In the crammed-to-the-gills Woodsies tent, Rick Astley has just finished his Smiths set, where he’s joined by Blossoms to interpret the Morrissey and Marr songbook with sincerity and panache. Now over at The Park stage, The Pretenders are playing the 7.45pm slot, and ex-member Johnny Marr is on stage with them playing 1982 hit Back On The Chain Gang, a song that has also been covered by Morrissey. Such is the circle of life.
“Glastonbury,” muses lead Pretender Chrissie Hynde. “How many memories? How many past loves? How many past lives?” After sterling recent material – opener Losing My Sense Of Taste doesn’t come out until September – she starts to reflect on some of them , and the digging into an incomparable catalogue begins.
Hynde gives a shout out to late founder members James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon before playing 1979’s debut single Kid, while 1983’s Thumbelina is a rockabilly thumper with some lightning guitar work from the bequiffed and prodigiously talented James Walbourne.
Hynde’s unique vibrato is still a thing of wonder: Hymn To Her is beautiful, as is Don’t Get Me Wrong, whose flood of emotion is enhanced by the guesting Marr’s restrained, florid, rhythmic guitar work which always, it seemed, owed a debt to early Pretenders. One song later and Chrissie is joshingly saying there’s a drunk backstage demanding to play: out comes Dave Grohl to play drums really fast to Tattooed Love Boys. A supergroup is forming live before our eyes. The last song is Mystery Achievement, a 1979 song that sounds freshly written, which features the line, “I love pretending.”
So do we. At the very end, none other than Paul McCartney (more of him tomorrow, surely?) comes back onstage with a beaming Chrissie and treats us to Thumbs Aloft. Tonight The Pretenders deserved exactly that, and more.
Our Friday Glastonbury 2023 reviews: the Arctic Monkeys is here. Foo Fighters is here. And our review of Friday at Glastonbury: Sparks, The Hives, Alabaster DePlume and Mozart Estate is here.
Our Saturday Glastonbury 2023 reviews: Lana Del Rey is here. Guns N' Roses is here. Generation Sex is here.
Join us back here tomorrow for all the action from Sunday, including Elton John and much more.
And catch up with our expedition to the wilder corners of Glastonbury on Thursday here.
Photo: Anna Barclay