We do have a good laugh, you know? It’s great fun, really.Ĭhrissie, you called yourself “an afterthought” on the record, but clearly your playing is so instrumental to the Pretenders’ sound. As for what’s unique about it compared to other bands? I don’t know. And thank God, because I couldn’t! But she just lets me do what I want guitar-wise, within reason, obviously.īut I have enormous freedom to just play. Walbourne: Oh, where, can I start? One thing is that, when I joined the band, Chrissie never wanted me to play what was on the records. What do you like about being in the Pretenders? James, you’ve played in so many bands and projects over the years. But I have to say, any excellence on this album is totally down to James Walbourne’s guitar. In fact, I’m probably the punk element, because my playing is rougher than theirs. You have to have people who can’t play very good to be truly punk. Hynde: We really wanted to make a punk-sounding album, and you just can’t have a punk-sounding album with virtuoso players. But I have enormous freedom to just play James Walbourne Just a good-old punk song.Ĭhrissie just lets me do what I want guitar-wise, within reason, obviously. And that’s the sort of song this band can play straightaway, really.
So I just started playing that riff, and that was it. Chrissie gave me some words for it, and they sounded angry. James Walbourne: The song itself came together with a lyric. “Hate for Sale” really defines the overall vibe of the album. People were like, “Oh, you have these time signatures that are unusual.” I said, “Oh, are they?” The only reason to really play something in an unusual time signature is if you don’t know what you’re doing and you can’t play in 4/4 time. Like, if you try to contrive an unusual time signature, it just becomes prog-rock. You can’t be contrived with that stuff, because if it’s contrived it’s not natural. And you know, the thing about mistakes and accidents is they’re the things that are unique. That was a cock-up in the studio, and he left it on. The only reason to really play something in an unusual time signature is if you don’t know what you’re doing and you can’t play in 4/4 Chrissie HyndeĬhrissie, you’ve stressed the importance of capturing the band sound on Hate for Sale, and it comes through straightaway on the title track, which starts the album off with what sounds like a mistake, before everyone regroups and comes crashing back in together.Ĭhrissie Hynde: Stephen Street put that on there, just for a laugh. And if anything, people might not know that they’re missing that.” She pauses. “And that’s what I love about it - it’s a real band sound. “This album really is about this band,” Hynde adds. “When Chrissie, Martin, Nick and I get together, the punkier thing just happens. We just went at it like that until we got it right.”Īs for the harder-edged sound this time around? “That’s just the band,” Walbourne says. Chrissie would write reams and reams of lyrics, and I would go over it and see what would hit me and then try and put some music to them. “You get over the initial nerves and realize you can work together. “When we got going, it happened quickly,” he says. We went into a little pre-coronavirus lockdown in France, and the songs started flying out. And this time around we wrote all the songs together, which we’ve never done before.
“I haven’t seen anyone else who can do what he does. “James is definitive,” Hynde says of Walbourne, who in addition to his own band, the Rails, has also worked with Jerry Lee Lewis, the Kinks’ Ray Davies and the Pogues, among many others.