![]() ![]() Chrissie Hynde’s early life and musical influences Here’s a brief look at the making of The Pretenders. Together with the Pretenders, she recorded her first album, one of the most celebrated debut records of all time. When you add in the fact that she and Walbourne had a little extra time to make the record during lockdown, that they realized that tomorrow didn’t have to be so much of a long time and that they could find comfort in Dylan’s works, it seems Dylan was right: lonesome means nothing at all.In 1979 Chrissie Hynde, a versed pro of the punk rock scene, finally made her unlikely dream come true. The Pretenders have always been underrated covers artists, going back to their first single, a cover of the Kinks’ “Stop Your Sobbing,” and Hynde has always had a rare knack for figuring out what she has in common with the soul of song and playing that up. What’s most striking about Standing in the Doorway is how easy the recordings came to Hynde and Walbourne. It’s also one of the prettiest recordings she’s ever made. Walbourne plays piano, harmonium, acoustic guitar, and mandolin on the track in a way that captures the seriousness of the song without letting it drift into melodrama, while Hynde deftly navigates the horror of the vocals with a voice that falls somewhere between weeping and sighing. The best rendition here is “Blind Willie McTell,” Dylan’s brooding Infidels outtake, which ties America’s history of slavery with America’s music, the blues. And it’s the way she parses the words of “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” and lines like “If tomorrow wasn’t such a long time, then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all,” with just a backdrop of acoustic guitar and woodwinds in a way that makes it a fitting lockdown anthem. She draws a deep breath before singing, “You left me standing in the doorway crying under the midnight moon,” in a way that shows true apprehension, and her personal expression heightens the cover. Her take on “Standing in the Doorway,” a moody standout from Dylan’s 1997 comeback Time Out of Mind, retains the ethereal, “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” throwback vibe of Dylan’s recording but on her own terms. Tambourine Man” like masters of warhorses, the pair opted for less obvious fare, including many recordings Dylan made in the early Eighties, allowing Hynde a wider berth to fit them to her voice and character. But rather than reinterpret “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Mr. These songs reminded Hynde of the impact his music has had on her formative years, and they moved her to select some of her favorite Dylan songs and record them with the Pretenders’ lead guitarist James Walbourne as a “lockdown series” of YouTube videos. The project came together last year after Dylan surprise-released a couple of songs, “Murder Most Foul” and “I Contain Multitudes,” in the early months of lockdown. So an album like Standing in the Doorway, which collects nine Dylan cover songs, must have felt like second nature to her. She’s vouched for his born-again years, belting “Property of Jesus” on her solo tours, and she slipped his lilting secular favorite “Forever Young” into the Pretenders’ set list only a few years ago. She sang “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” with him onstage at Wembley Stadium in ’84 and serenaded him with her own jaw-dropping, gospel-tinged rendition of “I Shall Be Released” at his 30th anniversary concert in ’91. Chrissie Hynde proved the bona fides of her Bob Dylan fandom decades ago. ![]()
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