{"id":812257,"date":"2026-07-20T13:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/812257\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T13:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:09:09","slug":"she-played-quite-loud-but-that-didnt-worry-me-former-pretenders-guitarist-remembers-playing-alongside-chrissie-hynde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/812257\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cShe played quite loud, but that didn’t worry me\u201d: Former Pretenders guitarist remembers playing alongside Chrissie Hynde"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robbie McIntosh has recounted auditioning to be a guitarist in the Pretenders<\/a>, and his experience playing alongside frontwoman Chrissie Hynde<\/a>.<\/p>\n

McIntosh joined the Pretenders in September of 1982, following the tragic death of founding member James Honeyman-Scott aged just 25 in June that year. Despite being friends with Honeyman-Scott, Mcintosh\u2019s audition was the first time he met Chrissie Hynde.<\/p>\n

As for what the audition entailed? He explains, in a new interview with Guitar World<\/a>: \u201cWe just jammed. I played for maybe 20 minutes with another guitar player, Mick Green, who I was sort of in awe of, and a bass player whose name I can\u2019t remember. Martin [Chambers] was playing drums. Chrissie and Dave Hill, the manager, sat in front of the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA few days later, I got the call from Chrissie and she said she wanted me in the band. I didn\u2019t have a clue that I\u2019d passed the audition.\u201d<\/p>\n

What followed was his first actual rehearsal alongside Hynde. \u201cI remember she played quite loud, but that didn\u2019t worry me,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI was more concerned with how I could complement her and play off what she did. I can\u2019t remember whether the first thing we did was 2000 Miles or Middle of the Road. I think it was Middle of the Road.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The latter famously featured a blistering lead guitar solo, which he says he pieced together through multiple takes in the studio.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the studio I did maybe three or four solos, all different kinds of things, and [producer] Chris Thomas said, \u2018I like that bit. We\u2019ll keep the first half.\u2019 I think I dropped in the really fast bit on its own, and I did that thing with the delay at the end of the solo. We worked on it for maybe half an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting on how his approach to the solo was different to what James Honeyman-Scott would have done, he continues: \u201cIt was a bit more aggressive and flashy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople always ask me about the picking on that solo,\u201d he says. \u201cI just used my fingers, and the pick was inside my hand. Then if I needed the pick, I\u2019d just pull it out. Chris Thomas always complimented me on the guitar playing on the album. I saw him a couple of years ago and he said the same thing. He said what a great time he had making that album. I was quite chuffed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/p>\n

Sam is the Associate News Editor for Guitar.com and MusicTech. Thoroughly immersed in music culture for the majority of his life, Sam has played guitar for 20 years, studied music technology and production at university, and also written for the likes of Guitar World, Total Guitar, Metal Hammer and MusicRadar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robbie McIntosh has recounted auditioning to be a guitarist in the Pretenders, and his experience playing alongside frontwoman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[4624,64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-812257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-artist","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}