Tie between voices

[Alex Melhuish]

Hello,

I hope you can help me. I'm trying to typeset a piano score - Gershwin
actually :).

I've come across a bar where the first chord slurs into the next,
which LilyPond handles fine. This second chord then ties to another
identical chord. However, the top note of this chord breaks off into a
second voice (where the bottom notes of the chord are quavers (eighth
notes), this note is a crotchet (quarter note)).
No matter what I try, I cannot get LilyPond to tie from the first
chord to the second, which is actually broken across two voices. How
should I be doing this?
Here's the code in question:
<e, b' d>8.-> <e~ a~ c~>16 << {c'4~ c4.} \\ {<e, a>8 <e a>8~ <e a>8.
<e a>16} >> r8 d32( c32 bf32 a32 | bf2->)~

As you can see, I've added ties to each note in the chord. Previously,
I've tried tying the whole chord (<a a c>16~...); this also didn't
work. The other problem I have with this is that LilyPond insists on
adding an additional 'r8' after the polyphony. I have no idea how it's
adding together note values for these two bars!

Please help me,
--
Alex Melhuish
address@hidden