For many Debbie Harwood fans, it’s all about her signature smoky voice, which has meant that for more than 40 years she has been front and centre of New Zealand music. Whether she was singing in her own band, other people’s groups or producing in the studio, her career has been rock solid.
Which is why it was no surprise that the band she formed with four other incredible women singers, When the Cat’s Away, was inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame last December.
“I didn’t realise how loved we were,” says Debbie, 61, whose idea it was to form the band back in the mid ’80s.
“I was working for Harlequin Studios and had my own band, but one night I woke up and thought about what would happen if the five of us got together and had a sing,” she recalls. “It just felt like it would be something great, but then I dragged my heels because I was a bit embarrassed to ask them.”
At the time, Margaret Urlich was in the popular band Peking Man and already had two number one hits, Dianne Swann was in the group Everything That Flies, Annie Crummer was busy with her solo career but also singing with bands like Netherworld Dancing Toys, and Kim Willoughby was also singing with bands and had formed a friendship with Annie.
When the Cat’s Away (from left) Annie, Debbie, Kim, Dianne and Margaret.
“Finally I suggested it, and as soon as we were in a room together, there it was. That magic and an amazing frisson. We took that onto a stage and everyone in the audience picked it up.”
It was 1985 and When the Cat’s Away soon became a busy touring band with many hits, including Melting Pot which went gold in 1988, making the five women household names.
“We were so good live and if someone says to me, ‘Oh, you were just a dumb covers band,’ I ask them, ‘Did you ever see us live?’ Because if you’ve seen us live, you get it.”
For Debbie, the best memories of her time in the group were being with four other women who loved singing together and loved each other.
“There is nothing more magnificent than females together,” enthuses Debbie. “Annie in particular would walk into a room with us and she would just be so happy. We’d have to get some squealing out of the way before we could settle down to do the music.”
Touring was a joy but Debbie says eventually it got out of control because they were so popular. “We were touring with 28 security guards for goodness’ sake. It turned into a monster.”
By the early ’90s, the women began to get back to their solo work as musicians and say that When the Cat’s Away never really broke up.
Debbie moved on to producing, becoming the first woman music producer in Aotearoa, working with her then-husband Rikki Morris when they owned a studio called The Bus. She was a finalist for Producer of the Year at the New Zealand Music Awards in 1998 for her album Peaches.
Pup Maltie brings housebound Debbie so much joy.
At the Hall of Fame induction, three members could be there – Debbie, Kim and Dianne – and there was a lot of healing in the room as they spent valuable time together reminiscing, says Debbie.
Annie couldn’t attend and Margaret, who lives in Australia, has some health challenges.
Sadly, Debbie has her own health crisis. She has heart issues which mean she can’t walk very far and has difficulty finding enough breath to talk during our interview. “But I was determined to go to the induction,” she smiles. “I probably would have avoided it if I’d been well, but now I force myself to do things and be brave.”
She avoided the red carpet and snuck in the back door, then loved every second of it, reuniting with her old friends and being made a fuss of. Then she spent a week in bed recovering.
“I just about bloody died. Near-death experiences are fabulous!” she laughs. And she’s not being flippant about the severity of the episode. In late 2020, Debbie was registered with hospice.
Her heart failure had reached the stage where the doctors could do nothing more for her. There would be no heart transplant or other procedures. Because of an earlier operation, too much damage had been done to Debbie’s heart and it would be too risky.
“So I was discharged from hospital and into hospice care,” she tells. When she was younger, Debbie had a ruptured mitral valve (which when working properly keeps blood moving in the right direction) and while being operated on, the surgeon discovered a hole in her heart. She has never really been right since, but now is very much living on borrowed time after discharging herself from hospice care to be at home.
Debbie is still good friends with Annie (left).
“The best part about hospice was these gorgeous women who are the nurses. They are angels. They are completely the opposite to doctors, who are all about what you can’t do, but they are all about doing whatever makes you happy! I loved their attitude,” shares Debbie. When she discharged herself, the nurses encouraged her to go and live her life and they would always be there for her.
“At the moment, I seem to be holding. I can’t do anything which involves exerting myself, but if I stay still, I’m perfectly okay!”
If she does overdo it, like when she went to the Hall of Fame induction, her heart can’t pump the fluid off her body, so she starts to swell.
“I bloat up around my neck, chest and torso, and my lungs start to fill with fluid so I can’t breathe. Normally you’re supposed to go to hospital to get the fl uid off your lungs, but I just went to bed with my pills and after a week I was okay.”
But there are big adjustments to be made. Debbie says she has spent her life keeping busy, mainly because she had an aversion to staying home. “Now I am at home all the time and that took a lot of adjusting to. I went to the supermarket yesterday and I hadn’t been for eight months,” she says.
She has also had to train herself not to be the highly sensitive person she has been all her life.
“My heart can’t handle strong emotion or stress, so I’ve learned how to hold those responses back. My dog died recently and I had to work pretty hard to hold back the devastation of that.”
In March 2020 Debbie moved back to Auckland from Hawke’s Bay. She left her husband Paul Jeffrey, a sound engineer who she had been with for 13 years, in Hawke’s Bay and focused on getting help for her heart.
“I just sat in a chair and didn’t go anywhere or do anything. I had to eliminate all pressure,” she explains. “My son Marlon brought me groceries and pretty soon I was heading downhill and that’s when hospice came on board.”
‘Now I force myself to do things and be brave’
Now Paul is back with her in Auckland and she’s getting used to him being her carer, whereas she used to be the “do everything” girl.
But Debbie says there was a point a few years ago when she felt suicidal. “I just felt ‘What’s the point? I’m no use to anybody, I can’t do anything. I can’t sing any more. I’ve lost myself.'”
But she found a counsellor through the hospital cardiology unit who helped her see that she was loved, wanted and was of use. And so she opened herself up to that and is happy to be living life on her terms.
Debbie says most people have no idea she is so ill because she looks quite normal, she smiles a lot and her brain is in very good nick.
“When I use the disabled parking spot at the supermarket, people give me the death stare because all my limbs are functioning and I look like an ordinary woman. That’s hard,” she says.
Debbie has no idea how long she has got because with heart failure, there is an unknown timeline.
“With cancer they’ve got a much better idea of timing, but with your heart, you just don’t know when it will be.” And it’s also not something she really wants to think about. Instead, she is counting the weeks until her first grandchild is born to her son Marlon and his partner Bella in early June. Marlon, 31, works at the School of Audio Engineering, and Debbie’s daughter Gala, 27, has just got her Masters in Archaeology and Ancient History, and is heading off to the UK on a scholarship to do her PhD.
Debbie is immensely proud of her children, but is also worried how her illness affects them.
“It’s been hard on the children because I feel like all I talk about is being sick,” says Debbie. “They’ll want to pop over, but I’ll have to tell them not to because I’m tired and in bed.
“I think it is pretty awful for them not knowing when the axe is going to fall.”
‘My whole thing this year is laughing and being happy’
Debbie is well into writing a book about her life, which will no doubt be full of fabulous stories of working as a musician in New Zealand. She certainly thinks she might have to change a few names!
And she is compiling an album of her greatest hits. She already has her albums Peaches, Soothe Me and The Sun on Spotify, and is choosing which of her favourite singles she will put on the new album.
So it’s a busy year ahead with her creativity seemingly in overdrive.
“There have been many benefits of being sick as far as doing things I wouldn’t have done because you think you’ve got tons of time, but I haven’t.”
When Debbie was contacted about the Hall of Fame induction, she initially thought she was going to be helping the organisers out as she had in past years.
“I thought it would be Andrew Fagan or someone. When they told me I was being inducted as an individual, as well as for the band, I couldn’t believe it. I burst into tears.
“It’s so important to let that stuff happen because you realise how loved you were… are. I didn’t really know, and as you get older as a woman, you can become invisible. But this induction brought us all together again and for that I am so grateful.”
As Debbie heads into 2022, she’s feeling positive about the year ahead.
“I’m constantly feeling better about life,” she admits. “I’ve got a new puppy and a new baby coming.
“We all go through our life, and we’ve all got stuff that hurts and we feel shame. My whole thing this year is just getting rid of that and laughing and being happy.”
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