Saturday, February 25, 2017

Musical Interlude: Back on the Chain Gang (1982)

Originally written for the soundtrack to the Jerry Lewis-Robert DeNiro movie, "The King of Comedy", in 1982, the Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang" was reissued as a track on the group's album, "Learning to Crawl", the next year, and the following video gained heavy airplay on MTV.



Vocalist Chrissie Hynde originally wrote "Chain Gang" as a reflection on her relationship with Kinks frontman Ray Davies, with whom she had a daughter. But when band-mate James Honeyman-Scott passed away earlier in 1982 from a drug overdose, Hynde changed the focus of the song as a remembrance of a fallen friend.

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