Hynde and Chambers decided to soldier on in grief. (Sadly, Farndon would die 10 months later by drowning in a bathtub after passing out from a heroin binge.) Band lineup for the recording of Learning to Crawl, including Malcolm Foster, Martin Chambers, Chrissie Hynde and Robbie McIntosh Two days later, Honeyman-Scott died of heart failure brought on by his own cocaine abuse. In June 1982, after they finished touring in support of their commercially and critically disappointing second album Pretenders II, Hynde and fellow band members guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and drummer Martin Chambers fired bassist Pete Farndon over his diminishing performance resulting from his escalating heroin abuse. Learning to Crawl was literally a phoenix rising from the ashes, as it was recorded in the wake of upheaval and tragedy for the band and, as such, many of its songs deal with various aspects of loss. To this day, the song remains one of my favorites of the 1980s. While I’d liked their 1980 breakthrough hit “Brass in Pocket” well enough, it was the bittersweet “Back on the Chain Gang”, with its jangly guitars, haunting lyrics, Chrissie Hynde’s distinctive lilting vocals, and the chain-gang chant in the chorus that really caught my attention. Though many music writers and critics believe The Pretenders debut album Pretenders is their best work (in 2013 Rolling Stone Magazine named it the 13 th best debut album of all time), I prefer their third album Learning to Crawl on the strength of its outstanding tracks like “Back on the Chain Gang”, “Middle of the Road”, “Show Me”, “Time the Avenger” and “My City Was Gone”.
0 kommentar(er)
