![]() ![]() Years later, we ran into Booker T & The MGs. So it was a struggle for her, but I thought it was too good not to have. ![]() In part, I think, that was because she knew it was great, and probably a hit, so if she did it, she was going to be singing it for a while. “I kept at her, saying we’ve gotta have it, but Chrissie was in two minds about it. “Ian persistence pulled I’ll Stand By You out of us, as Chrissie didn’t really want to sing it,” Seymour later recalled. As it transpired, though, it was Last Of The Independents’ epic ballad which went on to become the record’s signature hit, even if Chrissie Hynde required some persuasion when it came to nailing it. With Hynde’s new songs also including compelling rockers such as Hollywood Perfume, the gritty Money Talk and the rockabilly rave-up Rebel Rock Me, the new team had the basis of a vintage Pretenders album on their hands. When bassist Andy Hobson replaced Rourke as the sessions continued, the core four-piece Pretenders line-up which lasted for the next decade fell into place. There’s a definite thing going on in the rhythm between Chrissie’s guitar and Martin’s drums that you’d need a scientific equation to explain.” To my mind, he’s one of the great English rock drummers. But when Martin sat down, it began to feel like a real band. “Up to then it had been good, and the players we’d been using were first-rate. “When Martin came back, it was a huge piece in this thing we’d been building – or rebuilding in Chrissie’s case,” Adam Seymour explained in 2008. However, the sessions really began to cook when Hynde decided to invite Pretenders’ original drummer, Martin Chambers, back into the fold. With Copley behind the kit, they recorded the swaggering Night In My Veins, a UK Top 30 hit which suggested Hynde was back at her feisty best. Taking place in Bath and London, sessions for Last Of The Independents began with Hynde and Seymour joined by sessioneers including ex- Smiths bassist Andy Rourke and drummers Jimmy Copley and James Hood, with producer Ian Stanley (later joined by Stephen Street) manning the console. ![]() Detecting a melodic flair and versatility in Seymour’s playing akin to that of her old sparring partner James Honeyman-Scott, Hynde recruited Seymour for Pretenders’ next album. During the early 90s, Lowe was playing with a young guitarist named Adam Seymour (formerly of UK indie hopefuls The Katydids), and Hynde was suitably impressed by his abilities. Nevertheless, with a little help from her old friend and producer Nick Lowe, Hynde slowly began to reconnect with rock’n’roll. If it all becomes too professional and you don’t goof off enough, how will you have anything to talk about in the music? I need to hang out and have fun and be a nobody with a private life.” “To my mind, rock is about not going to work. “How can you crank out an album every year? That would be like going to work,” Hynde reflected in the sleevenotes for Pretenders’ 2008 box set, Pirate Radio. By her own admission, her interest in the rock’n’roll lifestyle had waned considerably. In the meantime, Hynde also had her second child and had become increasingly involved with environmental activism rather than music. However, having made both records with a supporting cast of studio musicians, the notion of Pretenders as a fully-fledged “band” had dissipated somewhat after 1984’s Learning To Crawl. After all, her band’s two previous albums, 1986’s Get Close and 1990’s Packed, bequeathed a smattering of hits and were hardly devoid of inspiration. Not that Hynde had lost her way, exactly. Stuffed with sassy songs full of attitude and killer hooks, it was everything a Pretenders record should be, and revealed that Chrissie Hynde had regained her mojo in no uncertain terms. Representing both a creative and a commercial rebirth, Pretenders’ sixth album, 1994’s Last Of The Independents, was the one the band’s loyal fanbase had been longing for.
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