Concert Review: The Pretenders, Saturday, February 21, at the Ameristar
Scott Spychalski Click on photo for slide show.
Dressed in a long black coat with tails, a bright purple belt and some muted purple boots no doubt made of Chinese plastic, Chrissie Hynde hit the stage at Ameristar with all the swagger that made her so dangerous and special 30 years ago. Not that age hasn't tempered her assault a little, with both humor and humility.
After a beautiful rendition of "Kid," from the first Pretenders album, she asked a man in the front row who was on his cell phone, "Who are you talking to?"
Then she took it from him and asked the caller, "How come you couldn't make it?"
"He hung up," she reported, adding, "I seem to have that effect on men."
After "Don't Get Me Wrong" and immediately before "Brass In Pocket," she joked that everywhere she turned men were rushing to help her--referring to guitar techs, her male bandmates and fans. She quickly added, "That only happens here. Believe me, even my dog doesn't listen to me at home."
But everyone was indeed listening in the 9/10ths full Ameristar Pavilion. Her voice was as beautiful as ever--the wordless vocal bridge in "Back on the Chain Gang" bringing applause and no doubt a few tears, as it followed those heartbreaking lines presumably about the death of original guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, "They'll fall to ruin one day, for making us part."
Hynde also danced, showing off that "Brass in Pocket" sidestep, and pushed her excellent lead guitarist, James Walbourne to one frenetic height after another. The band was solid and exciting, with bassist Nick Wilkinson providing propulsive bass lines to do the late Pete Farndon proud and steel guitarist/second guitarist Eric Heywood (of both Son Volt and Alejandro Escovedo fame) offering plaintive counterpoints to Walbourne's hot licks.
And then, of course, there was the only other surviving original Pretender, Martin Chambers, serving up his drum parts with power and precision. It was heartening to see how all of these band members smiled and joked around with one another, as if they were having the time of their lives. And when Hynde called Chambers, "the greatest drummer in the world," Chambers replied by thanking her. It felt like two friends expressing real love.
The show was a fast and furious road trip not only through Pretenders history but through the annals of rock, with the Bo Diddley beat of "Cuban Slide" and "Break Up the Concrete" counterbalanced by the delicate country balladry of "The Last Ride" which was then followed by the swamp boogie of "Rosalee" and the country blues of "Tequila." All of this before the show ended with some of the hardest rocking songs ever to come out of either the Pretenders or the punk/new wave era--"The Wait," "Precious," "Tattooed Love Boys" and "Up the Neck," back-to-back-to-back as encores.
During the encores, Hynde invited a man from the front row up on stage. It looked like it was either that or security might take him away. Earlier in the show, he'd taken off his shirt and thrown it to Hynde, so at this point he was wearing some kind of tie-dyed overalls, shirtless, and looking a little unsteady on his feet. She told him to sit by the drum kit and shouted "I scored" (implying he was her conquest) before launching into "Tattooed Love Boys."
And she did score, as did that fan getting to sit on stage through the hard-hitting finale, as did the rest of the audience, who Chrissie Hynde certainly made see, there's nobody else quite like her. If anything, that's a more powerful statement at 57 than it ever could have been three decades ago.
Scott Spychalski Click on photo for slide show.
-- Danny Alexander
set list
"Boots of Chinese Plastic"
"Don't Cut Your Hair"
"Kid"
"Message of Love"
"Love's a Mystery"
"The Nothing Maker"
"The Last Ride"
"Back on the Chain Gang"
"Rosalee"
"Tequila"
"Stop Your Sobbing"
"Talk of the Town"
"Day After Day"
"Don't Get Me Wrong"
"Brass in Pocket"
"Cuban Slide"
"Thumbelina"
"Break Up the Concrete"
encore 1
"The Wait"
"Precious"
encore 2
"Tattooed Love Boys"
"Up the Neck"
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