Private life
Chrissie Hynde may be one of the greatest vocalists in rock history, but by her own admission, she isn’t much of a writer. She opens her highly anticipated memoir, “Reckless,” with redundant references to the landscape of her conventional and uneventful upbringing. Far more interesting would have been for Hynde to grant readers greater access to her emotional life. What beyond simply being born into a generation that loved rock ’n’ roll brought about Hynde’s irrepressible need to rock? What was it about her parents’ refusal to accept that need that drove Hynde out of Ohio and propelled her toward musical fame?
Several chapters in, we learn that as a teen Hynde is turned on by watching rock musicians perform, but her attraction to the bands isn’t sexual. She tells us she’s also drawn to biker boys, but while eager to join them in experimenting with alcohol and drugs, she clings to carnal innocence. When Paul Butterfield’s guitarist invites her to a shady after-show party at the security guards’ clubhouse, Hynde accepts pills from a biker whom she describes as looking like “a brooding mix of every member of Steppenwolf montaged into [a] police sketch of a sex offender.”
In fact, he is a probable rapist whose face appears on a “Wanted” poster hanging on the wall like a victory pennant. As jailbait, Hynde escapes this potentially dangerous scene unscathed, but not so on other occasions; she recollects events that will sound like sexual assaults to many readers, though Hynde attributes them to her naivete and/or recklessness rather than acknowledging that she’s been wronged, much less victimized.
Hynde arrives in England in her early 20s well fortified by these experiences, casting herself as the quintessential badass, a persona that she would go on to hone in several bands before eventually forming the Pretenders in 1978. Hynde’s potent appeal didn’t come from looking conventionally pretty or sexually available, but by subverting the power dynamics and unspoken rules of “cock rock.” Her early songs often centered on the interplay of sex and violence, her emotive alto weaving in and out of guitarist James Honeyman-Scott’s melodic chords, landing in a magical place between toughness and vulnerability, the aching demand and the unmet need for love.
Together, Hynde and Honeyman-Scott worked this sensibility into unanticipated commercial success, but unfortunately drugs were always part of the picture. Bassist Pete Farndon, who was once Hynde’s lover — though her description of their relationship reveals no affection — is the first to go. Shortly after Hynde fires him from the band for sinking into addiction, Honeyman-Scott dies of a drug overdose, and in less than a year, so does Farndon. At the time, Hynde was pregnant with her first daughter, the product of a tumultuous relationship with Ray Davies of the Kinks.
Hynde ends “Reckless” at this point, in 1983, with a dispassionate rehearsal of the biographical facts. What we don’t get is a sense of how Hynde, now 64, has carried on since then or how she’s fared. Hynde went on to raise two daughters, largely on her own, and she dedicates “Reckless” to them. However, it appears that the book’s honest homage is to Honeyman-Scott, whom Hynde credits in the prologue with transforming her from an “ugly duckling into a swan” and giving her the special sound that was the Pretenders at its creative peak.
In a very brief epilogue, Hynde casually attributes getting clean to reading Allen Carr’s “Easy Way to Stop” books, refers to successive lineups of the band as only keeping the Pretenders going “loosely speaking,” and dismisses all of her subsequent lovers, implicitly including her two former husbands, as transitory romantic “dalliances.”
These descriptions are unsatisfying but perhaps unsurprising, given Hynde’s longstanding reputation for being brusque and often difficult, preferring in interviews to preach about animal rights and condemn consumerist values rather than speak openly and reflectively about her music or life. I wouldn’t expect or even want Hynde to publish a confessional tell-all, but I do long for more of a takeaway from this 300-plus page book than the cliche that “drugs only cause suffering.” I think there is also a true love story here, and a potentially powerful tale about resilience and survival. I only wish that Hynde had the heart, the will and the balls to tell it.
Allyson McCabe writes and produces stories about music for National Public Radio, the Rumpus, the Brooklyn Rail and others. E-mail: books@ sfchronicle.com