John Phillips, Pussycat

by dave heaton

Pussycat is a moment of history more than a fully realized LP. In 1976 John Phillips worked on the album with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and friends. But it fell apart, no thanks to Phillips’ drug habits. This mix of the album was completed by Harvey Jay Goldberg after the sessions fell apart. Bootlegged over the years, this is the first time that mix has been released, with some bonus tracks from the time period tacked on.

As an album, it sounds awkward, overdone in places and anemic in others. There are sharp guitar licks here and there, and the sensitivity (an essential quality) of Phillips’ voice still shines occasionally, coming out of the blue like a ray through a cloud on the album’s second and third tracks (“2001” and “Oh, Virginia”). The songs seem simpler than his best. That nearly works on the sparest and most personal-sounding songs, like “2001” and “Oh Virginia”. But songs like “Zulu Warrior” and “Pussycat” come off as underformed ideas Phillips thought up on the fly, thoughts that he should have just let slip past.

“Pussycat”’s image of him wanting to give his heart to every mistreated stripper to ever cross the catwalk is at least memorable. Along with “Sunset Boulevard”, that song shines light on the way this album could have taken Phillips’ real-life excess and made it into a theme or setting, more successfully. As it is, the LP feels mostly like a lost moment, a lost opportunity that’s at least sometimes interesting to look back on.

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