The Pretenders
The Nashville Room was a big grotty room on the corner of Cromwell Road and North End Row in West Kensington. It was a music mecca for about five years where many bands including the Sex Pistols, The Police, U2 and Joy Division got some of their first shows. This was an early gig for The Pretenders. I hadn’t been comissioned but I was curious about the band as there had been so much buzz about them. I like this photo for its structure and light as much as for Chrissie’s pose. The photo was recently published again by a US magazine accompanied by Chrissie’s memories. Although she could no longer remember where her Gibson SG guitar had vanished to, she recalled that she was wearing her plastic Fiorucci trousers that night. Sadly the two guitarists in the photo Pete Farndon and guitarist James Honeyman-Scott died from drug overdoses a few years after The Pretenders 1979 debut hit single ‘Stop Your Sobbing’.
