I Am Chrissie Hynde...
Chrissie Hynde is the frontwoman of The Pretenders, who formed more that thirty years ago, and are still playing to packed out audiences today. Their latest double album Best Of/Break Up The Concrete features 22 Pretenders classics, plus a whole new collection of songs, which they’ll be showcasing at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire on 15th July.
Chrissie joined Q Radio’s Danielle Perry to talk bandmates, growing up in Ohio and her love for Rock & Roll.
Q: You came over to London when you were just 22, can you describe what London was like then?
Chrissie: I was from a pretty normal family; I wouldn’t say affluent, just very average. I’d never been on a train and I’d certainly never been on an underground. Suburban life is very isolating, and then to come here… I didn’t have any money - I got a job the day I got here! I walked up to Bayswater Road after I asked the cab to take me to a hotel and found a guy who was selling handbags and said, “Can I work for you?”
I was in a house-share in Clapham eventually. You had to put a shilling in the meter for a bath; I loved how basic it was. I think that American society was already getting too comfortable, the over consumption was starting to creep in and to me that didn’t feel right. I knew I didn’t want to get a job, that wasn’t for me. So I bailed when I was 22; it didn’t seem that young at the time [but] I thought time was running out.
Q: Who were you hanging out with in London at that time?
Chrissie: When I first got here I didn’t know anyone. So when you don’t know anybody, someone you meet at a bus stop can become your best friend very quickly. Then I went to a party, quite a few months after I got here - I didn’t know anyone there - and I started talking and a little voice in the corner said, “Oh I know Iggy Pop”. I thought everybody was going to be in to Iggy and the Stooges and all that, but they weren’t when I got here.
Anyway, this guy ended up being a writer, Nick Kent, and actually I’d cut his article out and put it on my wall with the picture of Iggy before I left. It was one of my incentives to leave because I thought everyone must love Iggy Pop in England. I wasn’t a journalist, I was just opinionated and someone offered me a job there for a little while.
Q: Do you think that music journalists need to be a bit more opinionated now? Do you think everyone’s a bit safe?
Chrissie: I think England has still got the edge certainly on America. American rock writing for the most part I find it really glib and very banal; at least here they have a go. As long as we have Viz magazine here I think that will always keep the standards up where they should be.
Q: Did you find it hard making bands?
Chrissie: When you’re getting a band together, you try your best to get some songs together. I wrote with Mick before he got in the Clash, I was doing something with the guys before they became the Damned [and] I was doing something with some of the guys that went on to become the Johnny Moped Band. But the thing is, when you’re doing it, you’re really putting your everything into it but in your heart you know it’s not the one. I guess it’s like meeting a guy, you might spend some time with him but he’s not…
Q: Did song writing come easily between you all?
Chrissie: Well, I brought the songs to it and Jimmy, as soon as he played on some demos I knew something was happening there. Pete really wanted it and we had a vibe going, but when Martin came down I was laughing so hard as soon as I heard Martin play because I’d been waiting for years for this.
Q: That must have been the most inspiring moment for you after all that time just trying to find the right person.
Chrissie: It was pretty satisfying yeah.
Q: If we can touch on the really sad subject that two of the members of the band are no longer with us, what are your thoughts on death now, and drugs?
Chrissie: Well it’s the one thing that we know is going to happen to us, so it’s fine with me, I’m ready to go. But I don’t think they were ready to go sadly enough. Jimmy was 25, and I think Pete was 26, 27. Drugs, overdoses, that’s always a possibility. I think particularly Jimmy wasn’t thinking like that, because he wasn’t shooting smack or anything. It was just a cocktail of stuff and he already wasn’t the healthiest guy. But that’s always the possibility when people are taking a lot of drugs; that happens a lot, I’ve buried a lot of guys along the way.
Q: How did you deal with it at the time?
Chrissie: Well we only had two albums, we’d been touring non-stop so actually we were pretty burned out. Actually we fired Pete, because the drugs were really getting in the way at this point. We had a band meeting and the guys said they couldn’t keep working with him, and then Jimmy died two days later; that was totally unexpected. But at the time I was pregnant for the first time and I didn’t really have too much experience with children; I’d never even held a baby so I was kind of preoccupied.
Q: What’s it like being a woman in quite a male dominated society, in the world of rock and touring and life in music?
Chrissie: I like guys. I like the way they work; they don’t talk about their emotional lives. I’ve never been in a situation where a guy walks in and dumps his, “oh she didn’t call me last night,” it never goes there. Guys are much more focused on getting the job done and playing, and they seem to be better players.
Q: You think so?
Chrissie: In my experience, definitely. How many great female guitar players do you know? Then I get some angry feminists over the years will say, “well we weren’t encouraged,” but my reply to that is, “I don’t think Jeff Beck’s mother was saying, “Geoffrey are you rehearsing?” If you want to do something, the only person who’s going to stop you is yourself.
Q: Were your parents artistic at all?
Chrissie: If they were, they wouldn’t have had a chance because my dad had been a marine; my mother was a secretary, so it wasn’t that kind of opportunities then. They bought me a baritone ukulele for Easter, so that’s what got me started, but encourage me to get in to a rock band? No. I had to go far away to do my thing because that wasn’t in the plan.
Q: Where did you start your ideas about being vegetarian and opening your restaurant and being passionate about animal rights?
Chrissie: That started when I was a child, probably about three. I think people are born with that; people have it or they don’t. My parents always had a house on the edge of the new housing development where every fourth house is the same. They would buy the newest house that was on there because you couldn’t have anything used of course, or old. There would always be the virgin woods behind us and that’s where I spent my childhood, swinging on grape vines and playing through the gullies, and I think that’s really where it started for me.
Q: What do you think about the way it’s changed since then to now?
Chrissie: All my friends are vegetarian and I don’t associate with meat eaters if I can avoid it, obviously you can’t avoid it. I don’t understand paying factory farms, slaughter houses - I don’t understand supporting these industries that are devastating the animal kingdom. I have to pass on it because I don’t get it - maybe I’m the odd one out - but to me it’s everyone else that looks weird.
Q: How has being a mother changed you?
Chrissie: Well it was a lot of fun and you learn a lot.
Q: What have you learnt?
Chrissie: How to change a nappy. You certainly find out your level of patience, and I was surprised really because I had a lot more patience than I ever would have credited myself with. I took to it really well, I always put my kids first, I always had a lot of fun with them. They were polite; I don’t know if they still are but they certainly were as children! Now I’ve just got two great friends which is a miracle for me because when I grew up the relationship that you had with the older generation was you couldn’t get too close to them. It was a great time in my life.
The girls have grown up; they’re on their own now so I’m kind of back to where I started really, touring. Other women my age, when their kids grow up, they seem to be at a loose end, they don’t know what to do with themselves. But for me it was great, I could get straight back on the tour bus.
Q: Are you excited about being back on the road? Do you feel at home on the road?
Chrissie: Yeah, I probably feel the most at home on the road. Yeah, well, you don’t really want to go and see a band and have them play a bunch of new songs that you’ve never heard. If I saw David Bowie I’m hoping that he’s going to play Changes, if he came out and said, “we’re not doing any old material,” I’d be disappointed, of course I would be.
Q: That’s true. Talking about your home town, it was in Ohio wasn’t it?
Chrissie: Akron, Ohio.
Q: You didn’t really enjoy school but you went to lots of gigs, what was the one gig that you remember from that time in your life?
Chrissie: I went to tons of gigs, I saw the Rolling Stones with Brian Jones, I can remember what they were wearing. I saw Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and they had a punch up which was really exciting. So we stayed for the second show and he had the same punch up with the band and I thought, wow! Show business! I saw Jackie Wilson, the Beach Boys, Alice Cooper. All I did was go out, but that’s what anyone did. I don’t know about the people that went to high school dances and stuff; I didn’t associate with that too much.
Q: Is there one overriding track that reminds you of your life?
Chrissie: Eighteen by Alice Cooper, Jenny Take A Ride by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.
Q: What was it that drew you to the rock and roll scene and to live music?
Chrissie: I think it was the element that kind of circus was in town, that the travelling fun fair. Especially the English bands, they were skinny, their trousers were different, their complexions, boots, hair, it was all skinny; they were a bit sadistic.
Q: So you found it exciting?
Chrissie: Yeah, and like the guys who work in a fun fair, you just felt they knew more about everything than you did and you wished that you were getting on that caravan and travelling with them to the next city. That always excited me and it still does and I think some people are like that. And if you’re like that then you’re born with that and it stays with you all of your life.
Q: As a younger woman did you fall in love with rock stars easily?
Chrissie: Well yeah, I had their names all over my notebooks and stuff.
Q: Was it the adventure element and the intrigue of the musician that attracted you?
Chrissie: It was the music, it was definitely the music. I fell in love with electric guitar from a really young age. And also everything else wasn’t really that happening for me in the suburbs; who’s interested in school really? I didn’t want a career, I knew I wasn’t going to run with the pack and be like everybody. That’s how I’ve always seen rock, I know it’s become kind of mainstream but I still see it as a renegade.
Q: It’s like your own family I guess, isn’t it?
Chrissie: Well, a little better than that I suppose. You know after the tour you’re never going to see them again, but when you’re in there it’s a gang, it’s kind of a gang mentality. Families are great, but with families there’s obligations. But this is your chosen tribe so it makes the adventure a little more, the sky’s the limit.
Q: What made you choose to release a double album?
Chrissie: Well the double album is just to beg people to buy the record really. I should say that it’s because it’s been thirty years, but people don’t really buy records now and we have Break Up The Concrete out. So I suppose it’s an incentive, I think that’s what it was. It wasn’t my idea, although I was happy with the idea because it’s nice to include a retrospective I guess.
Q: And what would you say your favourite track off the best of collection that’s on this one is?
Chrissie: I like the stuff that James ‘Honeymoon’ Scott played on, the original Pretenders. But as far as a favourite track I don’t know, I like the performances, the players I’ve played with over the years really.
Q: Do you find it hard sometimes to listen back to it, your own best of?
Chrissie: Although we probably play most of the songs live at some point, when I was listening back to approve the running order I realise I hadn’t heard some of them since we recorded them. I was vaguely interested in listening to it but I’ll listen to it once; I’m not a memory lane girl very much.
Q: Tell us about the new material, it’s been seven years since your last release. Why now?
Chrissie: Seemed like a good idea. I’m not terribly ambitious; I don’t feel the need to be out there all the time. I was pretty busy the last six years, I went to Brazil and toured with some guys. Moreno Veloso and the guys he works with; met them and we toured around Brazil. Sadly never documented that because that was probably the highlight of my musical career.
Q: Why was that?
Chrissie: They’re just great and Brazil’s fantastic and it was exciting for me. I took a couple of years to start this vegan restaurant in Akron, Ohio, so I’ve been doing some other stuff. It’s not good to be on a treadmill if you’re doing this sort of work.
Q: You also appeared at a Barack Obama concert…
I did a benefit for Barack Obama because it was in Akron and they got the Black Keys and Devo, two Akron bands. Actually I resisted doing it because my parents are Republicans and I knew that that would really bum them out. It’s true they didn’t speak to me for a while after that, they’re very conservative. I don’t really get involved in politics, although I have a lot of time for him and I voted for him. Like millions of other people, I sunk to my knees and I cried when I realised that he had been elected.
