August 21-22, 2010

Present tenseChrissie Hynde still rocks, writes a slightly chastened

Jane Cornwell ahead of the Pretenders tour

Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders . . . the band evolved after two members died

IN 1982, on their first visit to Australia,the Pretenders dropped by the SevenNetwork music show Sounds andgoofed around on the studio couch.Cocky 20-somethings, with the world

at their feet, they fielded questions withyouthful insouciance: yes, they had emergedout of London’s punk and new wave scenefour years previously. No, their peers weren’tjealous of their meteoric success. Yes, leadsinger Chrissie Hynde had left the USbecause she didn’t like it. No, they hadn’tseen any Australian bands yet. Or rather,Hynde hadn’t.

‘‘I don’t like to go out to clubs oranything,’’ she said in her midwesternaccent, kohl-rimmed eyes defiant under herlong choppy fringe. ‘‘I like to stay in my roomand drink hot chocolate and watch latemovies.’’

Hynde’s cohorts — guitarist JamesHoneyman-Scott, bassist Pete Farndon,drummer Martin Chambers — bunched upnext to her as she spoke, ribbing their dark-haired frontwoman and sending up Soundspresenter Donnie Sutherland.

Fresh-faced but worldly, cool but wrylyamused, the offstage Hynde seemed muchthe same as the rock chick who sang Brass inPocket, Stop Your Sobbing and other hits frombehind her Fender Telecaster, the focal pointof a band whose chemistry was palpable.Archive footage of the interview, recentlyposted on YouTube, has an unintentionalpoignancy: a little more than a year later,Farndon and Honeyman-Scott were dead.

‘‘Don’t remember. That’s like, what, 28years ago?’’ Hynde snorts derisively andtakes a tentative slurp of the coffee she’sbeen given here in her publicist’s office in StJohn’s Wood, northwest London. ‘‘Urgh.’’She pulls a face. ‘‘That’s really f. . kinghorrible. Anyway, I just can’t take any moreof this looking back,’’ she says. ‘‘Know whatI mean? Enough!’’

Things have not started well. Havingrejected my handshake in favour of a fistbump, having then spent a few minutessending texts on her mobile and ignoring mecompletely, Hynde sits back on a sofa in herskinny jeans and tight black top and stares atme resignedly, the jaunty daisy pattern onher canvas hi-top trainers at odds with themood in the room.

At 59 she’s as whippet-thin as she was inthe early 1970s. That’s when she arrived inLondon looking for a vehicle for hertremulous velveteen voice and played inearly versions of the Clash and the Damnedbefore co-founding the Pretenders.

She hated doing press back then. Shehates doing it now.

‘‘I can’t keep talking about the past,’’ shereiterates with a scowl. ‘‘All that ‘he saidthis’ and ‘I read you said that’. I don’tremember saying any of it. I have a newband, a proper collaboration with a verygifted guy called J. P. Jones, and that is whatI am excited about.

‘‘So I’ll have someone else to dointerviews with, so I won’t have to do thisany more.’’

The drug-related deaths of the band’sguitarist and bassist (Hynde had sacked herex-lover Farndon for his drug use two daysbefore Honeyman-Scott overdosed) onlytemporarily derailed the Pretenders. Hyndeeventually put the group back together,firing off riffs through a succession of line-ups, the sole original member until Cham-bers rejoined in the mid-1990s.

With her electric guitar, Cleopatra eyesand shaggy dolly cut — the trademark fringethat is part fashion statement, part camou-flage — Hynde was the antithesis of, say,Debbie Harry of Blondie, another post-punkgirl singer who’d emerged in front of a bandin the late 70s.

Harry was blonde, wore a dress and didn’tplay any instruments. She left all thesongwriting to her boyfriend, Chris Stein,whose band it was in the first place. Hyndehired and fired and clearly wore the pants.She was the main songwriter of stylish, hook-laden numbers, including Back on the ChainGang, Middle of the Road and Message of Love,controlling the sound to the extent that thePretenders always felt a bit like a soloproject. It’s a suggestion that has alwaysriled. ‘‘I’m a real band person,’’ she sayswearily. ‘‘I like the chemistry. I’m nothingwithout a band.’’ Unlike Harry, who re-formed Blondie with Stein in 1997 after the

group split in 1982, Hynde, a mother of two,has never been away.

In a few months Blondie and the Pre-tenders will be co-headlining an Australiantour of inner-city theatres and countrysidewineries, a couple of which Hynde and coplayed when they last toured Australia threeyears ago (‘‘Some of our favourite shows ofall time,’’ states Hynde on the press release).It’s a remarkable double bill: as different asthey are, Hynde and Harry are much-admired pop culture fixtures. Their bandshave transcended their punk origins tobecome staples of mainstream rock radio;both have been inducted into the Rock andRoll Hall of Fame, the Pretenders in 2005and Blondie in 2006.

‘‘Don’t know her,’’ says Hynde, shrug-ging, of Harry, 65 ‘‘I’ve bumped into her acouple of times over the years but that’s it.’’So what is her favourite Blondie song?‘‘Don’t have one.’’ OK, but what if she had to

have one? ‘‘Well, I don’t have to.’’ Hynde isalmost sneering. ‘‘All right, that Union one,’’she offers, relenting slightly. ‘‘What’s itcalled? Union City Blues.’’

Given that Hynde is here to talk about thetour and, by extension, the Pretenders, herattitude seems less rock ’n’ roll than rude.Later, after I start rolling my eyes back at her,she’ll soften and apologise and tell me she’shaving a bad day; that last night she got sodrunk with old friends in Chelsea that sheleft her car on the street outside their home,and that when she went to retrieve it thismorning she discovered it had been towedaway. Later still she’ll suggest we go andgrab a pizza. The next day she’ll text me tosay she’s bought me a book. Right now,however, my presence irritates her.

‘‘Can’t we talk about something interest-ing?’’ she says, jerking an arm in annoyanceand spilling her coffee all over the floor.‘‘Oh, you know what? NEVER MIND,’’ shegrowls, jumping up in a tangle of limbs. I tellher how much I enjoyed watching the newDVD Live in London, which captures thePretenders in fiery form at the Shepherd’sBush Empire last year. How I love the wayher voice still sounds edgy and almostapologetically commercial. How she stillrocks so hard that her mascara runs in riversdown her cheeks. How she has clearly blazeda trail for a host of female rockers fromAlanis Morissette to Shirley Manson to KarenO from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Hynde is grimacing, curling into herself.You’re making a face, I say. ‘‘Please don’tsay anything about women,’’ she says. ‘‘I’mnot a pioneer. I haven’t done anythingdifferent. Maybe I can be a pioneer one daywith my vegan restaurants, because that’swhy I do this.’’ She squares her narrowshoulders. Does what? ‘‘This. The music. I dothe music to end the killing.’’

The younger of two children born to apart-time secretary and an ex-Marine insteak-eating Akron, Ohio — the ‘‘rubbercapital of the world’’ in a state long relianton manufacturing — Hynde has been avegetarian since she was 17. ‘‘That’s wheneverything changed,’’ she once said. ‘‘Then Iknew I wasn’t going to be like everyone else.I was going to live by my principles.’’

Those principles are fierce and oftenwildly contradictory, many of them formedduring her time as an art student at KentState University, where she dabbled in hippiecounterculture and Eastern mysticism (shestill subscribes to Vaishnavism, a Hindu sect)and was present when the National Guardfired on anti-Vietnam protesters in May1970, killing someone she knew. Today,however, she bangs on at length about thearrogant naivety of the 60s and 70s, giventhat all that fighting against repression hasresulted in a society where pornography iseverywhere, disrespect is rife and the planetis hurtling towards annihilation faster thanyou can say ‘‘I’ll stand by you’’.

At the top of her list are animal rights andenvironmentalism, the two causes aroundwhich her life revolves. ‘‘I divide the worldinto meat-eaters and non-meat eaters,’’ shesays. She tries to avoid atheists, too, findingthem boring and unedifying (her take onspirituality is complex), though she doesn’tseem to want them dead like she does meat-eaters: ‘‘They [meat-eaters] have destroyedthe planet and committed a criminal offenceagainst God. So this is war.’’

I tell her that I’m vegetarian (but not that Isometimes lapse), and shuffle my leather

08 COVER STORY