![]() You're not supposed to, and probably you don't have much confidence, and you do think you're a little piece of shit or else you wouldn't have gotten a rock band together in the first place. You're not supposed to go on stage and say, "I'm small and I have no confidence and think I'm a shit." Because you just can't do that on stage. The tradition of is that you're supposed to be kind of cocky and sure of yourself. So you say, 'That guy has a lot of bottle. In England, to say somebody has a lot of ass they have a lot of funk. The way Cockney rhyming slang works is the word you're really saying rhymes with the second word. Hynde got the idea for the song's title when, during an after-show dinner, she overheard someone enquiring if anyone had "Picked up dry cleaning? Any brass in pocket?" Of the song's reference to "bottle," Hynde explained, "Bottle is Cockney rhyming slang. ![]() Musically, Hynde described the song as "trying to be a Motown song, but it didn't quite get it." Hynde then recorded the part with a tape recorder and wrote the song's lyric. With that in mind, it’s probably just as well its author’s stance towards it has softened in more recent years."Brass in Pocket" originated as a guitar line that James Honeyman-Scott played for Chrissie Hynde. Now hailed as one of the best Pretenders songs, its stratospheric success rapidly changed the game for the group, as it provided the springboard for their self-titled debut album to top the UK charts for four consecutive weeks and to penetrate the heart of the Billboard 200 in the US, where it landed in the Top 10 on its way to going platinum.Ī veritable string of classic Chrissie Hynde-penned hits have since ensured Pretenders’ place among the best rock bands of all time, but while the group now have an enviable catalogue to pull setlists from, their fans will always want to hear them perform Brass In Pocket. Not only did the song become the first new UK No.1 of the 80s, it went to No.2 in Australia and also cracked the US Top 20. Released as a single in November 1979, Brass In Pocket’s commercial performance soon bore this out. Ultimately, though, the song’s enigma factor worked in its favour, and when Hynde’s sensual vocal delivery aligned to perfection with Honeyman-Scott’s chiming guitars and the supplest of grooves, Pretenders had a classic pop song which – as its kiss-off line would have it – was simply “special, so special”. Superficially, much of Brass In Pocket’s lyric was equally arcane, with Hynde throwing in obscure references to everything from Cockney rhyming slang (“got bottle”) to a style of driving with the window down, in the line “Detroit leaning”. If I’d imagined it was going to be such a hit, I might have been a little less abstract.” “We had dinner afterwards and one of their guys leaned across the table and said to another, ‘Did you take my trousers to the dry cleaners? Was there any brass in the pocket?’ It was a turn of phrase that describes someone who is doing alright, financially. “We supported a band on our label called Strangeways, on tour in the north of England,” Hynde wrote in the sleevenotes for Pretenders’ Pirate Radio box set. However, even if they caught the phrase “brass in pocket”, many casual listeners wouldn’t necessarily have understood what Hynde was singing about. Rather than rely on a traditional chorus, Honeyman-Scott’s guitar figure provided the song’s hook, and, unlike with most hit records, its title only featured once in the lyric. I wish I’d done it more.” “If I’d imagined it was going to be a hit, I might have been less abstract”įrom a songwriter’s point of view, Brass In Pocket eschewed the accepted rules in terms of structure. ![]() “I just happened to have a little tape recorder, and I taped it. Honeyman-Scott had devised the opening guitar riff: “He was playing that in the studio and I thought, Wow, that’s awesome,” Hynde recalled. It sprang from a collaboration with the band’s original lead guitarist, James Honeyman-Scott, who passed away from a drug overdose in June 1982. Unlike most of the songs gracing Pretenders’ marvellous self-titled debut album, Brass In Pocket wasn’t written solely by Hynde.
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