Tie problem

[Graeme Evans]

Hi,
I'm a new user of Lilypond, with quite a bit of experience with Score (some
professional).

I am having problems placing a tie between two bars, the 1st of which 
contains a whole note, and the second 4 quarter notes (all the same note, 
obviously.

There is no problem with this in simple form as it would be:

{ c1~ c4 c c c}

I run into problems when I put a hairpin crescendo/decrescendo in the whole 
note bar. The only way I can do this is to use spacer notes to lock the 
hairpins to, added as a second voice on the same staff. i.e

{<<c1~ \\ {s4 s4\< s4\! \> s4\!}>>
c4 c c c}

This renders the 2 bars correctly, except that the tie does not print.

What am I doing wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Graeme