In the summer of 1982, Hynde called a band meeting and promptly sacked Fardon due to illegal substance abuse and two days later Honeyman-Scott was found dead in his girlfriend’s house.
Their next top 10 hit was a cover of the Ray Davies-penned, Peggy Lee original I Go to Sleep in December 1981. They followed it with Talk of the Town which made number eight. In January 1980, Brass in Pocket topped the UK chart and became the first number one of the 80s. All they needed was a name and it was Chrissie who chose that after the Platters hit, The Great Pretender. One of the first songs they recorded was a cover of the Kinks’ Stop Your Sobbing and soon after, Gerry was replaced with Martin Chambers. He suggested she form her own band and in doing so recruited guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, Pete Farndon on bass and drummer Gerry Mcilduff. She recorded some demos she had written which Dave Hill at Anchor Records heard and gave her some studio time. That woman is the Akron, Ohio-born lead singer Chrissie Hynde who came to the UK in 1973 and worked on the NME and in Malcolm McLaren’s SEX shop. The Pretenders are a British band with an American front woman. It was Blodwyn Buttercup who emailed me to say, “Hi Jon, could you look at The Pretenders 2000 miles, we have some differing opinions in our household on what/who it was written about?” I love to solve an argument me so, understandably when you listen to the song, on the face of it you would think the man has left the woman and kids behind and gone far away for reasons unknown and the song tells of how she misses him and wants him back etc., well, total nonsense. I gave other examples of the same, but one not mentioned was 2000 miles by The Pretenders, although, to be honest, that one it a bit more understandable as it does mention snow and the ‘C’ word four times. Three weeks ago, I covered the story of Keeping the Dream Alive by Freiheit, a song that has nothing to do with Christmas, yet only really gets wheeled out in December because it has that ‘Christmassy’ sound.
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