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Reckless: My Life as a Pretender
Chrissie Hynde, leader of the Pretenders, is one of the most widely imitated figures in sexy, unflappable, vulnerable yet tough, a groundbreaking songwriter and performer. In these pages, Chrissie gives us her story. We see her all-American 1950s childhood in Ohio, and her teenage self falling for the rock music of the 1960s. We follow her to London, where she takes a job with NME and makes her way into the churning ’70s London punk scene, meeting Lemmy, Sid Vicious and Iggy Pop, living in squats, writing songs, playing in early versions of the Clash and the Damned. Her work with the Pretenders—which melded punk, New Wave, and pop to irresistible effect—would catapult her to instant stardom. Through it all is Chrissie’s unmistakable voice, ringing with fearless emotional honesty, a razor-sharp wit, and an enduring belief in the power of rock’n’roll.
312 pages, Paperback
First published September 8, 2015
428 people are currently reading
4149 people want to read
About the author
Chrissie Hynde
19 books51 followersChrissie Hynde is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known as the leader of the Pretenders. Hynde released nine studio albums as the Pretenders, beginning with1980’s Pretenders, which Rolling Stone ranked in the top 15 best debut albums of all time. Most recently, she released the album Stockholm, under her own name, in 2014. She lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 783 reviews
October 5, 2015
It's a rare and special thing when a memoir can rob you of almost all the respect you had for an artist. I've been a Pretenders fan most of my life, and was thrilled when I learned that Chrissie Hynde, who always seemed so clever and interesting in interviews, was going to be writing her memoirs. I was dying to know what went into her process as a songwriter and a musician, and to hear about how she fought her way through the "boy's club" of rock n roll to find her place and voice at the top. This book contains about 10 pages on that, and 10 pretty interesting pages of her witnessing the Kent State riots in 1970. The remainder is a collection of whining about the difficulties of living a comfortable existence as a indulged daughter of two loving parents in suburban Ohio, her all-consuming love of drugs, how much she hated living in America, how much she loved bumming around Europe (doing drugs and shoplifting), listening to music (and drugs), and dropping names (and doing drugs). Oh, and drugs. I'm at a loss as to how she thought that her career as an artist was so immaterial that she devoted almost no time to its discussion. I am so disappointed and disgusted to have put up with so much worthless background to have no payoff of what the Pretenders became, how they got there, and what she put into it to make it so. I'll still love the songs, but do yourself a favor and skip this one.
October 29, 2015
3.5 stars!
Reckless is a great title for this book AND for Chrissie Hynde.
This woman has been through some serious shit. Most of it self inflicted and just plain crazy. STDs, drugs and Rock & Roll-she's been through it all.
The book ends after two of The Pretenders died, (a long time ago), and I think that's apt because that's when her recklessness ended, (mostly), too.
Growing up in the sixties allowed her to do a lot of things that could not be done now. You can't knock on the windows of cars and ask someone to take you somewhere, not without worrying you'll end up in a dumpster behind a 711, anyway. You can't hang out with hard bikers without putting yourself in danger. (That one was as true then as it is now, and believe me, THAT was some real danger.)
Overall, I'm glad I listened to Chrissie's story. It's a story of using caution and NOT being reckless. Not if you want to continue to live. I liked that she remained herself throughout and took responsibility for her actions. This story is not pretty and it's not for everyone, but I enjoyed listening to Rosanna Arquette narrate this crazy lady's reckless life.
Reckless is a great title for this book AND for Chrissie Hynde.
This woman has been through some serious shit. Most of it self inflicted and just plain crazy. STDs, drugs and Rock & Roll-she's been through it all.
The book ends after two of The Pretenders died, (a long time ago), and I think that's apt because that's when her recklessness ended, (mostly), too.
Growing up in the sixties allowed her to do a lot of things that could not be done now. You can't knock on the windows of cars and ask someone to take you somewhere, not without worrying you'll end up in a dumpster behind a 711, anyway. You can't hang out with hard bikers without putting yourself in danger. (That one was as true then as it is now, and believe me, THAT was some real danger.)
Overall, I'm glad I listened to Chrissie's story. It's a story of using caution and NOT being reckless. Not if you want to continue to live. I liked that she remained herself throughout and took responsibility for her actions. This story is not pretty and it's not for everyone, but I enjoyed listening to Rosanna Arquette narrate this crazy lady's reckless life.
September 21, 2015
I was really disappointed. I was so excited to read about this rock legend who was from my hometown. She really only talked about the Pretenders for the last 40 pages and she covered nothing past the death of two of the original members. What she talked about was biker gangs, drugs and 100 other characters that where a part of her life for a minute. I had a hard time following where she was going and what she was saying about particular events. She used a lot of expressions I wasn't familiar with and I was often left wondering, huh? My husband is a huge Chrissie fan and I won't let him read this because it will ruin his fantasy of her.
September 19, 2015
Very disappointing. I really wanted to enjoy this as Hynde is one of my favourite rock stars. There are some great stories in here and an insight into a massive decade or so of rock history. But it's poorly structured, poorly written and fragmented. In short, it needs the firm hand of a good editor.
Leave the book and pop on a Pretenders album instead.
Leave the book and pop on a Pretenders album instead.
September 18, 2015
If you like Chrissie Hynde and think her music is brilliant, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK! She seems like she is a complete idiot who has not learned very much from her life experiences.
March 15, 2016
This book was a major disappointment. I really like the Pretenders and even have her solo album "Stockholm" on vinyl. But this book is so repetitive. At least 75% of the book goes on and on about her drug abuse, which gets really boring after a while. And only about the last 50 pages are about the Pretenders, and then only the early days as the book comes to an abrupt, unsatisfactory conclusion, when the band's guitar player dies, even though the band continued on for many years. Not recommended at all.
November 17, 2019
Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll pretty much sum up what Chrissie Hynde's memoir covers. I like her music with the Pretenders and remember listening to their hits on my car radio while I was commuting to work. She writes with engaging prose, irreverent wit, and manic energy. In short, she delivers just what I expected, and I found it entertaining. Her "reckless" lifestyle isn't one I envy or admire, but her main focus is always on the excellent music, her true art.
abandoned
October 6, 2015I generally steer clear of books recommended on NPR, but in this case, the author suggested that I not buy her fucking book.
http://www.npr.org/2015/10/06/4460834...
I can understand not wanting to be part of the rape culture dialog, that's her prerogative. But she was downright hostile and basically refused to talk about her book, on a book tour interview. Sheesh.
http://www.npr.org/2015/10/06/4460834...
I can understand not wanting to be part of the rape culture dialog, that's her prerogative. But she was downright hostile and basically refused to talk about her book, on a book tour interview. Sheesh.
July 16, 2019
How is this woman still alive?
Why are:
drugs
random sex with strangers
hook ups with friends
the song-writing process
transatlantic journeys
the punk scene
So boring?
Honestly, the author name drops, tells it like it is without artifice, but it's just not very interesting. Very few people go from under-achiever groupie to rock star but CH matter of fact style of writing and focus on minutia drains the drama out of her story.
Why are:
drugs
random sex with strangers
hook ups with friends
the song-writing process
transatlantic journeys
the punk scene
So boring?
Honestly, the author name drops, tells it like it is without artifice, but it's just not very interesting. Very few people go from under-achiever groupie to rock star but CH matter of fact style of writing and focus on minutia drains the drama out of her story.
September 24, 2015
This book is in a word BORING. I pushed myself to finish it even though I have several other books in the queue.
As others have stated, the first 75% of this book focuses on Chrissie's unremarkable suburban middle class childhood, and her blase, rudderless, boring, drug fueled young teenage years and young adulthood. While reading this, I didn't even get the sense that she wanted to be in a band, or be a musician, apparently nothing else to do, and since she doesn't seem competent enough to perform or get along with people in any other kind of job--why not be a musician?
I was really hoping for some interesting insight into the London punk rock scene or early 80's music; maybe some personal insights into her relationships with Ray Davies, and the guy that sang the Breakfast Club song (not even mentioned), but no, not so much. A little, but really not much at all for having been there during the heyday.
Toward the end, the last 25% or less, she starts to talk about the band (finally), the band mates, the struggles with drugs and alcohol, life on the road, performing, etc. and the book became somewhat more interesting but it was just a little too late for me.
Also, since Chrissie is now no longer a "Yankee" she uses a lot of what I would assume is British slang, (who knew a vagina was called a flue? probably a good one to remember). So sometimes I had no idea what she was talking about.
Clearly this is not someone you want to hang out and have a cheeseburger with (being that she is a self professed STAUNCH, and rather militant vegetarian she would probably gob you on your knob). I saw her on "watch what happens live" last night--Boring there too.
All in all, Chrissie comes off as a not very likable, semi-talented person who was in the right place at the right time with the right people and was able make a career out of it. Good for her, but please don't waste your hard earned money on this piece of shite.
As others have stated, the first 75% of this book focuses on Chrissie's unremarkable suburban middle class childhood, and her blase, rudderless, boring, drug fueled young teenage years and young adulthood. While reading this, I didn't even get the sense that she wanted to be in a band, or be a musician, apparently nothing else to do, and since she doesn't seem competent enough to perform or get along with people in any other kind of job--why not be a musician?
I was really hoping for some interesting insight into the London punk rock scene or early 80's music; maybe some personal insights into her relationships with Ray Davies, and the guy that sang the Breakfast Club song (not even mentioned), but no, not so much. A little, but really not much at all for having been there during the heyday.
Toward the end, the last 25% or less, she starts to talk about the band (finally), the band mates, the struggles with drugs and alcohol, life on the road, performing, etc. and the book became somewhat more interesting but it was just a little too late for me.
Also, since Chrissie is now no longer a "Yankee" she uses a lot of what I would assume is British slang, (who knew a vagina was called a flue? probably a good one to remember). So sometimes I had no idea what she was talking about.
Clearly this is not someone you want to hang out and have a cheeseburger with (being that she is a self professed STAUNCH, and rather militant vegetarian she would probably gob you on your knob). I saw her on "watch what happens live" last night--Boring there too.
All in all, Chrissie comes off as a not very likable, semi-talented person who was in the right place at the right time with the right people and was able make a career out of it. Good for her, but please don't waste your hard earned money on this piece of shite.
October 4, 2015
An honest account about the downside of sex drugs and rock and roll chrissie's life leading up to and to the end of the Pretenders with the deaths of the guitarist James honey an Scott and bass player Pete Farndon yes I've read the reviews that it does not go into her life with Ray Davies but I think she is honest enough it was a disaster and they rowed a lot but it's not a kiss and tell it is however clear she was one hell of rock chick and a survivor
September 22, 2015
For someone who wrote such precise and insightful lyrics in her songs and who has such a thoughtful and well-observed memoir it comes as a slight shock that Chrissie Hynde's opinion of her younger self seems to be a person who hadn't the slightest interest in writing, history, or education but was a total slacker whose only interests were music, drugs on the side, and an attitude as an outsider. She certainly paid her dues before making it as a musician as her long list of dead-end jobs, bad relationships, horrible squats with the worst living conditions imaginable, and her lack of progress as a guitarist makes clear. She seems to think it was all luck and the fact that she could never do anything else rather than persistence and the honing of her craft. Despite that, she's written an interesting memoir which includes historical insight, humour, and well-defined character portraits of the people she met along the way. I'm hoping she's intending to put out further volumes as (interesting as this one is) it only goes up to the deaths of James Honeyman Scott and Pete Farndon and doesn't include any detail on her lengthy and successful career in the wake of the first successful incarnation of The Pretenders. Still, it's very entertaining and educational read. - BH.
September 13, 2015
Chrissie being a formidable woman who's still got a lot of girl left, and a writer who barely has to try to achieve brilliance (as is part of her account), what you get here is succinct, honed brutal hilarity, even when it's dark because tragic elements like drug-deaths are involved.
The account stops abruptly when the first lineup of The Pretenders is halved. Most of what we've known about Chrissie takes place after that but it's clear that, for Hynde, something vital ended and what's after is of little consequence. This, actually, leaves out most of her career to date but it's a powerful statement in itself.
And of course, Chrissie is just heroic as much to boys as girls.
A unique and very recognisable self-portrait which doesn't tell us anything about her character we don't already know but which is absolutely chocabloc with anecdotes that must be read.
The account stops abruptly when the first lineup of The Pretenders is halved. Most of what we've known about Chrissie takes place after that but it's clear that, for Hynde, something vital ended and what's after is of little consequence. This, actually, leaves out most of her career to date but it's a powerful statement in itself.
And of course, Chrissie is just heroic as much to boys as girls.
A unique and very recognisable self-portrait which doesn't tell us anything about her character we don't already know but which is absolutely chocabloc with anecdotes that must be read.
July 22, 2021
I never cared for Chrissie Hynde or the Pretenders. Never liked their music and got the impression that she was arrogant and mean mouthed. (I love to read bios on people I love and people I dislike......either end of the spectrum...the middle is what bores me.) I will never like their music but my opinion of Chrissie Hynde has changed and there were several surprises to me. The biggest ones were:
1. She doesn't trash Ray Davies. I expected her to do so since he has not had kind words for her.
2. She does not come off as conceited or full of herself. If anything, she seems like a girl who was so in love with the music that she just wanted to be a part of it even knowing and acknowledging she is severely handicapped in the talent department.
I wasn't aware that she was such a druggie, although for her time it isn't really surprising. Maybe partly due to drugs, she got mixed up with a bunch of lowlifes and lived in one hovel after another all over Ohio, England, Canada, France and Mexico. She has kind words for just about everyone she's encountered in life except herself and Nancy Spungen (Sid Vicious' girlfriend.)
Even though I don't think of Chrissie Hynde as classy (nor would she want to be known as such), I think her autobiography showed a lot of class. She did not go into graphic detail about other people's secrets or her sex life. No one could accuse her of feeding the gossip grinder and exposing all sorts of sordid information that is nobody's business but her own. I have new found respect for her and hope that she's had a good time in the last couple of decades. She certainly had more than her share of hard times.
1. She doesn't trash Ray Davies. I expected her to do so since he has not had kind words for her.
2. She does not come off as conceited or full of herself. If anything, she seems like a girl who was so in love with the music that she just wanted to be a part of it even knowing and acknowledging she is severely handicapped in the talent department.
I wasn't aware that she was such a druggie, although for her time it isn't really surprising. Maybe partly due to drugs, she got mixed up with a bunch of lowlifes and lived in one hovel after another all over Ohio, England, Canada, France and Mexico. She has kind words for just about everyone she's encountered in life except herself and Nancy Spungen (Sid Vicious' girlfriend.)
Even though I don't think of Chrissie Hynde as classy (nor would she want to be known as such), I think her autobiography showed a lot of class. She did not go into graphic detail about other people's secrets or her sex life. No one could accuse her of feeding the gossip grinder and exposing all sorts of sordid information that is nobody's business but her own. I have new found respect for her and hope that she's had a good time in the last couple of decades. She certainly had more than her share of hard times.
August 23, 2017
I love rock and roll memoirs and was a huge pretenders fan but this book did not do it for me. Simply said, Chrissy Hynde presented herself in less than a laudable light. She just did not seem like a good person and her multiple stories that included name dropping, indiscriminate sex, and drug abuse got old. She also offers little growth or introspection. The best part of the book was her descriptions of her early life and her love for the dying city of Akron.
September 21, 2015
Chrissie Hynde has a unique voice, both as a songwriter and an author. I enjoyed every word of this book. I especially liked reading about her youth in Akron. I have been a Chrissie fan from the beginning, but I never realized exactly what a wild life she led after leaving home. Also, she made me realize how essential James Honeyman-Scott was to her music, and how tragic his loss was for her.
October 25, 2015
The title of this book should be "Reckless: My life as a total fuck up with a death wish (With a bit at the end about me being in a band)." The final 70 pages of the book are about The Pretenders - and those pages are only about the first few years of the band. The first 250 pages of the book are Chrissie recounting her many lame jobs and stupid drug-addled behaviors. It would have been a much, much better book if she had spent about 20 pages on her childhood, about 40 pages on her life as a wastrel in the USA, 50 pages detailing her time in Europe where she was a part of the beginning of the punk scene and then a good 200 pages about her life as a famous musician. That's a book I would have enjoyed reading. The book does pick up and become interesting once The Pretenders are formed, but by that point it is too little, too late. And to have it end so abruptly, with the deaths of Jimmy & Pete. Wha???? Is she hoping to get money to write a sequel?
I loathe this new trend in the entertainment industry, breaking up movies and books that should just be one entity unto itself and turning them into multiple movies & books. John Cleese did this with his recent memoir, ending just as Monty Python begins. Angelica Huston too - her first book ends just as she is moving to Los Angeles. STOP IT. Very very few lives warrant multiple memoirs. You're not recounting the fall of Rome, people, you're just writing a book about your career in the entertainment business. Emphasis on the part about the focus being on the career - NOT copious details about your primary school (Morrissey) or chapters about your extended family tree (Keith Richards) or a numbingly detailed rehash of your vacations (Grace Coddington). Is the publishing industry in such a downward spiral that editors aren't used anymore??? SMH.
I also don't understand the brouhaha over a interview that Chrissie gave to The Sunday Times. I searched online but could not find a free copy of the interview - only about a billion editorials commenting on how horrible Chrissie was & that she blamed rape victims for getting raped. The editorials have juicy short quotes from the interview, but I haven't read the actual thing. After reading her book it doesn't surprise me that Chrissie would stick her foot in her mouth and say shit without thinking.
As for the biker incident in the book, it's not as it is portrayed in the editorials. It wasn't even clear to me that she had been raped, the scene is written so poorly and the time frame is so disjointed. I'd gotten the impression from all the editorials that a naive young Chrissie had been hoodwinked by some biker dudes who told her about a party and instead took her to a house and gang raped her. In the book she is not naive but pretty experienced with the underbelly of life. She is loaded on ludes and visiting a friend at the local jail. She meets 2 bikers in the elevator who she thinks are hot & they ask her if she wants to go party - as in get high - not go to a party. She says sure because she says yes to every damn thing and has already put herself into dozens of sketchy situations previously (it's unclear if she has been raped before but it seems like it). The biker dudes steal her drugs, hit her on the back of the head (leaves no marks! Who knew?) and tell her to strip. Then the book jumps to her hanging out in the kitchen of one of the dudes, drawing. After art time, he takes her out to eat & then takes her home. Then they begin - dating isn't the right word - hanging out? She becomes his old lady I guess? He beats her up - more than once? She has oblique references to a bruised face. Then....she moves to another town. It's all so confusing. What is going on? Are we the readers meant to feel as disorientated and high as Chrissie felt? Or is it just bad writing?
Why is no one writing an editorial about Chrissie getting roofied and raped in Cleveland from the dude who picked her up hitchhiking? (Hitchhiking!!! Multiple times freaks pick her up but she keeps doing it? WHY? You'd think after the first time she jumped out of a moving car to get away from a - what, serial killer? Rapist? - that would be the last time she'd hitch hike. But nooooo. Not Chrissie!) That scene strikes me as far more disturbing than the biker one (which is horrible too) and Chrissie writes of it in detail - well for her at least - and she seemed pretty freaked out by it. The bit about her coming to, finding herself tripping her brains out & wandering naked in a strange room holding her shoes, looking for a door, and then realizing the rapist has blocked the door with the wardrobe so she is trapped. **Shiver** Then he threatens to kill her? And she is tripping on mescaline during this? OMG what a bad trip. It's so freaky. I would have PTSD after that incident.
The majority of the book is Chrissie doing insane, potentially deadly shit over and over and over again. Those death wish scenes are interspersed with examples of her being a terrible and irresponsible employee and a lazy & lackluster student. I am amazed that Chrissie became a rock star; based on her stories it seemed more likely she'd end up buried in a shallow grave somewhere. I practically gave myself a headache, I was shaking my head so often at the stupid, thoughtless crap she did. Like when she walked up to the total stranger in Mexico and asked if she could live with him - WTF. Or walking up to the dude in Toronto and asking if she could go home with him. He has a dog so it's ok. Uh.....I cannot relate at all.
I was so looking forward to this book. I've read many other memoirs set in the rock scene of that time in London & everyone writes of how great and cool and fun Chrissie is. I did not get that impression from her book. Not at all. Maybe if she had written about her life sober and as a single mom, I think the parts of her early stupid years wouldn't stand out so much. What a waste. Sigh.
I loathe this new trend in the entertainment industry, breaking up movies and books that should just be one entity unto itself and turning them into multiple movies & books. John Cleese did this with his recent memoir, ending just as Monty Python begins. Angelica Huston too - her first book ends just as she is moving to Los Angeles. STOP IT. Very very few lives warrant multiple memoirs. You're not recounting the fall of Rome, people, you're just writing a book about your career in the entertainment business. Emphasis on the part about the focus being on the career - NOT copious details about your primary school (Morrissey) or chapters about your extended family tree (Keith Richards) or a numbingly detailed rehash of your vacations (Grace Coddington). Is the publishing industry in such a downward spiral that editors aren't used anymore??? SMH.
I also don't understand the brouhaha over a interview that Chrissie gave to The Sunday Times. I searched online but could not find a free copy of the interview - only about a billion editorials commenting on how horrible Chrissie was & that she blamed rape victims for getting raped. The editorials have juicy short quotes from the interview, but I haven't read the actual thing. After reading her book it doesn't surprise me that Chrissie would stick her foot in her mouth and say shit without thinking.
As for the biker incident in the book, it's not as it is portrayed in the editorials. It wasn't even clear to me that she had been raped, the scene is written so poorly and the time frame is so disjointed. I'd gotten the impression from all the editorials that a naive young Chrissie had been hoodwinked by some biker dudes who told her about a party and instead took her to a house and gang raped her. In the book she is not naive but pretty experienced with the underbelly of life. She is loaded on ludes and visiting a friend at the local jail. She meets 2 bikers in the elevator who she thinks are hot & they ask her if she wants to go party - as in get high - not go to a party. She says sure because she says yes to every damn thing and has already put herself into dozens of sketchy situations previously (it's unclear if she has been raped before but it seems like it). The biker dudes steal her drugs, hit her on the back of the head (leaves no marks! Who knew?) and tell her to strip. Then the book jumps to her hanging out in the kitchen of one of the dudes, drawing. After art time, he takes her out to eat & then takes her home. Then they begin - dating isn't the right word - hanging out? She becomes his old lady I guess? He beats her up - more than once? She has oblique references to a bruised face. Then....she moves to another town. It's all so confusing. What is going on? Are we the readers meant to feel as disorientated and high as Chrissie felt? Or is it just bad writing?
Why is no one writing an editorial about Chrissie getting roofied and raped in Cleveland from the dude who picked her up hitchhiking? (Hitchhiking!!! Multiple times freaks pick her up but she keeps doing it? WHY? You'd think after the first time she jumped out of a moving car to get away from a - what, serial killer? Rapist? - that would be the last time she'd hitch hike. But nooooo. Not Chrissie!) That scene strikes me as far more disturbing than the biker one (which is horrible too) and Chrissie writes of it in detail - well for her at least - and she seemed pretty freaked out by it. The bit about her coming to, finding herself tripping her brains out & wandering naked in a strange room holding her shoes, looking for a door, and then realizing the rapist has blocked the door with the wardrobe so she is trapped. **Shiver** Then he threatens to kill her? And she is tripping on mescaline during this? OMG what a bad trip. It's so freaky. I would have PTSD after that incident.
The majority of the book is Chrissie doing insane, potentially deadly shit over and over and over again. Those death wish scenes are interspersed with examples of her being a terrible and irresponsible employee and a lazy & lackluster student. I am amazed that Chrissie became a rock star; based on her stories it seemed more likely she'd end up buried in a shallow grave somewhere. I practically gave myself a headache, I was shaking my head so often at the stupid, thoughtless crap she did. Like when she walked up to the total stranger in Mexico and asked if she could live with him - WTF. Or walking up to the dude in Toronto and asking if she could go home with him. He has a dog so it's ok. Uh.....I cannot relate at all.
I was so looking forward to this book. I've read many other memoirs set in the rock scene of that time in London & everyone writes of how great and cool and fun Chrissie is. I did not get that impression from her book. Not at all. Maybe if she had written about her life sober and as a single mom, I think the parts of her early stupid years wouldn't stand out so much. What a waste. Sigh.
July 1, 2015
This no-holds-barred memoir by the former Pretenders front woman and iconic singer/songwriter Chrissie Hynde is not to be missed. Her prose, like her music, is powerful, unsparing, and totally honest.
- Judy J., Doubleday Marketing Department
- Judy J., Doubleday Marketing Department
April 8, 2019
This biography feels like it should be Part 1, detailing the crazy youth of a very talented songwriter. The descriptions of the sex and drugs far outweigh the rock&roll. There are numerous vignettes that include some intriguing people, but they fly by like snippets in a movie trailer. I want to go see the real movie now.
Despite the above, the writing is fun and quirky, with crazy vocabulary and amazing incidents that no one should survive - Chrissie is the female version of Keef.
I still want to know more about her songwriting and musical stuff, but I definitely know more about the source of the lyrics.
Read it only if your band plays Pretender's songs - like mine does.
Despite the above, the writing is fun and quirky, with crazy vocabulary and amazing incidents that no one should survive - Chrissie is the female version of Keef.
I still want to know more about her songwriting and musical stuff, but I definitely know more about the source of the lyrics.
Read it only if your band plays Pretender's songs - like mine does.
November 8, 2017
I meant to read this when it first came out. Then I forgot. Earlier this year I was reminded when my blogger friend Susan at The Cue Card reviewed it.
Who was not a Pretenders fan in the 1980s? I was singing in a cover band at the time (back then it was known as a TOP40 band because we performed the hits of the day as long as people could dance to them.) I sang "Brass In Pocket" with all my heart, though I could never quite capture the sound of Chrissie's voice.
Her memoir is a trip through the 50s, 60s, and 70s. First in her hometown of Akron, OH, where her dad worked for Bell Telephone and her mom was the embodiment of the "feminine mystique." Chrissie was a good girl in her childhood but once she got hooked on music her path was set.
The 60s was high school, getting high, and going to see any band she could get a ride to. Somehow she graduated and got accepted at Kent State. Yes, she was there in the crowd during the shooting of college students protesting the Vietnam War.
Chrissie was not born under a bad sign. She had luck protecting her throughout a wild and dangerous young adult life. She learned guitar, she loved guitar gods, she took anything available to get high, but always she was trying to form a band. It was a long time coming but finally in London, The Pretenders became reality. Her book tells the whole story.
The Pretenders also became on "overnight" success. None of us knew it had taken her over a decade to get there. The substance abuse of course went into overdrive but her luck held. Like any self respecting rocker who plans to have a long career, she eventually quit all the drugs and tours to this day.
Chrissie Hynde is not only a great songwriter. She is a great writer. Reading her book is like having her right in your head telling her incredible story. Quite simply, she rocks!!
Who was not a Pretenders fan in the 1980s? I was singing in a cover band at the time (back then it was known as a TOP40 band because we performed the hits of the day as long as people could dance to them.) I sang "Brass In Pocket" with all my heart, though I could never quite capture the sound of Chrissie's voice.
Her memoir is a trip through the 50s, 60s, and 70s. First in her hometown of Akron, OH, where her dad worked for Bell Telephone and her mom was the embodiment of the "feminine mystique." Chrissie was a good girl in her childhood but once she got hooked on music her path was set.
The 60s was high school, getting high, and going to see any band she could get a ride to. Somehow she graduated and got accepted at Kent State. Yes, she was there in the crowd during the shooting of college students protesting the Vietnam War.
Chrissie was not born under a bad sign. She had luck protecting her throughout a wild and dangerous young adult life. She learned guitar, she loved guitar gods, she took anything available to get high, but always she was trying to form a band. It was a long time coming but finally in London, The Pretenders became reality. Her book tells the whole story.
The Pretenders also became on "overnight" success. None of us knew it had taken her over a decade to get there. The substance abuse of course went into overdrive but her luck held. Like any self respecting rocker who plans to have a long career, she eventually quit all the drugs and tours to this day.
Chrissie Hynde is not only a great songwriter. She is a great writer. Reading her book is like having her right in your head telling her incredible story. Quite simply, she rocks!!
October 27, 2015
Utter disappointment. Obvious that the publisher hoped she had another Patti Smith memoir and decided to split one book into two (I'm guessing another volume is coming) and the editors were too cowed by Chrissie to use a red pen. If you relish a poorly written, long-winded history of Ohio, unending accounts of endless drug use, unfounded and over-indulged ego, and an artist's early account with barely a nod to the artists around her-- this is your book. There is nothing on craft. There is no personal reflection. There is no intimacy. There are, as other reviewers have stated a few pages of interest, Kent State, London in the pre-punk days, sitting a the table with Mick Jones granny. (Where's his book, by the way?) But honestly, not enough to sustain a reader.
September 22, 2015
This is an interesting story of Chrissie Hynde's life leading up to being the front-woman for the Pretenders, but don't expect to learn much about the actual band or its activities (other than drug consumption). The Pretenders don't form as a band until near the end of the book. The book also skips around a lot, discussing people who have not clearly been introduced to readers, which makes it a bit confusing to follow. But the book leaves no doubt that Chrissie Hynde was a true bad-a**, no B.S. rock and roll icon.
January 11, 2016
Disappointing. The writing is mediocre and it is repetitive; we took some drugs, then we took some more drugs - and then we took some drugs. She seemed to have a big issue with being female - unsurprising, given the era; women were still very much second-class citizens, one of the reasons she stood out as a lead singer - there weren't many. Still and all, she was very naive, by her own telling. She seems to have seen herself as more 'like a man' than feminine but her idea of feminine (back then) was as stereotyped and limited - as conformist - as was the rest of western society's. As she almost articulates, her non-conformism was conformist in the extreme, ultimately. Like her generation, she was more rebellious than non-conformist: they were the first generation to have the freedom to rebel without incurring social punishment. They demanded the very freedom they already had, not recognising it for what it was.
The book she has written is more about her life before being a Pretender; thus, the very things a fan would read it for (that I read it for) are absent. I wanted to know about her music, her experiences as a woman fronting a band, the songs they wrote, by whom they were written and what meaning they had for her. I would have liked an insight into her own ethos of life. That, it appeared, was - take more drugs and be a passenger on society. There was no sign of a sense of responsibility.
Yes, she was reckless - but no more so than many others of her generation; my own is but a few years behind so, though in other countries, I can well relate to all she speaks of, including the drug taking of that era.
This book should really be renamed: Wasted: both her intelligence and time - and her chemically induced state of mind. More a pretender than a Pretender, sadly. I am not anti mind-altering substances but decided quite young that they wasted time. How sad that so many justified their use as non-conformism and the way to be cool. As ever, I observe that self-justification and intolerance are the only real sins, being the foundation of all ill behaviour in humanity.
I still love the music but have been left with a tarnished image of a hero of my younger days. I guess we all want our heroes to be greater than the average; it is always a disappointment to encounter the proverbial clay feet.
The book she has written is more about her life before being a Pretender; thus, the very things a fan would read it for (that I read it for) are absent. I wanted to know about her music, her experiences as a woman fronting a band, the songs they wrote, by whom they were written and what meaning they had for her. I would have liked an insight into her own ethos of life. That, it appeared, was - take more drugs and be a passenger on society. There was no sign of a sense of responsibility.
Yes, she was reckless - but no more so than many others of her generation; my own is but a few years behind so, though in other countries, I can well relate to all she speaks of, including the drug taking of that era.
This book should really be renamed: Wasted: both her intelligence and time - and her chemically induced state of mind. More a pretender than a Pretender, sadly. I am not anti mind-altering substances but decided quite young that they wasted time. How sad that so many justified their use as non-conformism and the way to be cool. As ever, I observe that self-justification and intolerance are the only real sins, being the foundation of all ill behaviour in humanity.
I still love the music but have been left with a tarnished image of a hero of my younger days. I guess we all want our heroes to be greater than the average; it is always a disappointment to encounter the proverbial clay feet.
October 26, 2015
I see in other reviews that Chrissie has gotten some flack for various aspects of this book. I just want to go on the record as saying this is one of the better, and more personable, rock autobiographies I've read. I'll admit, I was never much into the Pretenders. I liked their songs well enough, I was just never a rabid fan. My interest in Chrissie stemmed from the fact that she's from my hometown of Akron, Ohio, and also, from everything I'd come to know about her, she seemed like a nice, down-to-earth person. Nothing in this book has swayed me from that opinion. In fact, it's only been reinforced.
Initially, I wanted to read this book at least through the parts about her early childhood growing up in Ohio; however, I soon found myself eagerly reading the entire book. Chrissie has a self-deprecating attitude and a humorous side to her that I found immediately appealing. I found all of her stories and anecdotes amusing and enjoyed reading about how she came to be where she's at today. The hilarity of her line "besides, I'm from Akron," can only be appreciated by those who have first hand experience regarding the Akron-Cleveland divide.
I'm sure there's more to her story than where she ended, but I thought it was a fitting place to end. Her story is still going on today and with the deaths of two of the original members of the band, it was really the only place she could end it. It was done with grace and aplomb, exactly the way she's lived her life.
Initially, I wanted to read this book at least through the parts about her early childhood growing up in Ohio; however, I soon found myself eagerly reading the entire book. Chrissie has a self-deprecating attitude and a humorous side to her that I found immediately appealing. I found all of her stories and anecdotes amusing and enjoyed reading about how she came to be where she's at today. The hilarity of her line "besides, I'm from Akron," can only be appreciated by those who have first hand experience regarding the Akron-Cleveland divide.
I'm sure there's more to her story than where she ended, but I thought it was a fitting place to end. Her story is still going on today and with the deaths of two of the original members of the band, it was really the only place she could end it. It was done with grace and aplomb, exactly the way she's lived her life.
December 28, 2017
Wow! Im so glad Chrissie Hynde is alive. She's always been a music hero of mine, so I was keen to read this, but it was hard work. Not because it's badly written, but because it's so brutally honest and detailed that it was not always easy to read. So many drugs, so many shit decisions, it's amazing she lived to tell it all. The book got better for me at once the story of the Pretenders arrived, although she was such a part of the music scene that her stories about the people of the time are fascinating. I loved them and the songs she wrote, and it was incredible to read that someone so obviously talented didn't think that were. Thank goodness she got the band together and blessed us with her songs. Thanks goodness she made it.
June 27, 2018
I feel exhausted. This was a powerful book.
Written about the author, by the author. It's unflinching and honest about drug abuse, bikers, bands, bad boys and bad girls, the desire to make music, success and tragedy.
There is dry humour here but lots of dark, scary times. Chrissie Hynde has a way with words , both in her song writing and in this book.
quote from New York Times
" Through all of the tragedy and the mishaps, Reckless remains first and foremost a love letter to rock 'n' Roll"
Written about the author, by the author. It's unflinching and honest about drug abuse, bikers, bands, bad boys and bad girls, the desire to make music, success and tragedy.
There is dry humour here but lots of dark, scary times. Chrissie Hynde has a way with words , both in her song writing and in this book.
quote from New York Times
" Through all of the tragedy and the mishaps, Reckless remains first and foremost a love letter to rock 'n' Roll"
December 26, 2015
Dullest 'rock-n-roll' book ever. Note to self: Quick! Re-read 'The Dirt'! I hate how a non-Brit starts spouting off English colloquialisms, like "Silly sod!" and "Get yer kit off!" Lady, you're from Ohio. Enough already.
February 20, 2018
I'm giving up. I have already listened to 4 hours of this less than 9 hour book. it does not hold my interest. Also the pretenders have yet to get together. I usually don't give up on books. but I have to many to read and listen to then to keep listening to a book that I just don't care about
February 12, 2018
Freedom is a difficult thing not only to embody, but to define. Kris Kristoffeson writes (and Janis sings) "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" and The Eagles have it "freedom, well that's just some people talkin'..." Rock n' roll at its best ("purest" seems like the wrong word) perhaps embodies this best of all (at least in the postwar West). There are costs associated with freedom, of course. And a kind of void as well. The void gets elided, usually. The story becomes one of addiction and recovery, or finding peace through blah-blah. The dangerous days, the days when the music came, are hard to describe. But Chrissie Hynde's memoir, My Life as a Pretender, allows glimpses into freedom's void. And the price (and costs) of freedom. And why most people just don't get it.
Yes, I am aware of the books flaws. There are many of them: it is poorly written, in places sketchy or confusing, fraught with cliché, off-the-shelf cultural analysis, and half-assed character sketches. The beginning of the book is so bad that I almost gave it up: Sixties countercultural clichés and balderdash with dabs of incoherent sentimentality and hippie complaints. Throughout the book you are treated to Hynde's hatred of meat-eaters - sometimes hard to take from an alcoholic with a drug problem. But I persisted, and I am glad I did; the book is self-critical to an astonishing degree - and I don't mean the typical aw-shucks celebrity self-deprecation. Hynde's anxiety and self-loathing about what-to-be comes through here in a way few others would dare. It is one of the best celebrity-artist's memoirs I've ever read, right up there with Steve Martin's Born Standing Up.
One of the best things about it was Hynde's very clear-eyed account of what it is like to be young and trying to figure out what to do with yourself. This anxiety increases (for us coddled Americans, anyway) as the teens give way to the twenties and more of your cohort starts to figure it out while you remain befuddled. Awful times for many of us. Hynde obliterates the anxiety with drugs and booze and rock, but the anxiety remains. Writing from her success, she doesn't try to make it sound as if she were bound for glory. She watched in dismay as some of her partying pals at Kent State sober up, make the honor roll, and go on to graduate and get real, straight lives. Her move to London was a desperate, clueless leap into the void. Then came the tentative, decade-long creep towards putting together a band.
One of the most astonishing things about this book is Hynde's fearlessness combined with a craving for novelty, and, largely submerged or incoherent until she was almost thirty, her fierce ambition. She did things as a scrawny 15 year-old that I would, a big 6'2" male I'd never do on my most courageous day. Stepping off the bus at a fenced-in college campus in the middle of Mexico for a semester abroad, Hynde says "no way" to sharing dorm rooms with the chirpy co-eds she rode down with. Instead she goes over to a row of men sitting under an awning watching the girls and asks if any of them have a place where she can stay. Some guy with a big moustache has such a place... Funny thing is, she escapes harm living this way, despite doing a lot of drugs and standing out in the paddock nude with a cow (or a horse, I cannot remember) while her roommate take photos.
***
Another thing about this book that is interesting (and controversial) is that Hynde doesn't take a "women in rock" line. God knows she paid her dues, but although she acknowledges the special difficulties inherent in being a woman - sexual abuse being but one aspect - she never sees this as in any way defining her. In fact she would attribute some of her breaks - especially her stint as a correspondent for the prestigious London musical magazine NME - as being a product of her louche, punky female sex appeal and not for her abilities. Her disgust (self- and otherwise) about being a rock journalist surprised me - she can't write, she says again and again (and this book sometimes rather supports this conclusion). Then there's the sexual politics - her admiration for Iggy Pop transcends all others...and she sleeps with him. Ray Davies of the Kinks - one of her teenage idols - has a daughter with her (barely mentioned - this happened after The Pretenders fell apart). And Hynde likes to sew, sews for her band and boyfriends - no apologies given, or necessary, but like Sylvia Plath insisting on being referred to as a "poetess" this tends to make some uncomfortable in the 21st century. But this feminine aspect is never hidden or occluded by Hynde - I get the feeling it is to her just a part of this story, a not especially important part. But even if you stop events at 1982 as she does, for all her abundant street cred, Hynde is never a Riot Grrrl. In this era of cultural identity (and politics) this makes Hynde, I would think, a odd man (er, woman) out. Her courage, tenacity, and willingness to take on what was in those days overwhelmingly a man's world would make her a natural in regards to feminist heroes. But she refuses to be an exemplar this way, understanding, I think, that this approach, for all its merits is not rock n' roll. You rock or you don't. For Hynde, I think it fair to say that identity is all about what you do, not who you are - besides, who are you if you aren't doing anything? This anxiety - to do something great - suffuses this book. And yeah, it's harder for women, but then it's pretty freakin' hard for everybody to stick to it and keep it real and not choke on your own vomit in a hotel room or move back in with mom like Syd Barrett did and mumble to yourself down in the basement, or blow your head off with a shotgun like Kurt Cobain...
Authenticity, like freedom is impossible to pin down, because once pinned it dies. To get literary about it, Hynde seems to have tried for a total "disorganization of the senses" that Rimbaud called for, a necessity for an artist in order to break the bonds of society and become a visionary. But she doesn't try to tart up being blitzed into some sort of artistic or intellectual thing. Hynde has too great a bullshit detector to credit herself this much, although she does again and again complain about the stultifying conformity of Akron, Ohio middle class c. 1960. But she wasn't really trying for some sort of Épater la bourgeoisie so much as she was just trying to avoid them altogether. She is grateful to her parents, in fact, for providing some sort of boundary she could kick against, a necessary condition for any real teenage rebellion. Sex, drugs, rock n' roll - and then booze - interestingly added a bit late to the mix because only straights drank liquor - until Hynde discovered she had a real liking for the stuff (and admits to being a real mean drunk). Which is to say, a lot of rock's appeal is that all that stuff simply feels good. In short, Hynde just liked to get f**ked up. Very rock n' roll.
***
The problem, of course, is falling off the edge and, of course, a lot of them did, including half The Pretenders. Although the book as a whole is pretty sketchy as a narrative, Hynde gives one of the great, vivid rundowns - in glimpses, mostly - of what it is like to be on a rock 'n' roll tour bus with three bandmates and a variety of managers, roadies, and hangerson. It is awful. All The Pretenders were pretty much jerks (their drummer being the exception - rather going against the grain of rock n' roll clichés):
James Honeyman-Scott: A guitar-obsessive, perhaps a genius, Honeyman-Scott was the ingredient that made The Pretenders gel. He didn't like punk, and moved Hynde away to a chimey-jangley pop sound that Hynde had always liked anyway, back in the Sixties in Akron. Beyond the genius, he was a boor and vulgarian of the first order. Getting drunk and farting really loud in restaurants was the height of hilarity for this bumpkin dumbass. Grabbing flight attendants' boobs was another classic Honeyman-Scott move. He was interested in very little beyond guitars and getting wasted, a kind of musical idiot savant. I'd always heard that Hynde was "devastated" by his death, but beyond her appreciation for his talent, she didn't seem to like him much personally, so far as I could tell from this book. There wasn't much to like, apparently.
Pete Farndon: Just as the band was coming together, Farndon and Hynde had a stormy sexual relationships (all her relationships were stormy) that he apparently never got over. His drug use made him increasingly isolated and unstable to the point where the others sacked him - only to have Honeyman-Scott die two days later of an overdose. Farndon's boorishness, vanity, and general off-the-shelf bad druggie behavior made him tiresome just to read about, but he still sounded better to be around than Jimmy Honeyman-Scott. He died a year or so later, drug overdose, drowned in the bathtub.
Martin Chambers: The only reasonably decent person in the band, Hynde never makes it entirely clear if he was an especially good drummer. She does complain about his clothes - he liked nice suits. Actually, looking at old photos of The Pretenders, his suits have a rather timeless look that has worn well; a sort of Charlie Watts dignity. The others, even Hynde for all her fashion sense, had a bit of the 'eighties fashion victim look to them - jean jacket cutoffs over a leather biker jacket. Or Farndon's Rising Sun Samurai shtick (Hynde complains about this too). Honeyman-Scott had a sort of stuck-in-1974 fluffy blow-dried shag thing going - he could've fit in perfectly well with The Raspberries. Of course they couldn't have all dressed like Chambers - The Godfathers tried this and it seemed a bit labored, like Paul Revere and the Raiders in their Continental Army finery, you know. When the band visited Hynde's parents in Akron, Chambers went out bird-watching with her father, something I found so utterly decent and human compared to Sid Vicious encounters with gobbing and heroin and murder....but I digress...
***
Perhaps people like Hynde - bravely seeking experience - are common. But Hynde's ambition and talent kept her together (and kept her from self-annihilation) and I found it exhilarating how she embodied that one characteristic that all successful artists share: persistence. She is one of those oddball artists who was a connoisseur first - her love of music preceded her ambition to write and play for years; Paul Gaugin comes to mind (and Peter Buck of REM as well - a retail record store manager with an enormous, eclectic collection before he ever joined a band). Characteristically, Hynde never gives herself much credit (except when it comes to vegetarianism - she is insufferable about that) - not sure if she could sing, hardly mentions her guitar chops, or if she even has them, and is sketchy about her writing process (I would've liked more about that). This attitude of hers could be seen as self-loathing (a result of the trauma from her rape, some would say; others might say because she was a woman trying to make it in a man's rock n' roll world), but I see it more as a product of the lacerating self-consciousness of what used to be called the True Artist. It is only until you have ransacked your talent and seen where its limitations and dead spots dwell that you can fully grasp what failure is - and the fact that all True Artists this side of Michaelangelo fail - they fail in their vision, they fail in their ability to live up to their ideals, they fail their audiences.
Which leads to the question of talent. Just how talented is Chrissy Hynde? She never directly addresses this, and when she does she is characteristically dismissive. She's not sure if she could sing. She's not sure she can play. Her weird time signatures come about because she cannot count. But although she doesn't praise this aspect of her talent, she doesn't modify the time signatures when more technically adept male musicians - who love to count, as she points out - are baffled. She knows what she wants and does not compromise. Again, persistence. But were The Pretenders a great band? Is Chrissie Hynde a great songwriter? I'd have to say no to both questions. There's only a few "great" bands and I don't think The Pretenders make it. Rather they fall in the might've been category, with Big Star, for instance. Bands who had the potential but flamed out with drugs, booze, enmity, inattention, failure of nerve, whatever. Hynde acknowledges the ravages of drugs on her life, her friends, her bandmates, but she never quite comes out and addresses what it did to her talent. She never let drugs entirely wreck her talent, but wreckage occurred, I think. But had she lead a more responsible, less dangerous life, would she have accomplished anything at all? Rock n' roll is in a way about wasting it all - your talent, your friends, your body, your life. Efforts to homogenize this aspect of rock, to make it corporate, put it to bed in college, enshrine it in the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame are all either besides the point, or far worse, endangering the species. This isn't just a Rock thing. All art - hip-hop to poetry to sculpture to ragtime to dance - it all has something to do with defiance and freedom (that word again!) and taking no-going-back risks. This has been cheapened by bad sloganeering (and I'd include Neil Young among the guilty, hey hey my oh my), but there is something to it. And it's best to shut the f*** up and strap on a guitar.
***
And perhaps I should note that although I liked the Pretenders a lot, I was never a huge fan. I do recall when "Brass in Pocket," their first hit, hit the radio. I was a freshman/sophomore in high school and the radio was full of crap - so I would've told you. Looking back on it, I rather like the ragbag Top 40 of those days, when "Brass in Pocket" came seemingly out of nowhere: Kenny Rogers, Anne Murray, Chic, Billy Joel, Ronnie Millsap, REO Speedwagon. The Top 40 hadn't been fragmented yet, but there was a lot of awful songs out there, stuff your grandparents might like, with some occasional rockers - an interesting mix, actually. Or at least I found myself (secretly) fond of stuff like "The Pina Colada Song," "Le Freak" and "Hot Child in the City" even though, I'd insist I was a rocker. "Brass in Pocket" was interesting, I thought when it came out, but it never lit me up; at the time I thought of it as more of a novelty song than anything cutting edge (Hynde does not much like the song either, so she says in several places). I much preferred Tom Petty's "Refugee" - another weird American rocker bouncing back from England from those days. But what did I know? Mostly I just listened to The Beatles, over and over and over. I was the kid who loved the Beatles, that was my identity to some extent... Anyway, the Pretenders song that seems indispensable to me is "Back on the Chain Gang" - one of my all time favorites (I bought the single at some point). Their cover of The Kinks "Stop Your Sobbing" is pretty wonderful too. And, I should add, "Brass in Pocket" is much better than I initially gave it credit for. Listening to the many Pretenders tracks I don't know on YouTube while working on this, I found a lot of songs that verged on having a melody and then just sort of noodling off, Hynde's iffy lyrics and voice trying too hard to ramp up the voltage while Honeyman-Scott and the boys jingle-jangled. In college I much preferred REM back in the day for my dose of college boy jingle-jangle (thought I'm not sure REM ever quite hit the level of "Back on the Chaingang" or "Stop Your Sobbing.").
Freedom's void - I mentioned this at the beginning of this incoherent review. Towards the end of my undergraduate years, after two decades being the dutiful if lazy and sloppy student, I found myself facing graduation with fear and loathing. So many of my friends were approaching adulthood with optimism and fortitude when all I could see was drudgery and limitations. So I did what a lot of people do in this situation and started a band...oops....no I didn't. I have no musical talent whatsoever. What I did was signed up for graduate school. Same-old same-old but at least I was able to slack off for another year or two (I made it two). In graduate school I went quasi-punk - cut my own (thinning) hair, spiked it, and sewed a Union Jack to the back of my jean jacket and started hanging out in punk(esque) bars in Columbus Ohio. Yeah, I cringe at this now, but I was pretty desperate. I loved rock, and I had no interest in leading a conventional life, getting a new car, all that. I also lacked the courage of my convictions (or pretty much any kind of courage whatsoever) and so limped through my two years, unable to think of a good reason not to get my useless diploma and went home and got a job in the family business. My failure was complete. Just as I started my job, I heard a new record called "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and for a difficult year I blared Nevermind in my cassette deck on my way to and from work. Nirvana kind of saved my life there. Then P. J. Harvey. Then...well, I don't listen to new music anymore. Too old, too tired, too disdainful (everything sounds over-produced to me now, not that over-producing didn't happen in my younger years all the time too - Hynde points this out in her book).
Readers' complaints that it ends too soon or doesn't have enough about The Pretenders is sorta right but mostly wrong - the book ends where it should, with the dissolution of The Pretenders in 1982. Yeah, the group went on for decades, but it is just Hynde and a changing array of session guys (don't call them that!), kept together to let Hynde tell herself she is still in a group and not a solo act. Lennon (the Plastic Ono Band) and McCartney (Wings) did the same thing, probably because there is nothing better (and perhaps nothing worse) than being in a rock band that jells. For a brief moment, The Pretenders jelled, then half of 'em died.
But the last page is a disaster. In the book's sketchy, clumsy "Epilogue" she sums up The Pretenders' last 35 years:
"I kept the band going, loosely speaking. Different lineups and producers have seen me through and it's always a pleasure to do the old songs.
So be it.
I went on to have a lovely little family and found out that children really are the most joyful thing..." (p. 311)
So, uh, staying in Akron, getting married and having kids would've been "the most joyful thing" after all? Not entirely convinced here. Which is to say that the end of the book is trite, unbelievable. The Epilogue sums up not only The Pretenders, but also Hynde's life since 1982 in a single page. It's as if she wasn't even interested in the past 30+ years:
"I think it's easy to see that the moral of my story is that drugs, including tobacco and alcohol, only cause suffering. I read Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop books and I stopped.
Philosophically, I've kept an ongoing relationship with the Bhagavad Gita, the glory I bask in, always finding answers for everything and solace..." (p. 311)
Whatever. That's the trouble with rock n' roll; there really is no place to go but dead or straight. There's no halfway about it. No "finding answers for everything" and finally, no basking in "glory," no "solace."
Yes, I am aware of the books flaws. There are many of them: it is poorly written, in places sketchy or confusing, fraught with cliché, off-the-shelf cultural analysis, and half-assed character sketches. The beginning of the book is so bad that I almost gave it up: Sixties countercultural clichés and balderdash with dabs of incoherent sentimentality and hippie complaints. Throughout the book you are treated to Hynde's hatred of meat-eaters - sometimes hard to take from an alcoholic with a drug problem. But I persisted, and I am glad I did; the book is self-critical to an astonishing degree - and I don't mean the typical aw-shucks celebrity self-deprecation. Hynde's anxiety and self-loathing about what-to-be comes through here in a way few others would dare. It is one of the best celebrity-artist's memoirs I've ever read, right up there with Steve Martin's Born Standing Up.
One of the best things about it was Hynde's very clear-eyed account of what it is like to be young and trying to figure out what to do with yourself. This anxiety increases (for us coddled Americans, anyway) as the teens give way to the twenties and more of your cohort starts to figure it out while you remain befuddled. Awful times for many of us. Hynde obliterates the anxiety with drugs and booze and rock, but the anxiety remains. Writing from her success, she doesn't try to make it sound as if she were bound for glory. She watched in dismay as some of her partying pals at Kent State sober up, make the honor roll, and go on to graduate and get real, straight lives. Her move to London was a desperate, clueless leap into the void. Then came the tentative, decade-long creep towards putting together a band.
One of the most astonishing things about this book is Hynde's fearlessness combined with a craving for novelty, and, largely submerged or incoherent until she was almost thirty, her fierce ambition. She did things as a scrawny 15 year-old that I would, a big 6'2" male I'd never do on my most courageous day. Stepping off the bus at a fenced-in college campus in the middle of Mexico for a semester abroad, Hynde says "no way" to sharing dorm rooms with the chirpy co-eds she rode down with. Instead she goes over to a row of men sitting under an awning watching the girls and asks if any of them have a place where she can stay. Some guy with a big moustache has such a place... Funny thing is, she escapes harm living this way, despite doing a lot of drugs and standing out in the paddock nude with a cow (or a horse, I cannot remember) while her roommate take photos.
***
Another thing about this book that is interesting (and controversial) is that Hynde doesn't take a "women in rock" line. God knows she paid her dues, but although she acknowledges the special difficulties inherent in being a woman - sexual abuse being but one aspect - she never sees this as in any way defining her. In fact she would attribute some of her breaks - especially her stint as a correspondent for the prestigious London musical magazine NME - as being a product of her louche, punky female sex appeal and not for her abilities. Her disgust (self- and otherwise) about being a rock journalist surprised me - she can't write, she says again and again (and this book sometimes rather supports this conclusion). Then there's the sexual politics - her admiration for Iggy Pop transcends all others...and she sleeps with him. Ray Davies of the Kinks - one of her teenage idols - has a daughter with her (barely mentioned - this happened after The Pretenders fell apart). And Hynde likes to sew, sews for her band and boyfriends - no apologies given, or necessary, but like Sylvia Plath insisting on being referred to as a "poetess" this tends to make some uncomfortable in the 21st century. But this feminine aspect is never hidden or occluded by Hynde - I get the feeling it is to her just a part of this story, a not especially important part. But even if you stop events at 1982 as she does, for all her abundant street cred, Hynde is never a Riot Grrrl. In this era of cultural identity (and politics) this makes Hynde, I would think, a odd man (er, woman) out. Her courage, tenacity, and willingness to take on what was in those days overwhelmingly a man's world would make her a natural in regards to feminist heroes. But she refuses to be an exemplar this way, understanding, I think, that this approach, for all its merits is not rock n' roll. You rock or you don't. For Hynde, I think it fair to say that identity is all about what you do, not who you are - besides, who are you if you aren't doing anything? This anxiety - to do something great - suffuses this book. And yeah, it's harder for women, but then it's pretty freakin' hard for everybody to stick to it and keep it real and not choke on your own vomit in a hotel room or move back in with mom like Syd Barrett did and mumble to yourself down in the basement, or blow your head off with a shotgun like Kurt Cobain...
Authenticity, like freedom is impossible to pin down, because once pinned it dies. To get literary about it, Hynde seems to have tried for a total "disorganization of the senses" that Rimbaud called for, a necessity for an artist in order to break the bonds of society and become a visionary. But she doesn't try to tart up being blitzed into some sort of artistic or intellectual thing. Hynde has too great a bullshit detector to credit herself this much, although she does again and again complain about the stultifying conformity of Akron, Ohio middle class c. 1960. But she wasn't really trying for some sort of Épater la bourgeoisie so much as she was just trying to avoid them altogether. She is grateful to her parents, in fact, for providing some sort of boundary she could kick against, a necessary condition for any real teenage rebellion. Sex, drugs, rock n' roll - and then booze - interestingly added a bit late to the mix because only straights drank liquor - until Hynde discovered she had a real liking for the stuff (and admits to being a real mean drunk). Which is to say, a lot of rock's appeal is that all that stuff simply feels good. In short, Hynde just liked to get f**ked up. Very rock n' roll.
***
The problem, of course, is falling off the edge and, of course, a lot of them did, including half The Pretenders. Although the book as a whole is pretty sketchy as a narrative, Hynde gives one of the great, vivid rundowns - in glimpses, mostly - of what it is like to be on a rock 'n' roll tour bus with three bandmates and a variety of managers, roadies, and hangerson. It is awful. All The Pretenders were pretty much jerks (their drummer being the exception - rather going against the grain of rock n' roll clichés):
James Honeyman-Scott: A guitar-obsessive, perhaps a genius, Honeyman-Scott was the ingredient that made The Pretenders gel. He didn't like punk, and moved Hynde away to a chimey-jangley pop sound that Hynde had always liked anyway, back in the Sixties in Akron. Beyond the genius, he was a boor and vulgarian of the first order. Getting drunk and farting really loud in restaurants was the height of hilarity for this bumpkin dumbass. Grabbing flight attendants' boobs was another classic Honeyman-Scott move. He was interested in very little beyond guitars and getting wasted, a kind of musical idiot savant. I'd always heard that Hynde was "devastated" by his death, but beyond her appreciation for his talent, she didn't seem to like him much personally, so far as I could tell from this book. There wasn't much to like, apparently.
Pete Farndon: Just as the band was coming together, Farndon and Hynde had a stormy sexual relationships (all her relationships were stormy) that he apparently never got over. His drug use made him increasingly isolated and unstable to the point where the others sacked him - only to have Honeyman-Scott die two days later of an overdose. Farndon's boorishness, vanity, and general off-the-shelf bad druggie behavior made him tiresome just to read about, but he still sounded better to be around than Jimmy Honeyman-Scott. He died a year or so later, drug overdose, drowned in the bathtub.
Martin Chambers: The only reasonably decent person in the band, Hynde never makes it entirely clear if he was an especially good drummer. She does complain about his clothes - he liked nice suits. Actually, looking at old photos of The Pretenders, his suits have a rather timeless look that has worn well; a sort of Charlie Watts dignity. The others, even Hynde for all her fashion sense, had a bit of the 'eighties fashion victim look to them - jean jacket cutoffs over a leather biker jacket. Or Farndon's Rising Sun Samurai shtick (Hynde complains about this too). Honeyman-Scott had a sort of stuck-in-1974 fluffy blow-dried shag thing going - he could've fit in perfectly well with The Raspberries. Of course they couldn't have all dressed like Chambers - The Godfathers tried this and it seemed a bit labored, like Paul Revere and the Raiders in their Continental Army finery, you know. When the band visited Hynde's parents in Akron, Chambers went out bird-watching with her father, something I found so utterly decent and human compared to Sid Vicious encounters with gobbing and heroin and murder....but I digress...
***
Perhaps people like Hynde - bravely seeking experience - are common. But Hynde's ambition and talent kept her together (and kept her from self-annihilation) and I found it exhilarating how she embodied that one characteristic that all successful artists share: persistence. She is one of those oddball artists who was a connoisseur first - her love of music preceded her ambition to write and play for years; Paul Gaugin comes to mind (and Peter Buck of REM as well - a retail record store manager with an enormous, eclectic collection before he ever joined a band). Characteristically, Hynde never gives herself much credit (except when it comes to vegetarianism - she is insufferable about that) - not sure if she could sing, hardly mentions her guitar chops, or if she even has them, and is sketchy about her writing process (I would've liked more about that). This attitude of hers could be seen as self-loathing (a result of the trauma from her rape, some would say; others might say because she was a woman trying to make it in a man's rock n' roll world), but I see it more as a product of the lacerating self-consciousness of what used to be called the True Artist. It is only until you have ransacked your talent and seen where its limitations and dead spots dwell that you can fully grasp what failure is - and the fact that all True Artists this side of Michaelangelo fail - they fail in their vision, they fail in their ability to live up to their ideals, they fail their audiences.
Which leads to the question of talent. Just how talented is Chrissy Hynde? She never directly addresses this, and when she does she is characteristically dismissive. She's not sure if she could sing. She's not sure she can play. Her weird time signatures come about because she cannot count. But although she doesn't praise this aspect of her talent, she doesn't modify the time signatures when more technically adept male musicians - who love to count, as she points out - are baffled. She knows what she wants and does not compromise. Again, persistence. But were The Pretenders a great band? Is Chrissie Hynde a great songwriter? I'd have to say no to both questions. There's only a few "great" bands and I don't think The Pretenders make it. Rather they fall in the might've been category, with Big Star, for instance. Bands who had the potential but flamed out with drugs, booze, enmity, inattention, failure of nerve, whatever. Hynde acknowledges the ravages of drugs on her life, her friends, her bandmates, but she never quite comes out and addresses what it did to her talent. She never let drugs entirely wreck her talent, but wreckage occurred, I think. But had she lead a more responsible, less dangerous life, would she have accomplished anything at all? Rock n' roll is in a way about wasting it all - your talent, your friends, your body, your life. Efforts to homogenize this aspect of rock, to make it corporate, put it to bed in college, enshrine it in the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame are all either besides the point, or far worse, endangering the species. This isn't just a Rock thing. All art - hip-hop to poetry to sculpture to ragtime to dance - it all has something to do with defiance and freedom (that word again!) and taking no-going-back risks. This has been cheapened by bad sloganeering (and I'd include Neil Young among the guilty, hey hey my oh my), but there is something to it. And it's best to shut the f*** up and strap on a guitar.
***
And perhaps I should note that although I liked the Pretenders a lot, I was never a huge fan. I do recall when "Brass in Pocket," their first hit, hit the radio. I was a freshman/sophomore in high school and the radio was full of crap - so I would've told you. Looking back on it, I rather like the ragbag Top 40 of those days, when "Brass in Pocket" came seemingly out of nowhere: Kenny Rogers, Anne Murray, Chic, Billy Joel, Ronnie Millsap, REO Speedwagon. The Top 40 hadn't been fragmented yet, but there was a lot of awful songs out there, stuff your grandparents might like, with some occasional rockers - an interesting mix, actually. Or at least I found myself (secretly) fond of stuff like "The Pina Colada Song," "Le Freak" and "Hot Child in the City" even though, I'd insist I was a rocker. "Brass in Pocket" was interesting, I thought when it came out, but it never lit me up; at the time I thought of it as more of a novelty song than anything cutting edge (Hynde does not much like the song either, so she says in several places). I much preferred Tom Petty's "Refugee" - another weird American rocker bouncing back from England from those days. But what did I know? Mostly I just listened to The Beatles, over and over and over. I was the kid who loved the Beatles, that was my identity to some extent... Anyway, the Pretenders song that seems indispensable to me is "Back on the Chain Gang" - one of my all time favorites (I bought the single at some point). Their cover of The Kinks "Stop Your Sobbing" is pretty wonderful too. And, I should add, "Brass in Pocket" is much better than I initially gave it credit for. Listening to the many Pretenders tracks I don't know on YouTube while working on this, I found a lot of songs that verged on having a melody and then just sort of noodling off, Hynde's iffy lyrics and voice trying too hard to ramp up the voltage while Honeyman-Scott and the boys jingle-jangled. In college I much preferred REM back in the day for my dose of college boy jingle-jangle (thought I'm not sure REM ever quite hit the level of "Back on the Chaingang" or "Stop Your Sobbing.").
Freedom's void - I mentioned this at the beginning of this incoherent review. Towards the end of my undergraduate years, after two decades being the dutiful if lazy and sloppy student, I found myself facing graduation with fear and loathing. So many of my friends were approaching adulthood with optimism and fortitude when all I could see was drudgery and limitations. So I did what a lot of people do in this situation and started a band...oops....no I didn't. I have no musical talent whatsoever. What I did was signed up for graduate school. Same-old same-old but at least I was able to slack off for another year or two (I made it two). In graduate school I went quasi-punk - cut my own (thinning) hair, spiked it, and sewed a Union Jack to the back of my jean jacket and started hanging out in punk(esque) bars in Columbus Ohio. Yeah, I cringe at this now, but I was pretty desperate. I loved rock, and I had no interest in leading a conventional life, getting a new car, all that. I also lacked the courage of my convictions (or pretty much any kind of courage whatsoever) and so limped through my two years, unable to think of a good reason not to get my useless diploma and went home and got a job in the family business. My failure was complete. Just as I started my job, I heard a new record called "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and for a difficult year I blared Nevermind in my cassette deck on my way to and from work. Nirvana kind of saved my life there. Then P. J. Harvey. Then...well, I don't listen to new music anymore. Too old, too tired, too disdainful (everything sounds over-produced to me now, not that over-producing didn't happen in my younger years all the time too - Hynde points this out in her book).
Readers' complaints that it ends too soon or doesn't have enough about The Pretenders is sorta right but mostly wrong - the book ends where it should, with the dissolution of The Pretenders in 1982. Yeah, the group went on for decades, but it is just Hynde and a changing array of session guys (don't call them that!), kept together to let Hynde tell herself she is still in a group and not a solo act. Lennon (the Plastic Ono Band) and McCartney (Wings) did the same thing, probably because there is nothing better (and perhaps nothing worse) than being in a rock band that jells. For a brief moment, The Pretenders jelled, then half of 'em died.
But the last page is a disaster. In the book's sketchy, clumsy "Epilogue" she sums up The Pretenders' last 35 years:
"I kept the band going, loosely speaking. Different lineups and producers have seen me through and it's always a pleasure to do the old songs.
So be it.
I went on to have a lovely little family and found out that children really are the most joyful thing..." (p. 311)
So, uh, staying in Akron, getting married and having kids would've been "the most joyful thing" after all? Not entirely convinced here. Which is to say that the end of the book is trite, unbelievable. The Epilogue sums up not only The Pretenders, but also Hynde's life since 1982 in a single page. It's as if she wasn't even interested in the past 30+ years:
"I think it's easy to see that the moral of my story is that drugs, including tobacco and alcohol, only cause suffering. I read Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop books and I stopped.
Philosophically, I've kept an ongoing relationship with the Bhagavad Gita, the glory I bask in, always finding answers for everything and solace..." (p. 311)
Whatever. That's the trouble with rock n' roll; there really is no place to go but dead or straight. There's no halfway about it. No "finding answers for everything" and finally, no basking in "glory," no "solace."
August 7, 2019
Using her home town of Akron, Ohio to make a bigger point about the US, Hynde speaks about how the vast post war developments across the States influenced, shaped and changed the entire country. She highlights some really interesting points with regards to the vast shifts that really started to kill off the smaller towns and cities in favour of offering more direct and quicker routes to the major cities instead which thrived even more as result.
She then goes onto paint a vivid and colourful background about what was going on at the time she was growing up in the Mid-West during the 60s, the shadow of Vietnam, the birth of the pill and of course the many great bands who toured in and around the region. She gives us a feel for what it must have been like growing, learning and experimenting during such an era of change and how it drove a wedge between the generations and how class played such a big part such as in the drafting system which heavily relied on people from poorer backgrounds who became fodder for a meaningless war. She also mentions the Kent State University shootings (Where she was a student at the time). There are plenty of other choice moments when as a star struck fan she ends up taking David Bowie out for dinner in her mum’s car, dark dealings with biker gangs, various drug (prescription and illegal) induced exploits and misdemeanours
She comes to her early 20s tired of these seemingly aimless years drifting through her life, getting high, watching live bands and wondering what to do with the rest of her life and so moves to London, where Nick Kent moves in with her leading to her brief employment as a journalist at the NME. She describes her talents and time there with a frank and refreshing openness and honesty that you can’t help but warm too.
Hynde also has spells in Paris and Cleveland before boomeranging back to London where she gets fully immersed and involved in the punk scene and then a cast of familiar names appear from that scene like McLaren, Westwood, Mick Jones, The Damned and The Pistols to name a few and strangely enough we don’t even get to the formation of The Pretenders til around 230 odd pages in.
This book has a really nice flow to it and Hynde is a great narrator, coming across as modest, grounded and smart woman, who is never afraid to laugh at herself or her mistakes, not something that is so common in lead singers who have enjoyed such influence and success! She seems to have no ego whatsoever and never feels the need to bitch about other contemporaries. I came away with a tremendous amount of respect for her. This book pulls off that ever elusive trick which great biographies do, in that she reveals a lot but still leaves you wanting more at the end. This is a good, solid autobiography by a highly likeable writer and fine musician.
She then goes onto paint a vivid and colourful background about what was going on at the time she was growing up in the Mid-West during the 60s, the shadow of Vietnam, the birth of the pill and of course the many great bands who toured in and around the region. She gives us a feel for what it must have been like growing, learning and experimenting during such an era of change and how it drove a wedge between the generations and how class played such a big part such as in the drafting system which heavily relied on people from poorer backgrounds who became fodder for a meaningless war. She also mentions the Kent State University shootings (Where she was a student at the time). There are plenty of other choice moments when as a star struck fan she ends up taking David Bowie out for dinner in her mum’s car, dark dealings with biker gangs, various drug (prescription and illegal) induced exploits and misdemeanours
She comes to her early 20s tired of these seemingly aimless years drifting through her life, getting high, watching live bands and wondering what to do with the rest of her life and so moves to London, where Nick Kent moves in with her leading to her brief employment as a journalist at the NME. She describes her talents and time there with a frank and refreshing openness and honesty that you can’t help but warm too.
Hynde also has spells in Paris and Cleveland before boomeranging back to London where she gets fully immersed and involved in the punk scene and then a cast of familiar names appear from that scene like McLaren, Westwood, Mick Jones, The Damned and The Pistols to name a few and strangely enough we don’t even get to the formation of The Pretenders til around 230 odd pages in.
This book has a really nice flow to it and Hynde is a great narrator, coming across as modest, grounded and smart woman, who is never afraid to laugh at herself or her mistakes, not something that is so common in lead singers who have enjoyed such influence and success! She seems to have no ego whatsoever and never feels the need to bitch about other contemporaries. I came away with a tremendous amount of respect for her. This book pulls off that ever elusive trick which great biographies do, in that she reveals a lot but still leaves you wanting more at the end. This is a good, solid autobiography by a highly likeable writer and fine musician.
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