Chrissie Hynde is one of the legendary rockers with unmissable hits: her Pretenders, she has held them at arm’s length, on guitar and microphone, for over forty years. Arte.tv devotes a documentary to him to see until the summer.
Brass in pocket, Don’t Get Me Wrong, Message of Love, Middle of the road, I’ll Stand by You : The Pretenders have lined up a hell of a string of hits since the end of the 70s. Led by American singer and guitarist Chrissie Hynde, this rock band, born in London in 1978, established itself in the midst of a punk explosion with something different: a melodic rock with haunting refrains and a hit (snatched from the Kinks, hero of Chrissie Hynde) from the first single, Stop Your Sobbing. It will be followed by Brass in pocket which the singer hated and called “weak disco american nightclub singer” and who will end up number one everywhere.
This lightning ascent nevertheless had a complicated genesis and follow-up as told by Claire Laborey’s documentary The Pretenders – Chrissie Hynde or life in rock, to see on Arte.tv. A film rich in archive images and concerts, and punctuated with excerpts from his autobiography Reckless: My Life as a Pretender (not translated into French).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-V4HXjdGuY
Five years of trouble looking for each other, from London to Paris
Born in 1951 in Akron (Ohio, United States), Chrissie Hynde is a tomboy in adolescence who has only one passion, music. She started writing songs at 14, with her first guitar and fled her native Midwest whenever she could. She landed in London in 1973, then went to Paris where she stayed for a year with the group The Frenchies, and returned to London where, penniless, from squat to squat, she sought herself. Rock critic for the New Musical Expressshe massacres the groups – “the more poorly written and dismissive my articles were, the more the magazine applauded me“, she remembers. Then Malcolm McLaren and his companion, the stylist Vivienne Westwood, offered her a job as a saleswoman in their SEX boutique, the London epicenter of the punk movement where the Sex Pistols were formed.
After five years of wandering and the deep desire to play in a band, she finally set up The Pretenders in 1978, at the age of 27, with three musicians from Hereford: guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, bassist Pete Farndon and drummer Martin Chambers. Immediately, the planets align. She’s crazy about Iggy Pop, her guitarist is a fan of Abba, but instead of hue and dia, the alchemy works perfectly: she pulls him towards rock, he attracts her towards melody. Led by his very particular voice, which does not hesitate to bite on occasion, the formation touches the tops of the charts and connects the concerts and the tours, in particular in the United States.
Double tragedy and rebirth
“I had gone from the girl we didn’t want, to America’s favorite rebel.“, she summarizes. But there is no question of playing the game of the sex symbol singer that is expected of her. Chrissie Hynde, one of the rare women to take the lead in a rock band at the time, categorically refuses to be photographed alone: ”The Pretenders, it was the four of us“. Except that the drugs are right one after the other for this group, however tight-knit that Chrissie Hynde soon no longer manages to carry at arm’s length: the guitarist dies of a cocaine overdose in 1982 and the following year it is the bassist who succumbs to an overdose.
Others would have dropped the case for less than that. But with her drummer Martin Chambers, Chrissie Hynde doesn’t give up. As a true conductor, she will overcome the double drama and move forward with new musicians. The band, which has since gone through many redesigns and personnel changes, has somehow become “a tribute to its original musicians“, she likes to define it. And this without the success being denied to this day (the group is still active, its last album was released in 2020).
Bring down the establishment
However, the American singer and musician, who has raised two daughters in the meantime, burns with another unquenchable fire. “Got a rockin’ band, but I want more“, she exposes. “I also want to change the world and bring the establishment to its knees. I always wanted it.“She stands up against fur and for the ethical treatment of animals alongside PETA, and promotes vegetarianism.I want to bend the multinationals, publicly humiliate them. It’s like being in a rock band for me.“If she was not in the nails of punk musically, the punk spirit obviously never left her.
The Pretenders – Chrissie Hynde or life in rock, documentary by Claire Laborey (France, 2021, 52mn) To see on arte.tv and on YouTube until August 15, 2023.
You can prolong the pleasure by watching live on arte.tv The Pretenders – Decades Rock Live!a concert recorded in Atlantic City (USA) on August 11, 2006, with Iggy Pop, Kings of Leon, Shirley Manson from Garbage, available until July 31, 2023.