The roster of artists playing Encore Theater rolls on in May with two legendary musicians, Chrissie Hynde and Tom Jones, who follow Kraftwerk, Lionel Richie, and George Benson from April.
LISTEN TO PART 1 OF THE SPRING ENCORE PLAYLIST
Pretenders
May 1
Fronted by the indefatigable Chrissie Hynde (lead singer/rhythm guitarist/primary songwriter), the Pretenders have been bridging punk, new wave, and rock n’ roll since 1978. Their self-titled debut studio album, Pretenders (1980)—proclaimed by The Who’s Pete Townshend to be “like a drug”—is considered by Rolling Stone to be one of the best debut albums (#24 on Rolling Stone’s list of “100 Best Debut Albums of All Time”), as well as one of the best albums ever (#151 on Rolling Stone’s list of “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”).
Hynde—following the leads of Janis Joplin and Grace Slick; and along with such legendary rockers as Suzi Quatro, Patti Smith, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Pat Benatar, Debbie Harry, and Joan Jett—led a band that rocked hard, proving definitively that rock n’ roll was no longer a boy’s club. What’s more, Hynde refused to lean into the T&A of it all, performing in jeans and her signature shag, with copious amounts of eyeliner her only allusion to her sexuality, which despite (or perhaps because of) her disinterest, seemingly smoldered all the more.
About Hynde, Madonna told Q in 1994, “I saw her play in Central Park [in August 1980, performing with the Pretenders]. She was amazing: the only woman I’d seen in performance where I thought, yeah, she’s got balls, she’s awesome! It gave me courage, inspiration, to see a woman with that kind of confidence in a man’s world.”
The Pretenders—in their original line-up, which included Hynde, founding guitarist Pete Farndon (who was fired from the band in 1982 due to his increasing drug dependence, to which he succumbed the following year), founding guitarist James Honeyman-Scott (who died of heart failure due to cocaine intolerance two days after Farndon’s firing), and founding drummer Martin Chambers (who left the band in 1984 following the deaths of his two bandmates, but returned in 1994 and has remained with the band ever since)—were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005.
“Brass in Pocket” [Third single from the Pretenders’ debut album, Pretenders (1980)]
• The seventh music video broadcast on MTV
• The band’s first song to reach Number 1 on the UK singles chart
• Nominated for a GRAMMY Award for “Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal” (1981)
“Back on the Chain Gang” [Originally released as a single (1982), then included on The King of Comedy: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1983) and the Pretenders’ third studio album, Learning to Crawl (1984)]
• Written by Hynde as a tribute to the recent passing of her best friend, Pretenders founding member James Honeyman-Scott (guitarist, songwriter)
• The clanking and hammer-swing grunts in the chorus are allusions to Chain Gang (1962) by Sam Cooke
• Covered by Selina as “Fotos y Recuerdos” (1995), and by Morrissey (2018)
“Don’t Get Me Wrong” [Lead single from the Pretenders’ fourth studio album, Get Close (1986)]
• Hynde was inspired to write the song for her friend, John McEnroe
• Covered by Sixpence None the Richer frontwoman, Leigh Nash (2018), and by actor Hale Appleman (2019) on the musical episode of the SyFy series, The Musicians [S4, Ep10]
TOM JONES: Defy Explanation
May 14 – 17
Sir Thomas Jones Woodward OBE—he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2006, after having been made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1998—has been thrilling Las Vegas audiences since 1967 with his suave baritone, barely-buttoned shirts (his chest hair was insured by Lloyd’s of London for nearly $7 million in 2006), and pants so tight you could tell what religions he wasn’t.
Throughout his more than six-decade career, he’s received a GRAMMY Award for “Best New Artist” (1966), has had 19 Top 40 hits in the US and 36 in the UK, and has sold over 100 million records worldwide, delving into multiple musical styles and genres including country, dance, gospel, pop, R&B, show tunes, and soul.
Jones has been a coach on every series (season) of The Voice UK since its debut in 2012, except series 5 (2016).
“I (Who Have Nothing)” [Lead single from Jones’s twelfth studio album, I (Who Have Nothing) (1970)]
• English language cover—with new lyrics by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller—of the Italian song “Uno dei tanti,” originally performed by Joe Sentieri (1961) with music and lyrics by Carlo Donida and Giulio Rapetti.
• First recorded in English by Ben E. King (1963), then later that same year by Shirley Bassey, for whom the song has become a standard in her live performances
• Later covered by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway (1971), Sylvester (1979), Neil Diamond (1993), and Cynthia Erivo (2022)
“Kiss” [Single by The Art of Noise featuring Tom Jones (1988)]
• Cover of the hit single by Prince and the Revolution from their eighth studio album, Parade (1986)
• The Art of Noise reached out to Jones to record the vocals on their cover after seeing him perform a cover of “Kiss” during a televised version of his Las Vegas show
• Won an MTV Video Music Award in the category of “Breakthrough Video” (1989)
• Jones changed Prince’s lyric “Women not girls, rule my world” to “Women and girls, rule my world.”
• Appeared on the soundtracks to both My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988) and Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy(1996)
“Sex Bomb” [Fourth single from—and the only original track on—Jones’s 34th album, Reload (1999)]
• Written and produced by German DJ/Producer Mousse T
• Jones’s entry into the 1990s lounge music revival in DJ culture and nightlife [à la the remixed version of Where Is My Man by Eartha Kitt (1994), Steve and Eydie’s cover of Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun for the Lounge-A-Palooza compilation (1997), and History Repeating by Propellerheads featuring Miss Shirley Bassey (1998)]