The Pretenders
By Heidi Lee (SugarBuzz Michigan)
She’s been labeled a feminist, a punk, an activist, and a versatile songstress, but while all of these classifications can be justified in one way or another, there’s only one that Chrissie Hynde has worn with pride for nearly thirty years…Pretender.
Many can argue that, Chrissie Hyde is, and was, The Pretenders. She made her way across the ocean in the mid-seventies, from Ohio, and found a place of belonging among the growing crowd of British “punk” bands. Her job of reviewing bands for the New Musical Express allowed her to get to know some of the most well-known punk figures of the time (like Sid Vicious) and it wasn’t long before she got together with some like-minded rockers and formed The Pretenders. The early line-up consisted of guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, Pete Farndon playing bass, and Martin Chambers on the drums.
Their first successful album was their self-titled debut in 1979 which spawned three hit singles, “Kid”, “Brass in Pocket”, and a true-to-form cover of The Kinks’ “Stop Your Sobbing”. Despite their good fortune, the early 80’s were riddled with internal problems with the band. Between 1982 and 1983, the group lost two of their key members. Both Farndon and Honeyman-Scott were out of the band due to drug use, and the later succumbed to his addiction and passed away in 1983. All of this happened while Chrissie was pregnant with her first child, a daughter with The Kinks’ Ray Davies, named Natalie Rae.
You would think that with all of this drama, it would be enough to make anybody throw in the towel and forget musical aspirations all together, but Chrissie, as determined as ever, reformed the Pretenders in the midst of all of the chaos and released one of their best known albums, “Learning to Crawl” in 1984. The album featured two of the Pretenders most well-known songs, “Back on the Chain Gang”, and “Middle of the Road”, both would become 80’s classics.
Chrissie and the Pretenders continued to pop up in the charts here and there throughout the mid to late 80’s, with songs like “Don’t Get Me Wrong” (from 1988’s “Get Close”), and Hynde’s collaboration with UB40, covering Sonny and Cher’s 1965 hit, “I Got You Babe”.
As time went on, it wasn’t until the mid-nineties that the Pretenders would chart again, this time with the surrendering ballad, “I’ll Stand By You”. They released a few more albums in the 90’s, including 1995’s live album, “Isle of View”.
While some may have been surprised at Chrissie’s dabbling in reggae and the 60’s in her career, it is not that shocking. Many of the songs and the style of the Pretenders were obviously influenced by much of the music that came out of the 60’s. Chrissie was personally heavily influenced by many British bands of the 60’s, which is one of the reasons she moved to England in the first place. They’ve covered two Kinks songs, “Stop You Sobbing” and “I Go To Sleep”, and Dusty Springfield’s “Breakfast In Bed”. The tendency to have a love for music from the decade of mods and rockers might have all started when Chrissie was a young teen and got dragged on stage at a Jackie Wilson concert where she was rewarded with a kiss from the singer. Yet another factoid that makes her unique among women in rock.
And having that label pressed upon her is one she has never enjoyed having. Many interviews with Chrissie show a woman who is more interested in the music being made by anyone, be it male or female. Never using her gender as a gimmick, Chrissie has rocked with the best of them, and many current artists regard her as an inspiration and sometimes muse, and she has yet to stop doing what she loves to do.
In 1994, Sire Records produced a memorable press release called “Chrissie Hyde’s Advice to Chick Rockers”. Instead of continuing to try to sum up the life and times of one of popular music’s most unstoppable forces, let’s let the artist speak for herself…
- “Don’t moan about being a chick, refer to feminism or complain about sexist discrimination. We’ve all been thrown down stairs and fucked about, but no one wants to hear a whining female. Write a loosely disguised song about it instead and clean up ($).”
- “Never pretend you know more than you do. If you don’t know chord names, refer to the dots. Don’t go near the desk unless you plan on becoming an engineer.”
- “Make the other band members look and sound good. Bring out the best in them; that’s your job. Oh, and you better sound good too.”
- “Do not insist on working with ‘females’; that’s just more b.s. Get the best man for the job. If it happens to be a woman, great – you’ll have someone to go to department stores on tour with instead of making one of the road crew go with you.”
- “Try not to have a sexual relationship with the band. It always ends in tears.”
- “Don’t think that sticking your boobs out and trying to look fuckable will help. Remember you’re in a rock and roll band. It’s not “fuck me”, it’s “fuck you!”
- “Don’t try to compete with the guys; it won’t impress anybody. Remember, one of the reasons they like you is because you don’t offer yet more competition to their already existing male egos.”
- “If you sing, don’t ‘belt’ or ‘screech’. No one wants to hear that shit; it sound ‘hysterical’.”
- “Shave your legs, for chrissakes!”
- “Don’t take advice from people like me. Do your own thing always.”
Chrissie Hynde is the Pretenders.
Enough said.
Resources:
http://www.pretendersarchives.com/MainMenu.html
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:mx5m964o3ep2