Sex, Drugs, and Chrissie Hynde

When The Pretenders burst onto the scene in 1978, they brought with them a refreshingly edgy rock sound — one that married melodies, hooks, and guitar solos with the antics, attitude, and showmanship of punk and glam. And their front woman, Chrissie Hynde, epitomized tough, sharp, androgynously sexy cool. Now, Hynde has written a memoir full of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll called Reckless: My Life as a Pretender.

Hear Kurt’s full interview with Chrissie Hynde below.

Kurt Andersen: You talk about your band mates all having groupies, but you didn’t. Is that because there were no such things as male groupies?

Chrissie Hynde: In general, if women offer themselves up to bands, no guy’s gonna say no unless his wife’s on the bus, and if his wife’s on the bus they’re not gonna be in a band for very long, because no one wants to be with a guy like that. It doesn’t work that way for women. I know a lot of women in bands, and believe me, it’s not the same.

Over the course of 10 months [in 1982-1983], you fired your bassist [Pete Farndon], who then died in a drug accident; your great collaborator and friend and guitarist [Jimmy Honeyman-Scott] died doing cocaine. And then this memoir ends, pretty much.

Yeah, I didn’t expect it to end. But by the time I got to the second burial, I just didn’t feel like I could go on any more. The more I wrote about it, it felt like what had happened was too big that I was almost trivializing what happened to Pete and Jimmy. In fact, I should have maybe just ended The Pretenders there and never called it The Pretenders again.

This terrible set of events happened, you felt like, “I can’t do this anymore,” and then you keep doing it for 30 years.

First of all, I never thought “I can’t do this anymore.” I didn’t really think about it. I’m not much of a thinker, I guess. I’m just getting through the day. Jimmy [Honeyman-Scott] and I had already talked about going back in to do another song and it was the beginnings of “Back On the Chain Gang.”So instead of doing it with him, I dedicated it to him.

There are 10 Pretenders albums, and you still perform, you make records. Is it still fun?

Sure, yeah, it never changes. That’s the thing about rock, there’s an autism to it. It’s like two notes and it never changes.

Bonus Track: Kurt’s extended conversation with Chrissie Hynde