socks) but also for people they don’t know and will never meet again.
They are givers, not takers. Maybe they're right, maybe they’re wrong, maybe they’re weak, maybe they’re strong, maybe they’ll live lives of regret, maybe they'll give much more than they get, but nevertheless they’re in love with you, and certainly I am with them.
In the very early days of their friendship John was ‘‘Famous” and Harry was ‘Not Famous,” but it was with the greatest pleasure that John went public with the statement that Harry was his favorite American group (just as many years earlier he and his musketeers had done the same for the beautiful Byrds) and it was with great diffidence that Harry allowed RCA to exploit this endorsement.
Both responses emerged as the right ones and now, and now, and now... look what has happened ...hand in hand, by the edge of the sand they dance by the light of the moon and bring joy to the world.
Something like that.
Derek Taylor
Derek Taylor appears by kind permission of the lovable brothers Warner and their jolly nephew Chairman Mo.
End of liner notes.
*Peter Skellern provided the word ‘snapping’ as an alternative
to ‘breaking’ and |am avery pragmatic man (sometimes).
Sensitive Assistant Producer and Incredible Chief Engineer: Roy Cicala
Assistant Engineer: Jimmy lovine
Thanks to Dennis Ferrante
Thanks to THE BURBANK STUDIOS People: Andy MeDonald,
Frank Jones, Dianne Hollen and Jim Winfres
Thanks to Record Plant West People
Mastering: Record Plant Cutting Room: Tom Rabstenak and Greg Calbi
Production Assistant: May Pang
And OUR PAL Mal Evans
All Orchestration & Conducting: Ken Ascher
*Featuling The Masked Alberts Orchestra
**Ringo Starr appears through the courtesy
of EMI Records Ltd.
✝Keith Moon appears through the courtesy
of MCA Records, Inc.
✝✝Willie Smith appears through the courtesy
of Epic Records.
Art Direction by Acy R. Lehman
“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’tit?”’
Prof. Schmilsson M. E. (Me)
Subterranean Homesick Blues - Single advert RCA Records.
Harry & John.
John & Harry.
Ringo Starr, Harry & Keith Moon.
ReplyDeletePussy Cats is the tenth album by American singer Harry Nilsson, released by RCA Records in 1974. It was produced by John Lennon during his "Lost Weekend" period.
The album title was inspired by the bad press Nilsson and Lennon were getting at the time for being drunk and rowdy in Los Angeles.
They also included an inside joke on the cover – children's letter blocks "D" and "S" on either side of a rug under a table − to spell out "drugs under the table" as a rebus.
The album's intended original title, Strange Pussies, was rejected by RCA Records and modified to Pussy Cats. Among the many musicians on Pussy Cats are Ringo Starr, Keith Moon and Jim Keltner, who all play drums on the closing track, "Rock Around the Clock". Other contributors include Jesse Ed Davis, Klaus Voormann, and Bobby Keys.
Half of the album's original ten tracks were covers while the rest were written by Nilsson (with Lennon co-writing "Mucho Mungo/Mt. Elga").
After the first night of recording, March 28, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder popped into the studio unexpectedly.
The album was released August 19, 1974, in the US and August 30, 1974, in the UK.