“MIDDLE OF THE ROAD”

The Pretenders

RECORDED BACK IN 1983, this classic rock and roll song sounds as fresh today as it did when it became an FM radio hit in 1984. The arrangement features a snappy, uptempo groove, bright, twangy, semi-overdriven guitars and complementary riffs. Guitarist-vocalist Chrissie Hynde (Gtr. 2) plays the song in standard tuning and provides punchy barre chord stabs, mostly in the middle-upper register, and guitarist Robbie McIntosh (Gtr. 1) plays low-register drop-D power chords on the intro and choruses and a clever, well-crafted singlenote riff during the verses (see Rhy. Fig. 1, bars 9-14), which drives the song nicely. Notice his use of notes tied over the bar lines in this figure, which create an appealing rhythmic syncopation and sense of “push” as the chords change.

When playing McIntosh’s single-note verse riff, you’ll want to momentarily mute the ringing open low D string as you finger and pick the notes on the A string, to prevent the low D note from droning below the A and G chords played by Hynde during this section.

McIntosh crafted a killer guitar solo for this song, armed with his powerfully biting, overdriven Telecaster tone, a great sense of melodic development and some slick, tasteful chops. Leading into section E, in Fill 1, the guitarist starts out playing the solo fingerstyle, with his pick tucked into his palm. This allows him to pluck notes on different strings simultaneously and achieve a razor-sharp, nonstaggered articulation.

In bar 49, McIntosh quickly retrieves and deploys his pick to play a driving, rhythmically displaced “Free Bird”-style repetition lick that he continues through bar 52. The guitarist then segues into a series of two-note chords that are

F#, based on the A Dorian mode (A, B, C, D, E, G), which nicely cap off the solo in bars 53-57. Particularly cool is the series of three-note triads beginning in bar 58, which don’t match up to those in the underlying progression played by Hynde and bassist Malcolm Foster. The result is a subtle, interesting dissonance, which adds to the song’s allure.