Monocled Alchemist

Article published in Sounds, 26th January, 1980

The Pretenders | Living With Headlines | I CAN TELL you I was worried about this Pretenders thing. I thought they’d be too much for me — well, not so much ‘they’ as Chrissie Hynde herself.

Going on image, what I’d read in the music papers, rumours and the mutterings of acquaintances, I expected her to have the sort of voracious sophistication I’ve met in certain dyed-to-the-bone-marrow rock ‘n’ roll people and that it would wreck me.

The news that on the day I was meeting them they had simultaneously gone to the top of both the singles and the album charts didn’t seem likely to make it any more palsy-walsy either.

Frankly my only hope lay in Martin Chambers, the drummer, who was to line up with Chrissie for the interview. I’d never met any of them before but his picture on the album sleeve seemed to put across something encouraging. He’s the only one who looks as though he comes from Hereford and doesn’t give a monkey’s who knows about it.

James Honeyman Scott, the guitarist, and Pete Farndon, bassman, Herefordians both have melded themselves into Chrissie’s cosmopolitan I’ve-been-around persona.

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They stand with their hands in their jacket pockets while Martin’s are comfortably in his trouser pockets. They seem concerned with the photographer while Martin gazes out at the record-buyer.

But of course a photograph is a split second. I mean to convey exactly how thinly founded were advance impressions of the group.

The solid evidence (which always leads you into wanting to like people and hoping they won’t turn out to be arseholes) was the inspiring single ‘Brass In Pocket‘, which had converted me from complete indifference to enthralled enthusiasm within its four minutes, and the ‘Pretenders’ LP which confirmed at length and profoundly that I was right the second time.

AND NOW my response — this feature — to such eloquence, power, exultation and tenderness was to be based on an hour’s high-pressure conversation in a hundred-quid-a-day-before-you’ve-had-a-cup-of-tea suite at the Montcalm Hotel. Montcalm! Not exactly.

Dave Hill

We sat in the foyer for five minutes chatting with Dave Hill, their manager, who looked shattered. Then James Honeyman Scott came down from the previous interview, shook hands, said goodbye, and passed the baton to Martin who had just arrived. We followed him upstairs.

The picture does tell his story. He doesn’t have to break the ice with a new face — his personality denies the possibility of any such barrier existing. In rural round tones he said: “You know, everybody and his dad was drilling the road outside my bedroom window this morning. I wouldn’t mind only I’d been up till three talking with a friend. Then the phone started ringing and I couldn’t hear a word the noise was so loud.”

At this point Chrissie made her entrance down the chi-chi spiral staircase from the room above. Very grand. As if I needed any more daunting. But mercifully that was as bad as it got. The holes in her jeans didn’t match the decor.

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She joked about that Saturday Spectacular staircase and was put out for a moment to see Mike Laye because she hadn’t been ready for pictures and wasn’t sure if she was looking good enough.

She sat down without any pause for sizing up the opposition and commenced to give of herself, to my surprise, with the same open energy as Martin. So I told them about the impressions of them the cover had created in me.

Martin was pleased because previously he’d always been told that photos made him look like a model for ‘Him’ magazine. He professed himself a committed “country lad” who had only come to London to get on with his music.

Chrissie said: “The one thing I like about the cover is that it’s not very flattering. It’s better that way then when people meet you they don’t think ‘eugh’.”

Unrefined Yankee

Her voice is pleasantly deep, unrefined Yankee. Thinking it over Martin suggested that he might have come across more ‘real’ on the sleeve because just before the pictures were taken he knocked one of Chalkie Davies’ cameras over and he was “in a bit of a state” because he thought he might have caused some serious damage. And that’s how images are made and broken (sometimes).

Identifying strongly with the Hereford ‘bumpkin’ contingent myself I asked them whether there had been difficulties on either side in achieving a band rapport when Chrissie, famously, was born in Akron and has pursued her music successively in London, Paris (yeah, down and out), Cleveland, Tucson, Paris and London again.

They said “No.” Their expressions said the thought was so alien to them they were rather flummoxed by it but Chrissie had a go:

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“Musically we have all listened to the same things and it’s music that brought us together. Background, religion, race, colour, creed isn’t going to have much to do with it when you get to the sound — though it might mean something sociologically.”

“Anyway Chris comes from the Hereford of America,” said Martin which is worth quoting whatever it means (I’ve never been to Hereford either).

He stressed that the band was the thing, no considerations outside playing had given them any trouble at all and in those terms the Pretenders had been a productive meeting of instinct and skill.

“I like what we do musically a lot. Chrissie has a lot of odd timings in her writing which is great for me. When I was first in a group I was always playing 7/4s and all that to impress people but now it’s coming naturally through Chrissie — she’ll come out with a little bit of 5/4 or whatever and not know she’s done it.”

Play Riffs

Chrissie: “These guys are professional musicians whereas I’ve played alone in my room for years. I used to play riffs which felt right to me and then the proper musicians would point out ‘You can’t do that.’ I’d say ‘If I can play it surely you can!”

BUT UNTIL the Pretenders all she got was the pursed lips and dubious shakes of the head as if these musos were so many bank managers advising a client against anything more risky than locking her savings up in a vault. Now with these guys she’s found people who don’t refer back to the text book to see if it’s all right.

Chrissie: “What will happen is I’ll count something in my way, the way it feels, and memorise it then they’ll work out what it amounts to in musicians’ language. I get lost and I’m the guy who came out with it in the first place!”

Martin: “But I can understand her way of doing it. Take ‘Tattooed Love Boys‘ where there’s a gap. Normally you’d count the beat through the silence so you can all come back in together. But not with Chrissie. No.count, no way. It lasts as long as she wants it to last.”

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Chrissie: “I’m yelling ‘Watch me!’ They’re demanding to know what’s going on — and I’m the last person to ask. There again I get mad if they do it wrong don’t I?”

Martin agreed that had been known. She continued: “You can get side-tracked by the technicalities I don’t think ‘Now how can I get away from 4/4 on this?”

Martin: “What you have to do if you’re playing something unusual is make sure it flows, that it sounds simple. It’s not about being technical. For instance the band wrote the instrumental ‘Space Invaders‘ but what Chrissie put in there is the best guitar on the album.”

Guitar highlight

Chrissie said “Gee!” as if that was possibly a fresh compliment and recalled being urged into the studio rather reluctantly to thrash out her only lead break on the album.

“Yeah, it’s my guitar highlight. I guess people assume I just do the vocals and they put me down for guitar on the cover to make me feel better, but I was in there playing all the way through.”

Martin: “She played the drums as well. In fact it’s a solo album really.”

“That’s not entirely true,” said Chrissie. She meant it was entirely false. You got that? Well, good but I should warn you to watch out for the Pretenders sense of humour in print and music. They tend to be treated with a frowning seriousness which sometimes leaves them quite disoriented.

I TURNED to the small matter of their double No.1 which must make a bit of a change from the cultish semi-obscurity they languished in until last month. Was their bonhomie concealing a state of shock.

Martin: “No. l’ll tell you what I’m really pleased about: I’ve got my laundry done this week.”

Chrissie: “And I’m really miserable because I haven’t got my laundry done this week. We’re recording Top Of The Pops this afternoon and all those millions of people are going to be watching me with no underwear on!”

When I’d sorted out the syntax and wiped the steam off my glasses I pressed a little further.

“Well, the first thing I thought was that we could only go downhill from here.”

Martin: “It’s just nice to know that people must like the music.”

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That seemed to be carrying naiveté too far when their records were issued amid all the powerful persuasions to purchase that Warner Brothers can muster . . .

Chrissie: “Let’s face the music. We do have a big machine-working for us. I don’t think it’s being done in any unclean way but, for example, we have been up to do a lot of things for radio and so on. For every one we rebelled and said ‘We have to rehearse’. But you have to trust them to do the best thing.

We’re on Warner’s actually because they own Sire who own Real. it’s a great team. They are people I would want to see on a social basis, there’s no bastards in there, nobody I can’t trust even if they do something I don’t agree with. So we don’t feel like we’re a product. We love label!”‘

Had I been less well-bred I would have been sitting with my mouth agape by then. Had I been Japanese I would have stood up and sung the company hymn. I had never heard anything like that from a rock musician. It went on.

Writing songs

“We’re all on £50 a week, I’ve got to leave my flat tomorrow and move in with a friend, I’ve get no bank account, no publisher and no management — at least nothing signed, it’s all on a trust basis. I’m not really that concerned with whether I’m being ripped off. I’m in too much of a tizzy, I’m too busy writing songs.”

WE FINISHED by making some reference to the music (why not?) The last time they were featured in Sounds the Pretenders were on the ropes taking a pounding. That was August:

Chrissie: “We were in the depths of despair because the tour we’d just finished had been so badly organised – passing gigs we’d done two days before to get to the next one.”

Stop Your Sobbing

Martin: “Then we went straight into recording and every studio we set foot in was immediately flooded with water in great quantity and volume.”

Chrissie: We can’t fake it so we came across depressed because we felt that our craft was going down the pan.”

Martin: We were listening to the stuff we’d recorded three months before and it didn’t sound too good anymore.”

This was the intermediate result of working with Chris Thomas whose production approach is slow, meticulous and reflective compared to Nick Lowe who recorded both sides of their first single, ‘Stop Your Sobbing‘, in a day.

Naturally the end result has made them a lot happier and must have had a lot to do with their buoyant mood when I met them. Craftsmanship is too modest a word for what they’ve achieved I think.

Autobiographical

Like most writers Chrissie was reluctant to talk about the ‘meaning’ of her songs on the basis that if you don’t get it no amount of talking will help (she did put me right on a few of the lyrics I couldn’t catch though, thereby hopefully saving me from making a twat of myself which was kind of her).

But I asked her about how far they were autobiographical, “I could be in trouble with that but you can’t go back and change them because you decided you don’t want to expose yourself like that.

I’ll tell you what I want is to see the 28-year-old cocktail waitresses on the force (i.e. people not unlike Chrissie Hynde?). I’d like it if one of them came up to me at a gig and said she’d got a sitter for the kids so that she could see us. Rather that than a kid saying ‘I want to wring your knickers-out over my breakfast’ — I have had a few letters like that,”

Brass In Pocket

She changed tack and did explain a little of her own idea about ‘Brass In Pocket‘. It’s such a stirring song I don’t suppose the authorial view will stop anyone using their imagination on it too:

Yeah, it’s a very lightweight pop type of song, nothing heavy about it. Along the lines of the guy who is feeling very insecure, not about pulling a girl but, say, trying to be accepted by the guys down the pub. It’s a front he’s putting up.

“It’s like buying a pair of new boots and you feel great but then you get home and see your spots in the mirror. Or take a couple of dexies and you’re in gear for the evening but on the train home it’s different. Nobody ever hears the last line you know and that’s what it’s all about. It says ‘Oh and the way you walk’: I’m impressed with you pal!”

Precious

THIS IS where I try to say why I like the Pretenders so much instead of just heaping on the adulatory adjectives. The musical side is easy: it’s hard, tough, great raw guitar sounds, a tremendous undertow of motion-emotion at whatever pace they choose (from ‘Precious’ to ‘Private Life’); the band are very powerful but devoted to enhancing the songs as surely as Joan Armatrading’s best line-ups.

Chrissie Hynde’s voice. That the two comparisons I would make are so diverse, Sandy Shaw (sorry) and Joni Mitchell, shows that it must be pretty much her own sound.

What she does with it nothing flash but extremely sensitive to the tension of her songs whether it’s wildness like ‘Tattooed Love Boys’ or near lullabye like ‘Lovers Of Today‘.

Her most intangible quality is of always sounding as though she’s talking (including shouts, murmurs, whispers, snarls, laughter and ordinary chat) although she’s riding her own strange and subtle rhythms and melodies.

Up The Neck

Her words. They may not be the reason why the Pretenders will sell a million copies or Whatever, but they do set her apart from ‘popstars’ who merely have a knack for creating pleasurable stimuli to which we respond like Pavlov’s Dog – her songs have content.

They reek of people: ‘Lust turns to anger ? A kiss to a slug ? Something was sticky / On the shag rug (look at the tiles) / I remember the way he groaned / Moved with an animal skill ? And I rubbed my face in the sweat which ran down his chest ? It was all very . . . run of the mill / But I noticed his scent started to change somehow ? His face went berserk and the veins bulged on his . . . brow / I said “Baby, aa sweatheart” (‘Up The Neck’);

And: ‘I tore my knees trying to get to you . . . ? I shot my mouth off and he showed me what that hole was fore . . . / You’re gonna make some plastic surgeon a rich man / All for the prestige and the glory’ (‘Tattooed Love Boys‘).

Private Life

You can’t separate the power of the words from the power of the music but the sheer strength of some of her lines is immaculate. You could bounce bombs off the couplets in ‘Private Life’: ‘Your private life drama, baby leave me out (Stop) . . . / Your sentimental gestures only bore me to death / You’ve made a desperate appeal now save your breath . . . / Attachment to obligation through guilt and regret / Chick, that’s so wet / And your sexual complications are not my fascination . . . / I just feel pity when you lie / Contempt when you cry.’

It’s leathery toughness most of the way but there again, and I didn’t have time to ask her about it, she offers you Chrissie Hynde the mother figure. The lyric to ‘Kid’ is simple and sung slowly, stretched out as opposed to the verbal cramming of her more aggressive stories: ‘Kid, what changed your mood / You’ve gone all sad / So I feel sad too . . . / You don’t understand / You’ve turned your head / You’ve dropped my hand . . . / Full of grace / You cover your face.’

Ray Davies

Its gentleness, clarity and grief are beautiful no lesser word is adequate. The song even makes me feel paternal and I detest children. ‘Kid’ is also particularly relevant to Chrissie’s immediate thoughts on developing her writing:

“I would like to get away from demanding people’s attention the way something like ‘Private Life‘ does. I’d love to get that Ray Davies feeling of saying everything in a couple of words with the musical content of the song as the emotional vehicle.

I said I could see her point but on the other hand I think ‘Stop Your Sobbing’ is a rightly obscure Davies song, the least compulsive track on the album, and basically she shouldn’t be ashamed of her intelligence.

“Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t tamper with what you’ve got. You know after I’d started writing people would hear my stuff then say ‘Yes, but you’ve got to have a verse, a hook and a middle eight’. I’d never thought of that but then I’d become conscious of it . . . I’m talking at cross-purposes with myself — all my insecurities come out.”

The record shows that Chrissie Hynde has got all kinds of what-it-takes. But she is the shaper of the Pretenders and she is also unusually malleable herself, ‘vulnerable.’ she calls it. She made you notice all right. Could be she’s going to have to use her sidestep a lot more. (Phil Sutcliffe)