THE PRETENDERS LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS FULL
Prior to recording a full LP, Hynde and Chambers enlisted guitarist Billy Bremner and bassist Tony Butler for "Back on the Chain Gang," a shattering, touching tribute to Honeyman Scott with a touch of inspiration from Sam Cooke's R&B hit "Chain Gang." The Top 5 hit, as well as its sad, autobiographical B-side "My City Was Gone," would appear on Learning to Crawl. 3 in Edsel's box set, didn't arrive until 1984. (Farndon would die a year later, drowning with heroin in his system.) Two days later, on June 16, James Honeyman Scott died, a consequence of cocaine abuse. On June 14, 1982, Pete Farndon was ushered out of the band due to his escalating drug problem. But all wasn't perfect behind the scenes. Honeyman Scott's jangly, taut licks, Farndon's confident bass and Chambers' hard-hitting drums all melded into one perfect unit in support of Hynde. Pretenders II followed the band's Extended Play EP and adhered closely to the sound, spirit and style of the first LP, right down to the Ray Davies cover - in this case, "I Go to Sleep." Once again, Hynde - as vocalist and writer or co-writer of every song on the album save the Davies tune - balanced her sexually charged, open persona ("The Adultress", "Bad Boys Get Spanked") with that of a mature woman poetically reflecting on life and love ("Birds of Paradise," "Talk of the Town"). (Nick Lowe handled the production on a rendition of "Stop Your Sobbing" by Kinks frontman Ray Davies, with whom Hynde shared a long relationship.)Īlas, the original line-up only created one more full-length record. She kept true to that lyric on this raw, tough, sexy and surprisingly emotional record as produced by Chris Thomas. "Gonna make you, make you, make you notice," Hynde belted with assurance on "Brass in Pocket," the hit single and future classic which anchored Pretenders. Ohio-born Hynde found ideal (for the moment) conspirators in three chaps from Hereford, all of whom had diverse musical influences: guitarist James Honeyman Scott, bassist Pete Farndon, and drummer Martin Chambers. But Hynde knew the rules of rock before she broke them. She had played with early versions of The Clash and The Damned, and brought that brash spirit to her own band. Chrissie Hynde, who wrote or co-wrote ten of the album's twelve tracks, was already a well-known figure around the U.K. Though filled with pop-worthy hooks perfect for the new wave movement, its attitude was pure punk. The storming debut Pretenders set the tone for the band's electrifying sound.
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These discs reprise the rarities brought to light by Rhino for the box set Pirate Radio as well as on Rhino's original expanded editions of the band's first four albums. What that means is that plenty of bonus material has been collated, including B-sides, live tracks, demos and soundtrack one-off performances.
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(Or: that's to say 8/10, or 4/5, of the entire Pretenders discography! The band has only released two albums since 1999, in 20.) Every one of the eight titles here is housed in a thick digipak, with six of the titles as 2-CD/1-DVD sets and two as 1-CD/1-DVD sets. family of labels between 19 as deluxe editions. In this series, Edsel has addressed all eight albums from The Pretenders as originally released by the Warner Bros.
THE PRETENDERS LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS SERIES
The bulk of that journey has recently been collected by Demon Music Group's Edsel label as a series of individual, deluxe reissues or one 22-disc box set, 1979-1999. It's been a long, strange trip filled with ups (ten albums, numerous hits, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction) and downs (the deaths of Honeyman Scott and Farndon, many personnel changes). 1979's Pretenders launched the band on a journey that continues to this day. émigré the other three were Brits), not its unabashedly punk approach to a classic rock sound, not its effortless, cool swagger.
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Chrissie Hynde, Pete Farndon, James Honeyman Scott and Martin Chambers may have taken the name of The Pretenders, but anybody paying attention soon realized that there was nothing "pretend" about this band - not its brash amalgam of British and American styles (Hynde was a U.S.