“Nobody’s permanent
Everything’s on loan here…”
January 13th, 1984. Midnight. Tower Records. Concord, CA. That was the night/early morning when the third studio album by the Pretenders, Learning to Crawl, was released – and I was waiting patiently for the staff at Tower to bring the record out of the Employees Only area to the front of the store so I could buy my copy. Yes, anticipation was building for weeks since the first single off the album, “Middle of the Road” was released in November 1983 (B Side was “2000 Miles”), and I was thrilled that the band I loved since my junior year of high school hadn’t broken up after the deaths of two of its founding members, James Honeyman-Scott (June 16, 1982) and Pete Farndon (April 14, 1983). Honeyman-Scott ingested too much of an “ill advised drug cocktail”* and died of heart failure – according to Ben Edmonds in the booklet for the band’s box set Pirate Radio: 1979-2005. Bassist Pete Farndon died from a combination of heroin use while in a bath – which led to his drowning.
When “Back on the Chain Gang” was recorded in 1982, it had morphed from a song about finding a photo of Ray Davies – who Hynde was in a relationship with for four years – to becoming a song about Honeyman Scott. The group was working on the song before Honeyman Scott died and Fardon was fired from the band. After Honeyman Scott’s death, Hynde and Chambers endeavored to complete the song as a tribute to their bandmate. Because Honeyman Scott was a fan of guitarist Billy Bremner (who played with Rockpile), he was brought in to help with lead guitar parts. It took him a while, but Bremner was able to come up with that signature lead that opened the song. Honeyman Scott was also a fan of guitarist Robbie McIntosh – who he wanted to bring in to play with the band. McIntosh played rhythm guitar, and Tony Butler rounded out the players on bass guitar and backing vocals. Oh, and the B Side of the single was “My City Was Gone” – a song that Butler came up with the now iconic bass line that anchors the song.
So, before January 13th, 1984, four Pretenders songs were out there to keep fans sated – and all four were incredibly strong and diverse. This signaled that the full LP, Learning to Crawl was going to be something special.
It turned out to be one of the two best-selling records in the band’s catalog – the other being their debut album. Pretty good after their sophomore album Pretenders II sold half as many copies as albums number one and three. Still, it’s not solely about the album sales. What Learning to Crawl showed was that the Pretenders were picking up the pieces and carrying on as a band with a collection of songs that were far different from the first two records. Sure, “Middle of the Road” rocks pretty hard, but gone are any of the punkish flourishes that Hynde brought to earlier songs. This is a straight-ahead rocker that fits quite nicely in what was left of AOR radio in 1984 and had the staying power to become classic rock. Though the guitar part sounds deceptively simple, Steve Churchyard, who engineered the sessions on the album, told Sound on Sound in 2005 that “Middle of the Road” was one of the “most challenging songs on the album.” Although the riff seems meat and potatoes enough, Churchyard said that it “had layer upon layer of guitars” that required around six guitars to create that thick, rockin’ sound: “There were the high and the low parts, both doubled, and each part was played individually and left to ring, sustained through the next part. It was Chris Thomas’s idea to do it that way, and although it took a long time and was quite a laborious process, the end result was fantastic.” I couldn’t agree more. No wonder “Middle of the Road” is an iconic and classic song in the Pretenders’ catalog.
However, putting “Middle of the Road” and “Back on the Chain Gang” in brackets, what about the rest of the songs that make up the bulk of the album? There’s now an expanded version of the album released in 2007 that includes some additional tracks, a demo, and some live performances, but here’s the original track listing from 1984:
“Watching the Clothes”
“Show Me”
“Thin Line Between Love and Hate” (cover of the 1971 song by The Persuaders)
“I Hurt You”
“Time the Avenger” is an absolute gem with its driving rhythm over Hynde’s unique vocal phrasing. I remember seeing this performed live on the Learning to Crawl tour in 1984 and it was a solid rocker that got the crowd going, even though it was a fairly new song to the ears of fans. It’s still a tune that stands out on the record as the last vestige of whatever combination of elements that made the Pretenders the Pretenders when they first started. The angular rhythm guitar work gets boosted and mirrored by Malcolm Foster’s bass work and Martin Chambers’ thunderous drumming – and builds in texture and intensity with Robbie McIntosh’s lead guitar flourishes. Time is an avenger, and you can really feel it stalking you as the song rides out to the finish.
“Watching the Clothes” is a bit silly in style, but it has a sad backstory. About a year before Learning to Crawl came out, I heard a radio interview with Chrissie Hynde where the DJ asked her if she was still writing songs, and she said something like, “Yeah, just the other day I was working on a song about doing laundry.” Reading the lyrics, however, doesn’t capture what the song is about. As Hynde noted to Dave Edmonds in 2005 for the Pirate Radio box set, “My flatmate Kevin Sparrow died on Christmas Day of 1979. I took some of his clothes to the launderette and sat there and watched them spinning ‘round in the dryer, sadly knowing he’d never wear them again. Sometimes you can dump your grief into a song.”
“Show Me” was one of those album tracks I pegged as a single when I first heard the record. Its radio-friendly, almost adult contemporary feel, showed a different side of Hynde. Yes, she was a newish mother when this song was written, and as she said, this was her song about motherhood, but it’s not entirely a sappy affair. Okay, it is kind of sappy, but after years of hearing Hynde write blunt songs about sex, “Show Me” was a kind of radical departure from some of the shock and awe lyrics Hynde was known for.
“Thumbelina” This country-fused song was also a departure in style for the band. Based on a road trip Hynde took with her girlfriends in 1975, it could easily be read as “Mommy Song, Part 2” with the chorus, All the love in the world for you, girl/Thumbelina in a great big scary world/All the love in the world for you, girl/Take my hand and we’ll make it through this world. It’s got a great galloping beat, which adds some diversity to the songs on the album. “Thumbelina” may be a strange choice, but I think there’s one thing about Hynde that she hasn’t shied away from and that’s making sure music that’s inspired her makes its way into her songs – for better or worse.
“My City Was Gone” If there’s one song on Learning to Crawl that sounds like it could have been recorded by the original lineup, this is it. Pete Farndon, when he first met Hynde at an audition for the Pretenders, ran through songs that spanned the gamut of R&B, country, and punk. He was so impressed by the variety of styles she was playing that he knew this band she was forming would be unique if they could lock in other players. So, when Tony Butler in 1982 laid down the bass groove that anchors the song, it was far and away better than anything Farndon could have come up with, but it did, in a way, signal a Pretenders’ sound that was likely evolving from its punk roots to the R&B type of funk feel that Farndon jammed with Hynde in 1979
“Thin Line Between Love and Hate” A cover of a 1971 R&B song by The Persuaders that Hynde likely includes in the album because of her love of R&B from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Lyrically, though, it sounds like something like she could write. It has an effective narrative originally written and sung by men about a horrible man who mistreats his woman – to his detriment. Hynde keeps this cover pretty close to the original, just like she did when the Pretenders used to cover Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher” in their live set in the early ‘80s.
“I Hurt You” Another exploration of the dark side of relationships that, lyrically, paints a pretty bleak picture of people who hurt people. To wit: If you’d been in the SS in ’43/You’d have been kicked out for cruelty. Well, what more is there to say than sometimes you kick…and sometimes you get kicked?
“2000 Miles” Hynde was convinced that people would recognize “2000 Miles” as influenced by the Otis Redding song “Thousand Miles Away.” However, it appears few, if any, caught the reference when it was released as a B side to “Middle of the Road” – and then included in Learning to Crawl. The song is now one of those Christmas songs that’s become embedded in the yearly All Christmas programming some radio stations flip to the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. “2000 Miles” may have been inspired by Otis Redding, but it was also inspired by the Christmas lights that Hynde saw on Oxford Street in London when she was recording in AIR studios in 1983. Interestingly, it was one of the last songs written for the Learning to Crawl sessions and one of the first songs released before the album came out.
So, that’s the album. 10 songs. 40 minutes. Over a million album sales. 1984 was a hell of a year for music. Here’s a sample: Prince’s Purple Rain, U2’s The Unforgettable Fire, Van Halen’s 1984, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA, Sade, Diamond Life, INXS, The Swing, The Smiths’ first album, Byran Adams, Reckless, Madonna, Like a Virgin, Tina Turner, Private Dancer, Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense, and Wham! Make it Big. Yes, there’s more, but the point is that the Pretenders’ Learning to Crawl was released when many of the band’s contemporaries also created iconic albums that have endured for 40 years – and Learning to Crawl is certainly an album that tick, tick, tick of time hasn’t diminished.
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*“Cocaine is a hell of a drug,” Rick James (February 11, 2004, Chappelle’s Show, “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories –Rick James Part 2”)
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