08 COVER STORY

N 1982, on their first visit to Australia, have one? ‘‘Well, I don’t have to.’’ Hynde is the Pretenders dropped by the Seven almost sneering. ‘‘All right, that Union one,’’ Network music show Sounds and she offers, relenting slightly. ‘‘What’s it goofed around on the studio couch. called? Union City Blues.’’ Cocky 20-somethings, with the world Given that Hynde is here to talk about the Iat their feet, they fielded questions with tour and, by extension, the Pretenders, her youthful insouciance: yes, they had emerged attitude seems less rock ’n’ roll than rude. out of London’s punk and new wave scene Later, after I start rolling my eyes back at her, four years previously. No, their peers weren’t she’ll soften and apologise and tell me she’s jealous of their meteoric success. Yes, lead having a bad day; that last night she got so singer Chrissie Hynde had left the US drunk with old friends in Chelsea that she because she didn’t like it. No, they hadn’t left her car on the street outside their home, seen any Australian bands yet. Or rather, and that when she went to retrieve it this Hynde hadn’t. morning she discovered it had been towed ‘‘I don’t like to go out to clubs or away. Later still she’ll suggest we go and anything,’’ she said in her midwestern grab a pizza. The next day she’ll text me to accent, kohl-rimmed eyes defiant under her say she’s bought me a book. Right now, long choppy fringe. ‘‘I like to stay in my room however, my presence irritates her. and drink hot chocolate and watch late ‘‘Can’t we talk about something interest- movies.’’ ing?’’ she says, jerking an arm in annoyance Hynde’s cohorts — guitarist James and spilling her coffee all over the floor. Honeyman-Scott, bassist Pete Farndon, ‘‘Oh, you know what? NEVER MIND,’’ she drummer Martin Chambers — bunched up growls, jumping up in a tangle of limbs. I tell next to her as she spoke, ribbing their dark- her how much I enjoyed watching the new haired frontwoman and sending up Sounds DVD Live in London, which captures the presenter Donnie Sutherland. Pretenders in fiery form at the Shepherd’s Fresh-faced but worldly, cool but wryly Bush Empire last year. How I love the way amused, the offstage Hynde seemed much her voice still sounds edgy and almost the same as the rock chick who sang Brass in apologetically commercial. How she still Pocket, Stop Your Sobbing and other hits from rocks so hard that her mascara runs in rivers behind her Fender Telecaster, the focal point down her cheeks. How she has clearly blazed of a band whose chemistry was palpable. a trail for a host of female rockers from Archive footage of the interview, recently Alanis Morissette to Shirley Manson to Karen posted on YouTube, has an unintentional O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. poignancy: a little more than a year later, Hynde is grimacing, curling into herself. Farndon and Honeyman-Scott were dead. You’re making a face, I say. ‘‘Please don’t ‘‘Don’t remember. That’s like, what, 28 say anything about women,’’ she says. ‘‘I’m years ago?’’ Hynde snorts derisively and not a pioneer. I haven’t done anything takes a tentative slurp of the coffee she’s different. Maybe I can be a pioneer one day been given here in her publicist’s office in St with my vegan restaurants, because that’s John’s Wood, northwest London. ‘‘Urgh.’’ why I do this.’’ She squares her narrow She pulls a face. ‘‘That’s really f. . king shoulders. Does what? ‘‘This. The music. I do horrible. Anyway, I just can’t take any more the music to end the killing.’’ of this looking back,’’ she says. ‘‘Know what The younger of two children born to a I mean? Enough!’’ part-time secretary and an ex-Marine in Things have not started well. Having steak-eating Akron, Ohio — the ‘‘rubber rejected my handshake in favour of a fist Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders . . . the band evolved after two members died capital of the world’’ in a state long reliant bump, having then spent a few minutes on manufacturing — Hynde has been a sending texts on her mobile and ignoring me vegetarian since she was 17. ‘‘That’s when completely, Hynde sits back on a sofa in her everything changed,’’ she once said. ‘‘Then I skinny jeans and tight black top and stares at knew I wasn’t going to be like everyone else. me resignedly, the jaunty daisy pattern on Present tense I was going to live by my principles.’’ her canvas hi-top trainers at odds with the Those principles are fierce and often mood in the room. wildly contradictory, many of them formed At 59 she’s as whippet-thin as she was in during her time as an art student at Kent the early 1970s. That’s when she arrived in Chrissie Hynde still rocks, writes a slightly chastened State University, where she dabbled in hippie London looking for a vehicle for her counterculture and Eastern mysticism (she tremulous velveteen voice and played in Jane Cornwell ahead of the Pretenders tour still subscribes to Vaishnavism, a Hindu sect) early versions of the Clash and the Damned and was present when the National Guard before co-founding the Pretenders. With her electric guitar, Cleopatra eyes group split in 1982, Hynde, a mother of two, fired on anti-Vietnam protesters in May She hated doing press back then. She and shaggy dolly cut — the trademark fringe has never been away. 1970, killing someone she knew. Today, hates doing it now. that is part fashion statement, part camou- In a few months Blondie and the Pre- however, she bangs on at length about the ‘‘I can’t keep talking about the past,’’ she flage — Hynde was the antithesis of, say, tenders will be co-headlining an Australian arrogant naivety of the 60s and 70s, given reiterates with a scowl. ‘‘All that ‘he said Debbie Harry of Blondie, another post-punk tour of inner-city theatres and countryside that all that fighting against repression has this’ and ‘I read you said that’. I don’t girl singer who’d emerged in front of a band wineries, a couple of which Hynde and co resulted in a society where pornography is remember saying any of it. I have a new in the late 70s. played when they last toured Australia three everywhere, disrespect is rife and the planet band, a proper collaboration with a very Harry was blonde, wore a dress and didn’t years ago (‘‘Some of our favourite shows of is hurtling towards annihilation faster than gifted guy called J. P. Jones, and that is what play any instruments. She left all the all time,’’ states Hynde on the press release). you can say ‘‘I’ll stand by you’’. I am excited about. songwriting to her boyfriend, Chris Stein, It’s a remarkable double bill: as different as At the top of her list are animal rights and ‘‘So I’ll have someone else to do whose band it was in the first place. Hynde they are, Hynde and Harry are much- environmentalism, the two causes around interviews with, so I won’t have to do this hired and fired and clearly wore the pants. admired pop culture fixtures. Their bands which her life revolves. ‘‘I divide the world any more.’’ She was the main songwriter of stylish, hook- have transcended their punk origins to into meat-eaters and non-meat eaters,’’ she The drug-related deaths of the band’s laden numbers, including Back on the Chain become staples of mainstream rock radio; says. She tries to avoid atheists, too, finding guitarist and bassist (Hynde had sacked her Gang, Middle of the Road and Message of Love, both have been inducted into the Rock and them boring and unedifying (her take on ex-lover Farndon for his drug use two days controlling the sound to the extent that the Roll Hall of Fame, the Pretenders in 2005 spirituality is complex), though she doesn’t before Honeyman-Scott overdosed) only Pretenders always felt a bit like a solo and Blondie in 2006. seem to want them dead like she does meat- temporarily derailed the Pretenders. Hynde project. It’s a suggestion that has always ‘‘Don’t know her,’’ says Hynde, shrug- eaters: ‘‘They [meat-eaters] have destroyed eventually put the group back together, riled. ‘‘I’m a real band person,’’ she says ging, of Harry, 65 ‘‘I’ve bumped into her a the planet and committed a criminal offence firing off riffs through a succession of line- wearily. ‘‘I like the chemistry. I’m nothing couple of times over the years but that’s it.’’ against God. So this is war.’’ ups, the sole original member until Cham- without a band.’’ Unlike Harry, who re- So what is her favourite Blondie song? I tell her that I’m vegetarian (but not that I bers rejoined in the mid-1990s. formed Blondie with Stein in 1997 after the ‘‘Don’t have one.’’ OK, but what if she had to sometimes lapse), and shuffle my leather

August 21-22, 2010