![]() ![]() But I was determined to believe the problem would clear up – until an alarming encounter in the building into which I had just moved with my wife and infant son. Three months after the gig, I was still speaking as if my words were being stirred through gravel. This eventually “improved” to a torn-sounding rumble. Then I began speaking in a parched whisper. But at what cost? By the end of the night, I was growling the lyrics to White Room like it was a Tom Waits number.Ī three-day bout of laryngitis followed. I wince at the tentative way I sing that “Ohhhhh” in Miss You, sneaking up on the note from below, sliding into it gingerly. Today, I can barely bring myself to listen to the CD of that concert, which Jann later presented to each band member as a memento. It would seem a little on the nose to suggest that Yoko, along with her and John’s son, Sean, were looking up at me from the front row, except they were. I was experiencing all of these symptoms as I took my place, centre stage, in the glare of the lights, and began our opening number, the Beatles’ song I’ll Cry Instead, originally sung by John Lennon. Stress attacks the vocal apparatus, tightening muscles that should remain loose and pliable, restricting breathing, closing off the throat, paralysing the tongue and lips. Singing is as psychological as it is physical. This began to concern me as the days ticked down to our gig – a holiday party at a downtown dance club, to which Jann had invited 2,000 of his closest friends, including a constellation of celebrities. Reaching for it, my voice would break up into a toneless rattle, or vanish altogether. ![]() I was also finding it difficult suddenly to hit high notes, like the F above middle C in the Stones’ song Miss You (“Ohhhhhh, why’d you have to wait so long?”). I continued attending twice-weekly rehearsals and soon reverted to my old ways – actually singing harder, trying to put some of the old volume back into my voice, which was sounding weirdly dampened. So, on practice days, I simply rose from my desk (I was finishing a book on deadline and spent eight hours a day writing, in complete silence), rode the subway to our rehearsal space in downtown Manhattan, took my place behind the microphone and started wailing over my bandmates’ cranked-up guitars and drums.Īnatomy of the larynx, published in 1893. I had, for instance, never done a proper voice warmup, and had certainly never been informed that the delicate layers of vibratory tissue, muscle and mucus membrane that make up the vocal cords are as prone to injury as a middle-aged knee joint. My chief attributes as a singer included impressive volume and an ability to stay more or less in tune, but I was strictly a self-taught amateur. I had just turned 41, and I jumped at the opportunity to sustain the delusion that I was not getting old. S ome years ago, I was invited by my then boss, Jann Wenner, the owner of Rolling Stone, to be the lead singer in a band he was putting together from the magazine’s staff. ![]()
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