The last word of that bridge leads to a key change for the final verse, Hynde’s voice now palpably displaying the ache as she directly addresses the loss she feels: “I found a picture of you/Those were the happiest days of my life/Like a break in the battle was your part/In the wretched life of a lonely heart.” The memory ends, and she’s once again “back on the train/Back on the chain gang.” In the second verse, Hynde suggests that unnecessary ephemera like “The phone, the TV, and the news of the world” became an unstoppable, malignant force: “Got in the house like a pigeon from hell/Threw sand in our eyes and descended like flies.” In the bridge, she curses unnamed antagonists, all while looking forward to their comeuppance: “But I’ll die as a I stand here today/Knowing that deep in my heart/They’ll fall to ruin one day/For making us part.” “That was a song I was writing and I had shown Jimmy Scott some of the chords, and I was working on this song which he liked, and then he died, and it turned into more of a tribute to him,” Hynde explained. Hynde told interviewer Paul Zollo that she altered the content of the song, which was originally inspired by her relationship with Kinks’ frontman Ray Davies, in the wake of the sudden tragedy that befell the band. From extreme adversity, “Back In The Chain Gang,” the song which would become the band’s biggest hit single, was born. But Hynde had begun writing a song which seemed to hold of lot of promise. (Farndon would succumb to a drug-related death the next year.) The band was down to two members, lead singer and songwriter Chrissie Hynde and drummer Martin Chambers. Just days after that incident, guitarist James Honeyman-Scott died of a drug overdose. In June, the band fired bassist Pete Farndon because of his drug use. In the summer of 1982, The Pretenders, just two albums into an already-impressive career, were crumbling.
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