The summer of 1982 was a difficult time for the Pretenders. In June, guitarist James Honeyman-Scott died of cocaine-induced heart failure, just two days after the band fired bassist Pete Farndon for his erratic drug-fueled behavior, which led to Farndon's death the following year. Of the original foursome, only bandleader Chrissie Hynde and drummer Martin Chambers remained.
Determined to keep going with recording plans, the Pretenders tapped Rockpile guitarist Billy Bremner and bassist Tony Butler for a pair of bittersweet songs that would be released as a single and B-side that fall, and later included on the band's third album, 1984's Learning to Crawl.
Back on the Chain Gang and My City Was Gone became two of the band's biggest hits, but they also contain two of the band's most memorable basslines.
“I had worked with producer Chris Tucker on Pete Townshend's solo albums,” said Butler in the September 2014 issue of Bass Player. “I believe it was Chris who called me to come down and play with the Pretenders. I was a huge fan, and Chrissie was everybody's dream.”
While My City Was Gone formed out of a studio jam, Back on the Chain Gang was worked out over a day or two of rehearsal.
After eight bars of guitar vamp (note that the first strum falls on beat two), the band enters with a slide-guitar melody, the first of the song's many hooks. Butler outlines the verse chords with a simple rhythmic arpeggio line.
Groove-inclined players may have to curb the urge to cut off each bar's downbeat note on beat two; rather than locking with the snare drum, Butler's lilting phrasing glues together the more rhythmically energetic guitar and drums.
“When it drops it doesn't stop. It swings right across for a slightly different flavor. It's almost like a waltz over rock & roll.”
Mid-phrase, Butler inserts his own subtle subhook as the chords change from A to Em: an octave slide down from E on the A string to open E.
“That's pure Chris Squire. I bumped into some very cool people playing bass, and he used to do that kind of thing all the time.”
An eighth-note lick at 00:49 heralds the chorus, where the bassline has its own internal call-and-response in each two bar phrase. The descending eighth-note lines on the back half of the first bar are repeatedly answered by an upward sliding lick at the end of the second bar. The second chorus, which is longer, simplifies this idea rather than overdoing it.
As the reiterated slide guitar lick at 01:49 gives way to the minor modulation in the bridge at 02:05, watch for the rest on beat one and the offbeat half-note rhythms that follow. An octave slide from D to D, and it's off to the bridge.
Lyrically, the bridge marks the song's bitter climax, which the bassline supports by setting aside the verse's melodic arpeggios in favour of ominous-sounding octaves, punctuated by more Squire-inspired slides.
Most songs build up tension all the way to the end, but with the final verse modulation up to E major, Back on the Chain Gang has a simpler bassline accompanying a more basic chord progression.
The I-V-IIm-IV progression gives the first two verses a slightly pensive sound, but the bridge's minor-key catharsis gives way to verse three's more cheerful I-V-IV-V pattern, like the contentment or calm you might feel after a good cry.
Butler put it a bit differently: “Usually everything's building up all the way to the big finish. But with this song it's not a mega-ejaculation, it's a minor one.”
By the time those tracks were burning up the charts, Butler had started what would become a decades-long membership in Scottish rock band Big Country.
In addition to playing bass, Butler helped out with the ‘Hoo! Hah!’ background vocals during each chorus, which reference the work chant heard throughout Sam Cooke's 1960 single Chain Gang.
“Chrissie was asking all us males to do the hoo-hahs and other manly noises, but she was getting fed up with the lack of gusto in our performance. So she came into the studio, stood in front of us, and bent over, so we were staring at her backside. Then the noises got much more enthusiastic!”
Butler constantly reminds his students of the importance of practicing, but when it comes to creating memorable basslines, he says, "It's all about movement. Some of my best basslines have come from me looking at a woman dancing.”
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