Pretenders front woman Chrissie Hynde has penned a memoir of hash, pot, heroin, alcohol, LSD, beatings, rapes, gang rapes, gonorrhea, poor judgment and missed chances, all tossed off with tough-girl insouciance.
The once and present “high priestess of badass rock ’n’ roll” (according to Britain’s Q magazine) is not much given to introspection, although she does admit on Page 144 to “my old, useless, familiar and constantly suppressed depression.” Don’t look for self-pity here.
Ms. Hynde started out in Akron, Ohio, where houses “smelled of wood polish and ironing and rhubarb pie.” The federal highway system destroyed her early childhood neighborhood, “every street becoming a dead end. Across the swathe of concrete, its other half could be found, spliced like a worm, still wriggling.”
Doubleday ($26.95).
Such turns of phrase pepper the memoir, which does not appear to have had a ghost writer. Although the book provides ample evidence of Ms. Hynde’s underwhelming academic achievements (she never passed algebra), it also makes clear that she is “good with her hands,” be it painting, sewing, woodworking, cleaning or guitar playing. Behind these few personal resources she has her ace: her persistent belief in her ability to be a singer in a band despite having little experience with either singing or performing, and no formal background in music.
Persistence, talent (not much admitted to here) and pure luck played their parts in getting Ms. Hynde from Akron to England, from scrounger to lead singer. Her stints as a journalist for NME music magazine, and as an employee at a London shop run by impresario Malcolm McLaren and clothing designer Vivienne Westwood, helped launch her career.
Sarcasm and dry humor shine through many paragraphs here, lightening accounts of homelessness, drug addiction and physical abuse. One can almost hear her deep, sneering vibrato.
Some of her song lyrics come to life as well. “Tattooed Love Boys” is one chapter title, the same title as one of the songs on the Pretenders’ debut album. In the memoir, Ms. Hynde describes how, in a drugged-out state, she refused to give some motorcycle gang members her Quaaludes and how they then took her to an abandoned house and assaulted and raped her. At least one thing they yelled at her during the ordeal (“Shut up, or you’re going to make some plastic surgeon rich!”) later became a song lyric: “Stop sniveling / You’re gonna make some plastic surgeon a rich man.”
This incident recently made headlines because Ms. Hynde blamed herself for the assault.
Some anecdotes will carry special resonance for Pittsburghers: a digression on the origin of the term “redd up,” for instance, or some dissing of Cleveland: “Every mile away from Cleveland was a mile cherished.”
The book has a few surprises — who knew Chrissie Hynde was a student at Kent State University when the 1970 shootings happened? Who knew she almost married both Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten (for the sake of a British visa)? When has Chrissie Hynde ever been photographed smiling?
But mostly, these tales could be easily deduced from a sampling of Pretenders song lyrics. Tequila? Check. Men? Check. Attitude? Check and checkmate. Plenty of that, in fact, from flipping off leering men in Mexico to slugging someone on stage. Male ego hurt by taking orders from a soon-to-be ex-girlfriend? “Too bad, buddy boy,” she snaps.
There are two somewhat unusual aspects to the book. For one, Ms. Hynde is extremely circumspect about past love interests, distilling many relationships to a few sentences, or even one: “I guess you could say he was my boyfriend.” Serious dalliances with Kinks lead singer Ray Davies, with whom she had a child, and Pretenders bandmate Pete Farndon are served up and put away with minimal fuss. Her marriages are barely acknowledged; former husband Jim Kerr of Simple Minds is not even named.
The other surprise is her utter contempt for the late Nancy Spungen, who was stabbed to death at age 20, allegedly by her boyfriend, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. Nancy’s mother wrote a 1983 book describing her daughter’s lifelong battle with mental illness, and it seems gratuitous to kick a woman when she’s down — and dead.
Fitfully entertaining, surprisingly well-written in places, “Reckless” is worth a read.
Laura Malt Schneiderman: lschneiderman@post-gazette.com.
First Published: September 13, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
