As with most acts, it would seem, I came late to The Pretenders. Not that I didn’t hear their first two records, or at least the singles. I cannot for the life of me understand the popularity of “Brass in Pocket,” a song that to this day I find musically annoying, and while I knew people who were very into Pretenders and Pretenders II when I was in college, the group’s work didn’t register with me until this record, “Learning to Crawl.”
It came out in January 1984, and was released at a really pivotal time in my life. The first single, “Back on the Chain Gang,” was released many months before, September 1982, and was one of the huge hits of our final year of college – a sound that wasn’t quite like the other New Wave sounds, and a mood that wasn’t the same either. There was something so dark, sweet, and real about it. Written after the death of guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and during her pregnancy and difficult relationship with Ray Davies, the song has an observational intensity that is quite unlike other songs of the time. This was really the first song that made me take notice of The Pretenders, and it really hasn’t lost its emotional connection for me all these years later.
Famously, the band had just lost two of its members to drug addiction – one fired, the other dead – so the sound of this album is necessarily different from the previous records. Perhaps that was the story behind this record’s title. Though Hynde said it was inspired by her infant learning to crawl, certainly the remnants of the band must have felt that way . . . and honestly, so did I. When the album came out, I was two months married, and two months away from being sober – truly in the “Middle of the Road,” in that sense. That song, which still rocks, came out as a single the month we were married, again in advance of the album. In that sense, I felt like I was also very much learning to crawl – learning how to be married, how to be sober, how to be a functioning adult. (Hey, happy 40th anniversary, “Learning to Crawl”!)
The two advance singles lead off the album, but it stays strong beginning to end, alternating pace and intensity, slipping in a laundry-related novelty (not the only one in my collection in those years!), and closing with a Christmas song that doesn’t make me angry.
I continued to follow The Pretenders (which really just means Chrissie Hynde) from that moment forward – some things bought, some I didn’t. We saw them perform twice, about 20 years apart, and both times they were by far the loudest band I have ever encountered. As much as I enjoy some of the other songs in their catalog, if I’m going to wander over to the shelves and pull out some Pretenders, this is going to be the one.
