This song is about the sexual assault committed by a biker gang against Pretenders leader Chrissie Hynde. While hanging out with a friend, she was asked to go to a "party" with some guys from a local biker gang. Her friend declined, but Hynde went along with the bikers. She takes full accountability for the attack. In her book Reckless: My Life as a Pretender, she wrote: "Now let me assure you that, technically speaking, however you want to look at it, this was all my doing and I take full responsibility. You can't f--k around with people, especially people who wear 'I heart rape' and 'On Your Knees' badges."
While she was being attacked, one of the assailants said, "Shut up or you're going to make some plastic surgeon rich!" She paraphrases that threat in the lyrics: You know what they say: "Stop snivellin', you're gonna make some plastic surgeon a rich man (thanks, Andy - Berkley, MA, for above 2)
This frantic track makes a sudden stop at the 1:22 mark before going into a wild instrumental breakdown, then ending at a hard 2:59 with a cold ending when Hynde sings, "You are that." Like most Pretenders songs, Hynde wrote "Tattooed Love Boys" on her own and worked it out with the band, doing it by feel. Without much structure, it made for some unorthodox musical moments like the false ending. She developed a kind of telepathy with her drummer, Martin Chambers, who was able to follow along. "I can understand her way of doing it," he told Sounds in 1980. "Take 'Tattooed Love Boys' where there's a gap. Normally you'd count the beat through the silence so you can all come back in together. But not with Chrissie. No count, no way. It lasts as long as she wants it to last."
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