return to menu of Pretenders articlesTHE NEW PRETENDERS album is finally out, and it's called Learning To Crawl(Sire). Now, considering all that's happened to the band during the last two years, the record's title is pretty significant, and quite likely over the course of the next few weeks you're going to be inundated with pedantic over-interpretations of the title's meaning and the album's songs. That's okay.
But I figure that you might as well read my pedantic over-interpretation first. For those of you who've spent the last two years in Beirut, let me be the first to tell you that guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon are no longer with the Pretenders. Both are dead, the victims of drugs. Scott was the first to die, the final report being "cocaine intolerance which caused heart failure." That was in June of'82. He was 26. Ten months later he was joined by Farndon, found dead in his bathtub with his body pumped full ofheroin and cocaine. He was 30.
By the time that Farndon died, however, a new Pretenders line-up was already intact. Chrissie Hynde-- songstress, guitarist, vocalist, and reluctant leader of the group-and drummer Martin Chambers had recruited Robbie McIntosh, a mate of Honeyman-Scott's, to replace Scott not long after the guitarist's death, and he in turn was joined by one of his friends, Malcolm Foster, on bass. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Things really began to fall apart for the Pretenders even before Scott's death. Following two years of fave raves, two exceptional albums (Pretenders and Pretenders II), and a fistful of great singles, the band embarked on an ambitious world tour that took them to every outpost except Tierra del Fuego. By the time that they wrapped up the tom in April of'82, relationships within the band were extremely shaky. Nerves were frayed. Everyone was at each other's throat.
Mainly, the problem was Farndon, a chronic drug abuser. Hynde told England's New Musical Express last November that "As Pete got more and more into his drug habit, his playing suffered for it...He got sloppy and he drank a lot, and he would drink whiskey so he was really a mess, and his playing got sloppier and sloppier."
Chambers had had it up to his sideburns with Farndon's antics and wanted him out of the band. So did Honeyman-Scott. And so in June of '82 Pete Farndon was kicked out of the Pretenders. The band had planned to bring McIntosh or someone else in to play guitar or keyboards on stage in order to givee Hynde more flexibility, anyway. However, two days after Farndon was given the sack, Honeyman-Scott's weak constitution finally collapsed. He was dead, and the Pretenders were in complete disarray. To add to Hynde's anxieties, she was three months pregnant by The Kinks' Ray Davies, with whom she now lives. On the face of it, the Pretenders were kaputski. But Hynde and Chambers pulled together, snared ex-Rockpile guitarist Billy Bremner and bassist Tony Butler, and cut a fantastic single, "Back on the Chain Gang" b/w "My City Was Gone," in the Summer of'82. And with McIntosh and Foster firmly ensconced in the band, the new foursome played the US Festival in California last May.
Since then they've been busy recording Learning To Crawl with producer Chris Thomas, who also supervised the first two albums, and just prior to )[mas a new single, "Middle of the Road," was released in the U.S., with its flip side, "2000 Miles," serving as the British single. Now comes the album. Naturally, it is a record that refleets the tumultuousness of Chrissie Hynde's life since Pretenders II hit a critical snag in '81: Scott's death, putting together a new band, her relationship with Davies, and probably most important, the birth of her baby girl, Natalie, last January. It is an album that on one hand recognizes the impermanence of things (life, love, marriage, home) while offering hope (new life, perseverance, faith) in the bald face of that impermanence.
Although Learning To Crawl doesn't pack the wallop or seethe with the ferocity of 1980's Pretenders, the new record is perhaps Hynde's most cogent, coherent statement to date. It's certainly her most thoughtful, and it reflects a new maturity in her and in the band. Whereas in the past she has gone to unsuccessful extremes to blend in with the rest of the band, with Learning To Crawl she has come to grips with her responsibility as band leader, and as a result the songs brim with confidence, not cockiness.
"Middle of the Road," a formidable rocker that kicks off the album, is representative of Hynde's maturation and serves as her personal statement on where she stands after all that's gone down since the band began to disintegrate. Powered by a signature echoey riff on the verses, she says early on, "I've got a smile for everyone I meet/As long as you don't try draggin' my bay/Or droppin' the bomb on my street." It's a blistering tune, with McIntosh reeling off some stinging blasts during the break before Hynde returns to spit out an admonishment against invasion of privacy (hers), indicating that she has new concerns and that the first flush of stardom has long since faded:
I can't get from the cab to the curb
Without some little jerk on my back
Don't harass me
Can't you tell
I'm going home
I'm tired as hell
I'm nor the cat I used to be
I've got a kid
I'm 33.
And to ram home the sentiment, she snarls cat-like as the song erupts into a growling harmonica outro that rocks viciously. It's a riveting four minutes that ranks with the band's best work. After she's established what's what,-Hynde moves on to address what she sees as the inevitable impermanence of life, encapsulating her feelings on "Time the Avenger," the saga of an executive's fall from exaltedness.
Nobody's permanent
Everything's on loan here
Even your wife and kids
Could be gone next year.
Time is the avenger. It erodes everything, tick, tick, ticking as life slips away. Things could change today or tomorrow, but time eventually catches up with everyone and everything. Much of the rest of the album is a laundry list of impermanence, headed by Hynde's tender and defiant tribute to Honeyman-Scott, "Back on the Chain Gang." She shakes her fist at the implacable forces that precipitated Scott's death, while fully recognizing that she's powerless to control them.
The powers-that-be
That force us to live like we do
Bring me to my Knees
When I see what they've done to you
But I'll die as I stand here today
Knowing deep in my heart
They'll fall to ruin one day
For making us part.
It's a lovely song, highlighted by some deft guitar interplay between Hynde and Billy Bremner, but particularly by Hynde's lilting vocal on the opening and closing verses. Elsewhere, she cites the wanton destruction of the American landscape on "My City Was Gone," with Tony Butler's chug-a-lug bass creating a slow-rolling pace that's periodically interrupted by some fab piercing chords from Bremner. And on "Thin Line Between Love and Hate" (a cover of a '72 Persuaders' song) and "I Hun You" she relates the dissolution of a marriage and a relationship, respectively. These two songs are perhaps the record's only disappointments, since "Thin Line" is grossly oversimplified and "I Hurt You" is a lyrically muddy, musically murky battle of the sexes that doesn't work. However, both songs, especially "Thin Line," are distinguished by gripping Hynde vocals.
For me, what's always set Hynde apart from other rock chanteuses (Harry, Lennox, Iyall, Benatar) is her versatility and uncompromising persona. She's never pandered to males. Never glammed it up. She's always been very much her own person, and that independence came across on "Brass in Pocket," "The Adultress," and particularly on "Precious," as well as "Middle of the Road" and "My City Was Gone" here. However, she's equally adept at waxing wistful, frequently evincing world-weariness or vulnerability. This was evident on "Kid," "Talk of the Town," and most notably on Ray Davies' "I Go To Sleep."
Her wistfulness and vulnerability haven't diminished on Learning To Crawl, either, although they're tempered with a certain knowingness. You can hear it on the touching "Show Me," with its plaintive plea, "I want love." You can hear it on the beautiful Christmas lament, "2000 Miles." And it's particularly affecting on "Back on the Chain Gang."
Oddly, it's three songs-"Show Me," "Back on the Chain Gang," and "2000 Miles"--that constitute Hynde's counter-argument for hope and faith in a world governed by impermanence. She makes her best case on "Show Me," a wonderful celebration of her baby daughter that's reminiscent of the first album's "Kid." For Hynde, her baby is a glimmer of hope that came along just when she needed it most. And it's renewed her. Revivified her. Turned her outlook on the world around and forced her to look at things from a new perspective. She sings to her baby:
Welcome to the human race
With its wars, disease; and brutality
You with your innocence and grace
Restore some pride and dignity
To a world in decline.
It's a beautifully optimistic song, buoyed by the kind of shimmering guitar work and melodic progressions that characterized the best songs on the first two albums. That shimmering guitar also pops up on "2000 Miles," a lament of paned lovers to be sure, but one that reaffrrms the power and resilience of love, too. Hynde says that mere distance can't lessen what exists between two people ("I'11 think of you/Wherever you roam"), and the imagery that she conjures--"diamonds in the snow sparkle" and children singing at Christmas--cuts through the song's melancholy tone. It even ends--and since "2000 Miles" is Learning To Crawl's closing number, the album also ends-on one last ringing, glimmering upturned note that reverberates as it fades. Hope has the last word.
"Thumbelina," with its rolling rockabillyness and its visual glimpses of Western America as seen by a band on tour, is another nod to baby Natalie, with Hynde again asserting that love bonds are "what's important in this world." The song also raises the practical problems of touring with a baby, something that other contempo rockers, such as Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads, have recently faced. When asked about the prospect of the upcoming Pretenders' tour, Hynde told NME, "I feel apprehensive because I'm going to be taking this baby with me, and I worry about her...But she's young enough now that as long as she gets what she needs she's happy. I don't know if I could take her in a couple of years. I wouldn't want her first words to be 'room service.' "
Musically, with the exception of "I Hurt You," Learning To Crawl compares favorably with the sensational Pretenders. Hynde has stepped out of the band's shadows to assert control, and in the process she's banished the heaviness that creeped into "Tattooed Love Boys" on Pretenders, and more than a few songs on II, a lapse that Hynde attributes in part to Pete Farndon's musical inclinations at the time.
Overall, Learning To Crawl sounds more reserved than the first two albums, although it is by no means lightweight. Hynde contends that producer Chris Thomas successfully captures "the Pretenders sound" on the new album, and I think she's right. The emphasis is on a tough melodic approach, a sound that fortified some of the band's best moments in the past: "Message of Love," "Brass in Pocket," "Birds of Paradise," "Mystery Achievement," and "Talk of the Town." It's present here in the raging guitars on "Watching the Clothes," Hynde dirty to middle-class boredom, and on the blazing outro to "Time the Avenger," which is also abetted by Malcolm Foster's bedrock bass. Still, it's her romantic melodiousness that I find most compelling and although "Middle of the Road' is an unparalleled raver, I think that "Show Me" and "2000 Miles," that former with its unbridled joyousness and the latter with its bittersweet loveliness, are at the heart of Learning to Crawl.
True, Hynde will no doubt be the beneficiary of a prodigious sympathy vote with this album, and yet I think that it stands on its own merits, particularly lyrically. I've already heard some carping concerning the presence of "Back on the Chain Gang' and "My City Was Gone" on the new album, songs recorded over a year and one-half ago, but that's forgetting that this record was made under extraordinary circumstances utilizing numerous musicians-the only constants being Hynde, Chambers, and producer Thomas. This isn't an excuse. It's fact. As for Hynde's description of Learning To Crawl in NME as "a bit of a salvage job," well, she may not realize it but it's a great record.
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