The pretenders time the avenger5/6/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() What gives the song its power is Chrissie Hynde’s ability to move beyond personal experience to universal experience, and feel with all of us who are “victims of the system” spending our lives in the grind, in the “circumstance beyond our control” that saps our energies and leaves us little time for the truly important things like love and friendship. Now, if this were simply another song about poor, harried rock stars, “Back to the Chain Gang” would have been forgotten by now. If that’s the case, though, the memory triggered is not of death but of the high-pressure rat race of the music business they experienced together. Far more melodic than her earlier work, the lyrics are richer and more complex than “Middle of the Road,” peppered with bursts of emotion that alternate from happiness to deep bitterness and a desire for revenge against “the powers that be.” Some say this is song is at least in part about their late lead guitarist, James Honeyman-Scott, and I suppose the “I found a picture of you” line could be a reference. “Back on the Chain Gang” had been released a little over a year before Learning to Crawl, and I’m thankful they included it on the album so people of the future like me wouldn’t have to dig through compilation albums to plot the band’s development path. I’ve known people of all ages who were psychologically and spiritually dead, from eighteen to eighty, and I’ve known men and women classified as “senior citizens” who were far more alive than many of my millenial contemporaries (my partner and I fucked a couple in their fifties this past weekend, and it was one of the most intense and energetic sexual experiences of our lives). We’ll see this theme pop up now and again in Learning to Crawl, providing a culturally interesting subtext to what she was experiencing at this stage of her life. I’ve never seen any evidence of a correlation between age and sprightliness. I always laugh when I hear the parting couplet, “I’m not the cat I used to be/I’ve got a kid, I’m thirty-three, baby.” While I understand there’s still a stigma attached to a woman with a kid, I was blown away when I learned that people back then considered thirty “old age” and ordered black balloons for birthday parties. Past corrugated tin shacks holed up with kidsīut when you own a big chunk of the bloody Third World Like fat cats driving around in jeeps through the city She still sings with street-wise confidence, but now she’s much more articulate: The title communicates both a shift in perspective due to maturity (she was my age when this was recorded) and a genuine concern about the world where she is raising a child. Martin Chambers opens with a more energetic and confident display of drumming than he’d shown on the earlier works, and new guitarist Robbie McIntosh delivers a solid lead solo. The tight rhythms and energy open the door for Chrissie to ride the wave with her lead vocal, which is strongly enhanced by the enriched content of the lyrics. “Middle of the Road” is a terrific confirmation that the reconfiguration of The Pretenders represents a pulsating rebirth. I feel like I’m experiencing the whole person instead of just a part of her. Her voice sounds more confident and she infuses the entire production with forward-looking energy. She hired some temps, led the patchwork band to make one of their best singles, found the guys she really wanted and went on to record Learning to Crawl. What makes this such a superior record to either of the first two is Chrissie Hynde coming into her own as a songwriter with a social consciousness who can still rock with the best of them. Having already overcome many obstacles on her journey, Chrissie Hynde was already an expert in perseverance. Drug abuse took the lives of the bass player and lead guitarist. ![]() ![]() Much had happened between these two albums. I also thought Chrissie was guilty of bad acting on that song, and equally so on “The Adultress.” For those reasons and more, I’m going to take a pass on Pretenders II and move on to the much more interesting and substantial Learning to Crawl. When I am practicing BDSM, I’m not playing in the sense of “playing games.” I’m expressing my love and seeking gratification through a deeply personal, erotic style. End of discussion. For me, pain is part of the erotic experience. My parents and I have always loved each other. The truth is I despise the song: it perpetuates the stereotype that people get into BDSM because their mommies or daddies were mean to them. Some readers may be surprised, given my BDSM proclivities, that “Bad Boys Get Spanked” didn’t make the list. Except for “Talk of the Town” and their amazing cover of The Kinks’ “I Go to Sleep,” Pretenders II didn’t really work for me. ![]()
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