Pretenders (1980)

Personnel

Chrissie Hynde: guitars, vocals

James Honeyman-Scott: guitars, keyboards, vocals

Pete Farndon: bass, vocals

Martin Chambers: drums, vocals

Produced at Wessex Studios, London; Air Studios, London, by Chris Thomas, Nick Lowe

Engineers: Bill Price, Steve Nye, Mike Stavrou

Released: January 1980

Highest chart position: UK: 1, US: 10

We were all a little in love with Chrissie because she was so cool and didn't take any shit from anybody. She had so much style. She had a tough but vulnerable sound that was really unusual.

Nick Lowe, sleeve notes for 2006 Pretenders compilation, Pirate Radio

This is one of the most astonishing debut albums in the history of music.

Michael Chabon

Pretenders is, indeed, one of rock's defining debuts. Nearly five decades after its release, its opening salvo remains the group's paradigm, a tantalising taste of where its A-Team might have travelled in the longer term had the guitarist and bass player not danced so intimately with Mr D.

A sizzling crucible of punky snarl, Stonesy swagger and Kinksy pop, Pretenders kicks away like a Bonneville hitting the ton on the North Circular, rages through a frantic first side, recovers its composure with a parcel of roguishly streetwise, near-perfect pop songs and crashes home almost 50 minutes later with a bass-driven stormer that manages to fuse Stevie Wonder with The Spencer Davis Group and Magazine. At a time when UK punk was morphing into post-punk, thereafter to the new romantics and synthpop, Pretenders evidenced seamless shifts in style and tone that briskly distanced its makers from every other contemporary rock 'n' roll band or genre.

Three hit singles were tucked up nicely by the time the album was released in January 1980. Each was more successful than the last, climaxing with a global monster. Onstage, the band were now combustible; confidence was high for the maiden long-player, even as the energy generated live was becalmed by the gentler pop sensibilities of the singles. All would be included on the album, contrasting intriguingly with the switchblade rock 'n' roll at which the young band were proving themselves as keen and bright as any of their peers.

The first 45, 'Stop Your Sobbing', coupled with 'The Wait', had been issued almost exactly a year before the album, charting in the UK at number 34. At around the same time, the band played their first bill-topping gig, at West Hampstead's Moonlight Club. As they proceeded to tear up live venues throughout the UK, critics were suitably ecstatic. Having already featured the band on Melody Maker's coveted front page, editor Richard Williams attended a Moonlight set and, in his praise, evoked maybe the greatest of all rama-lama rock groups: 'The Wait' [is] the best thing of its kind I've heard since The MC5's 'Looking At You'. Chrissie Hynde deals with rock 'n' roll like no woman I've ever seen.' Over at NME, Nick Kent at first skewered the rival title's eagerness ('Five gigs played and the vultures are already congregating'), but Chrissie's ex was ultimately magnanimous ('As a dance band, there's simply no-one to touch them right now'). The critical hyperbole meant overall expectations for Pretenders had become lip-smackingly Beatles-esque, although as the band headed for the studio, one professional who could boast real-world Fabs experience was only a second choice.

For production duties, Chrissie at first fancied her old drinking partner, Nick Lowe, who by 1978 was a much sought-after writer, performer and producer. However 'Basher' (the nickname referenced Nick's mantric encouragement to his clients: 'bash it out, we'll tart it up later') was dubious about the music. He considered 'Stop Your Sobbing' the only early Pretenders demo with any real promise, limiting his contribution accordingly. It was a decision he'd regret, as he confessed to Chris Salewicz:

I honestly didn't think the group were going to be as good as it turned out to be. I was really madly off the rama-lama punk thing at the time, and I thought that was the way Chrissie was going to go - which was really unfair because I'd never seen them or heard any of the other stuff she'd been writing. In fact, I didn't realise Chrissie could write such good songs. And I turned them down.

For the bulk of the album, Chrissie - if she was avowedly not a solo artist, she was just as certainly the gangmaster and main decisionmaker - enticed Chris Thomas with a demo cassette and a performance at the Marquee. She'd met the experienced producer in 1977, first at a Stranglers gig, later when Thomas helmed Chris Spedding's Hurt, the first record ever to feature Hynde's voice, albeit as backing vocalist. (Chrissie's knowledge of the Heavy Bikers might also have helped Spedding's lyrics; the versatile guitarist's resumé ran from free jazz to the Wombles, but his 1975 hit 'Motorbikin' suggested that behind the absent time signatures and the furry burrowers' ever-present litter bins lurked a down-the-line rocker.) Thomas - whose studio and personal skills had enhanced records by the heads of state themselves, The Beatles, along with such courtiers as Pink Floyd, The Sex Pistols, Procol Harum and Roxy Music - agreed to help largely on the evidence of 'Brass In Pocket', which he thought was the perfect single: 'I knew Chrissie was great and I really liked her songs,' Thomas told Salewicz. 'So what she suggested was that we do some really casual recording without worrying about what the consequences of it would be.'

Thomas was in demand. The Wessex Studios sessions for Pretenders had to be scheduled in numerous discrete quanta around the producer's obligations to Pete Townshend's Empty Glass and Wings' Back To The Egg. Perversely, this stumbling modus operandum did The Pretenders' recorded results no harm, allowing the band the space between studio sessions to evolve and refine the material around the UK club scene. As Thomas told Uncut in 2013:

We did it in short bursts over the course of eight months. It was frustrating for them, but it meant Chrissie kept coming in with a fresh supply of brilliant new songs, like 'Lovers Of Today'.

Those consequences, of course, would prove unforgettable. The perfect second 45, 'Kid', backed by 'Tattooed Love Boys', was released in June 1979, peaking at number 33 after Record Mirror declared it single of the week. But just as Thomas had predicted, it was the third 7", 'Brass In Pocket' c/w 'Space Invader', that made the biggest impression. Shortly before the album hit the stores the single made number one in the UK - fittingly for a band with such promise for the upcoming 1980s, the decade's near-firstchart topper (Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick In The Wall, Part II' actually straddled the 1979 Christmas/New Year season in the top spot) - and number 14 on the US Billboard Hot 100. One week after its release, Pretenders entered the UK album chart at number one.

Critical reception was strangely mixed, but The Pretenders were about to go global. Success hastily reversed the polarities; suddenly every ligger who snubbed the support act they'd never heard of back in 1978 now insisted they'd always thought The Pretenders the best band in the world. Melody Maker and NME continued their feud: the former praised Pretenders as 'the first important album of the 1980s', while the latter, now ambushed by its 'hip young gunslingers' Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons (themselves influenced by a younger but no less vitriolic Chrissie Hynde - NME was doing for rock journalism what Hunter S. Thompson once did for political reporting), moaned that its mortal enemy was overhyping a band who were 'so reminiscent of '60s pop that any claim they are innovative is completely invalid.' Sounds, meanwhile, bafflingly detected two main influences: Public Image Ltd and Sting. It's hard to imagine who found the idea more hilarious, The Pretenders included. A decade after its release, Pretenders was declared by Rolling Stone the 20th-best album of the 1980s, upgrading its assessment in 2013 to the 13th-best debut album of all time.

For the sleeve, photographer Chalkie Davies nailed the band in all their insubordinate and, according to Martin, inebriated glory. On the left, Pete is bad-boy biker incarnate in greased quiff and black Brando 'Triumph' jacket; he seems startled, as if collared after guzzling a cappuccino at the Ace Café and doing a runner. On the right, a tall, supercool Jimmy peers down through rock 'n' roll aviator shades, appraising Martin's cheery grin, scruffy estate agent's three-piece suit and half-mast tie. Chrissie, of course, is the focal point, ruddily incandescent against her colleagues' dark attire. Like Pete's, her biker jacket is Lewis Leathers, only in scarlet: it looks the business, but questionable given the vegetarianism she'd observed since she was 17 and for which, one day, she'd willingly step outside the law. Interestingly...