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 onMelody 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 atNME, Nick Kent at first skewered the rival title’s eagerness (‘Five gigs played and the vultures are already congregating’), but Chrissie’s ex wa
