Pretenders – "Up the Neck" (1980)

 

I remember the way he groaned

And moved with an animal skill

I rubbed my face in the sweat

That ran down his chest

It was all very run of the mill

Several of the artists whose records were chosen for the inaugural class of the 2 OR 3 LINES “SILVER DECADE” HALL OF FAME wrote so many great songs that it was difficult for me to choose just one.

That is true – in spades – of Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders.  And since there’s no rule saying that I can only choose one of her songs for that hall of fame, I’m choosing three.

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I’ve been listening to the Pretenders’ first two albums for 40 years, and they are just as powerful today as they were when they were brand new.  Not every song on those albums is great, but enough of them are to put them head and shoulders above nearly every other album from that era.

The Pretenders' eponymous debut album

Of all the great rock songwriters of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, I think Chrissie Hynde is the one I would pick as most likely to have succeeded as an author of fiction or screenwriter.

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You could say Ms. Hynde’s best songs are about couples, but it’s probably more accurate to say they are about couplings.  

The intersections between men and women that she writes about rarely end well – usually because the man is a disappointment in some way.  Hynde can be quite scornful of the males in her songs – she is a master (mistress?) of cutting vain men down to size.

Her description of the male-in-heat in “Up the Neck” – let’s be honest: when is the typical male not in heat? – deftly captures the contrast between how a man in the throes of passion appears to himself and how he appears to his female partner:

I remember the way he groaned

And moved with an animal skill

I rubbed my face in the sweat

That ran down his chest

It was all very run of the mill

The post-coital tristesse that is typically experienced by couples is depicted in very concrete terms in these lines from “Up the Neck”:

Something was sticky

On your shag rug

If that image isn’t enough to burst anyone’s romantic bubble, I don’t know what is.

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While the male in “Up the Neck” may be deserving of scorn, the singer’s not disappointed in him so much as she’s disappointed by the way things turned out.

She acknowledges that she wasn’t entirely in her right mind when she and her partner came together:

Anger and lust

My senses running amok

Bewildered and deluded

Have I been hit by a truck?

When they first kissed, she had a feeling of innocent bliss comparable to “the time in the womb.”  

But the morning after was a different story.  She “woke up with a headache that split [her] skull,” and “alone in the room.”

It’s sad that things turned out that way because she went into things with the best of intentions – and to be fair to the man, so did he.  But good intentions usually aren’t enough:

I was sure his intentions were sweet

And that mine was as well

But a wish is a shot in the dark

When your coin's down the well

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Click here to watch a live performance of “Up the Neck” from March 1980 – just a few months after the song was released on the Pretenders’ eponymous debut album, which the noted novelist Michael Chabon has called “one of the most astonishing debut albums in the history of music.”  (You can say that again.)

I’ve watched this video several dozen times.  Chrissie Hynde is utterly compelling in it – she has me in the palm of her hand from the beginning to the end.  I have never seen a rock performer who is more naturally charismatic.

Chrissie Hynde in 1980

Actually, I’m not sure “performer” is the correct term for Hynde.  She’s not “performing” in the usual sense of the word.  No one is better than Mick Jagger, but you never forget that he’s performing.  By contrast, Chrissie Hynde doesn’t appear to have planned or rehearsed what she does on stage – she just comes out and is herself.

That may be an incredibly naive statement, but I’m sticking with it.  Whatever it is that makes Chrissie Hynde what she is, I think it’s something that comes wholly from within.  

Do me a favor.  Start watching that “Up the Neck” video at the five-minute mark – which is the beginning of a long instrumental break that leads up to the big finish of the song.  Watch Hynde pace back and forth behind guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Famdon as they do their thing – she doesn’t engage in any kind of histrionics that takes attention away from them or drummer Martin Chambers.  

(Sadly, Honeyman-Scott died in 1982, and Famdon died in 1983 – both deaths were drug-related.) 

At 5:55, she takes a step toward her microphone, turns to the right until her back is to the crowd, and then does a three-quarter turn to the left so her body is perpendicular to her audience when she ends the instrumental break by singing – moaning? – “ooooohhhhh, oohh, oohh, ooooohhhhh.”  (Whoever edited the video cut in the middle of her move – I wish I could see the raw footage without that edit.)

That seems to have spurred the group to shift into a higher gear for thirty seconds or some before ending the song – and the concert.  (I’m assuming that “Up the Neck” was their encore.  If so, it was certainly a good choice.)

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Click here to hear the studio version of “Up the Neck.”

Click below to buy that record from Amazon: