Pretenders : The Wait (single version)
In January of 1979 Real Records released "Stop Your Sobbing" b/w "The Wait", the debut single from Pretenders. The UK press would soon be raving about the killer band featuring the tuff American front woman Chrissie Hynde, "the best new singer in ages" according to Richard Williams of Melody Maker.
The A side is a 1964 Kinks cover and among the safest tunes that would appear on the debut album a full year away. (Though Ray Davies might have been taken by their version as well as his future romantic interest Hynde).
More interesting to these ears is the B-side, a Hynde/ Pete Farndon collaboration called "The Wait". Produced by Hydne's friend, Nick "Basher" Lowe, it's rougher than the version on the album version and has a live in studio feel. When James Honeyman-Scott launches into the solo, you can hear why critics called Pretenders the future of rock n roll.
That's the kind of publicity Hynde wanted to avoid...as she told Melody Maker's Allan Jones in the Summer of '79.
It really pissed me off. But I shouldn't have been pissed off, I should've been more hip to the press, I shoulda understood it better...
But, like, at that stage you don't wanna whole lotta attention. You don't want a lotta people looking over your fuckin' shoulder when you're putting something together. You don't really want anyone around. They start giving you advice and you're not asking for it.
They start pointing you in directions, you know, man, and you're still finding your own direction. ...And it can be, like, dangerous if you start listening to them when they're like on the fuckin' phone ramming themselves down your throat.
Pretenders would release two more singles in 1979, including "Brass in Pocket"which would top the U.K. charts.
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