Chrissie Hynde Without Tears
The lights in Glasgow’s Apollo Theatre dim as the voice of Frank Sinatra starts to fill the dank, dingy hall: “That’s life/That’s what all the people say/You’re riding high in April/Shot down in May/ … Each time I find myself/Flat on my face/I pick myself up/And get back in the race.” With Sinatra wafting from the PA system, the defiantly unsentimental Chrissie Hynde takes the stage. Now 32, the Pretenders‘ lead singer looks like the same tough punk whose hellish behavior once attracted as much attention as the songs she wrote from her gut. Here she is, with the same black-leather wrapping. The same unfashionably tousled black hair, the heavy black eyeliner. The same snarl that can stop you dead in your tracks.
No, Chrissie Hynde doesn’t seem to have been changed, or even slowed, by the two years of tragedy that followed the Pretenders’ swift ascent to fame. First, the bass player who was once her lover, who had become a hopeless junkie, was kicked out of the band. Two days later, the guitarist whose lyrical playing formed the bedrock of the group’s sound, died of a cocaine overdose. Within 12 months, the bass player, still addicted to heroin, was dead, too.
But please. Don’t feel sorry for Chrissie Hynde.
There’s a new band now, another hit album, a seven-month world tour — even a baby daughter.
Somehow, Chrissie Hynde just keeps on going.
It was the spring of 1982, and Chrissie Hynde was in love. Back in 1980, she had met Kinks leader Ray Davies at a New York nitery, and zap! Instant infatuation.
Romance had never really played a big part in Hynde’s life. Sure, she had had her share of flings, but nothing serious. “I never had a real boyfriend,” she says. “I don’t like these girls who always have boyfriends. You know, the kind who read in Cosmo, ‘When your boyfriend’s gone, have a full array of sexual gadgets in the drawer next to your bed.’ I mean, talk about sickos. I was never like that.”
But if ever there were a man who could make Chrissie Hynde fall head over heels in love, it was Ray Davies. Ever since she’d been a child in Akron, Ohio, Chrissie had been enamored of Davies, now 39, and the Kinks. Their debut LP was one of the first albums she’d ever bought. Later, after she’d moved to London and begun writing for the New Musical Express, she once opined: “Raymond Douglas Davies is the only songwriter I can think of who can write such personal material (and he is always very personal), and never get embarrassing. One of the true romantics of our time.” When Chrissie formed the Pretenders in 1978, along with three young musicians from the English town of Hereford, they announced themselves to the world with “Stop Your Sobbing,” a Davies track from that first Kinks album.
Within a few months of their first encounter, Ray told Chrissie he wanted her to have his baby. “No other man had ever said anything like that to me before,” she remembers. “It was so romantic.” It was all she had to hear — well, almost. “The idea of my being a great big huge fat pregnant woman with tits and everything was horrifying. I couldn’t relate to it. I’ve always related to being like a bloke.”
But her sense of adventure finally won out, and Chrissie began planning her future: Near the end of April, she and Ray would be married; the day of the wedding, she would become pregnant. Her personal life was finally falling into shape — her love for Ray had inspired her to stop smoking, drinking and using drugs — and her career was going just as well. With two smash albums (Pretenders and Pretenders II) and a string of fine singles (including the hit “Brass in Pocket”) to their credit, the Pretenders had firmly established themselves in the upper echelon of rock & roll. They weren’t superstars exactly, but they could afford a few luxuries, like taking a little more time to record their next album, spending longer periods off the road. Chrissie figured that she and the band could work on their third album while she was pregnant, and then, after she had the baby in January 1983, she could take some time off. Everything seemed perfect.
“We never did get married that day,” Chrissie Hynde says almost matter-of-factly, staring out a train window at the passing English countryside. “Ray and I had a row, and when we got down to the registry office, the guy took one look at us and refused to marry us. He probably thought he would have been making a big mistake.” She chuckles. “His conscience wouldn’t allow it.”
Actually, Chrissie maintains, marriage really didn’t matter. She’s glad they didn’t go through with the ceremony. “I can’t really come to terms with what marriage means, especially nowadays. The fact that you can be divorced sort of nullifies the whole spirit of marriage. And I guess I don’t like what I see in it when I look at other people. I don’t wanna be like them.”
Marriage or no marriage. Chrissie and Ray stayed together, and exactly nine months after the reluctant registrar turned the couple away, Chrissie gave birth to a baby girl, Natalie. And now, bouncing the baby on her lap as the train makes its way toward Leeds, the next gig on the Pretenders’ 1984 world tour, Chrissie allows that she never should have tried to think things out in advance. She, of all people, should have known better. “Life,” Chrissie says with a trace of resignation in her voice, “is never what you think it’s going to be.”
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