Pretenders – Brass In Pocket

“Brass in Pocket” – Single by The Pretenders from the album Pretenders.
Released November 1979
Charted No.1 in UK and No.14

Released as the third single from their self-titled debut album. It was written by Chrissie Hynde and James Honeyman-Scott, and produced by Chris Thomas.

“Brass in Pocket” became the band’s biggest hit to that point, reaching number one in the UK and number 14 in the US. Its music video was the seventh video aired on MTV on its launch on 1 August 1981.

In the video for the song, Hynde plays a lonely waitress in a backstreet cafe. The rest of the band arrives in a large pink American car driven by Pete Farndon. The three men peruse the menus but are soon joined by their female partners. All six then leave the restaurant. Hynde commented on the ending of the video, “The ‘Brass in Pocket’ video got hijacked by the director, because the idea of that was that these guys were going to break in on motorcycles and I was going to get on the back and ride out of there. And he had different ideas, and he left me in there crying. That wasn’t my script.”

The video was filmed in the North Kensington area (north of Notting Hill district and south of Kensal Green area). The cafe’s location was at the intersection of Middle Row and Southern Row, but the cafe has since been replaced with a four-story residential building (50 Middle Row).

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Pretenders - Brass In Pocket

Pretenders - Brass In Pocket (Official Music Video)03:02

It was their first big success, scoring number one on the UK Singles Chart for two weeks in January 1980 (making it the first new number-one single of the 1980s), number two in Australia during May 1980 (for three weeks), and number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States. It was listed at No. 389 on Rolling Stone’s “Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time” in 2021.

There is a lot of British slang in the lyrics:

“Got Bottle” – Have courage.

“Skank” – Move your body side to side.

“Reet” – Righteous.

“Brass” – a Northern English expression for money, harking back to the days when non-silver coins, or “coppers” were worth something.

Lead singer Chrissie Hynde grew up in Akron, Ohio and was a student at Kent State University in 1970 when four students were killed by members of the US National Guard. She left for England in 1973, where she formed the group with three guys from Hereford.

The Pretenders was formed in 1978 by vocalist and guitarist Chrissie Hynde (b. September 7, 1951, Akron, Ohio, U.S.), bassist Pete Farndon (b. June 12, 1952, Hereford, Herefordshire, England—d. April 14, 1983, London), guitarist James Honeyman-Scott (b. November 4, 1956, Hereford—d. June 16, 1982, London), and drummer Martin Chambers (b. September 4, 1951, Hereford).

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