Pretenders II

Album: Pretenders II
Year: 1981

. . .

Here’s a thing I didn’t realize when I started writing these posts: just how much of a love-fest they were going to be for James Honeyman-Scott, who died of a cocaine overdose in 1982 and subsequently had such a short oeuvre that he often gets left off the lists of great guitarists.

I mean, Chrissie Hynde was a life-changing force of nature, one of the all-time great singer-songwriters. But holy Jesus fuck, Honeyman-Scott was so fucking tremendous, he helped her tap into her force and then he aided and abetted her in such a way that she’s been able to use what she learned to ride her initial inspiration for four decades now.

Album: Pretenders II
Year: 1981

. . .

As you can imagine, after the twin triumphs of Pretenders and the Extended Play EP, I was totally looking forward to the follow-up. And I was totally disappointed.

Now, by no stretch of the imagination is Pretenders II a bad album, and I loved how the cover hearkened back to the days when the Rolling Stones would glower at you from one of their mid-1980s album covers — though Chrissie Hynde said in her book that she didn’t like it because of the airbrushing both made it look fake and yet still couldn’t hide Pete Farndon’s heroin pallor (not as bad as Brian Jones on the cover of Between The Buttons, but still) — but for a band who had made their name eschewing formula, it seemed, well . . . formulaic.

Certain Songs #1638: Pretenders – “The English Roses”

Certain Songs #1637: Pretenders – “Pack It Up”