Its just that hour and a half on stage, thats all. Anyone in a band will tell you that. And the origin of the creativity . The sitting down and writing songs . Does that come as easily now . Well, i dont know if it was ever easy. It was maybe more compulsive when you have nothing to do and youre alone in a room with a guitar, then eventually you will write a song. I never wrote them because i felt i had to or that i should. I felt i wanted to write songs and present them to a band. It was always about the band. Youve obviously gone in new directions, and youve got a new album out, which you recorded in sweden with a guy, a well known musician and producer whom i dont think youd worked with before, so obviously theres a lot of new stuff going on right now, and i just wonder whether youve taken your music in a different direction. Does it feel very different . Not really. No, i dont change very much. Ijust kind of do what i. I write some songs, put them together with the band, record it. I wouldnt say im an experimental artist. Ijust try to do my thing, and if anyone likes it, thats great. Yeah. But im not really. I just like to stay in the middle, so if ijust can do enough to get by. I mean, i shouldnt say that in front of my Record Company or my management, because im supposed to be out here hawking my fish, you know. The truth is, ijust want to do enough to get by and do what i like to do, which is to go on the road and play in a band. Its very simple for me. And what you also seem to have succeeded in doing this time around is hooking in a great friend of yours, a guy who i know youve always loved to listen to, neil young, to play on the album, and that must have been quite special. That was pretty surreal, but i really wouldnt have thought of doing that if i hadnt been working with bjorn yttling, and just trying to impress him, because i wouldnt have thought of calling neil young myself. But youve known neil young for years, havent you . You played with him. Didnt you support him . Yeah, but i dont ask someone like that, will you play on my record . I wouldnt even think of it. But we had one that sounded like a neil young song. We kept referring to it as the neil young song, and just to kind of wind him up, id say, of course, we can always get neil young to play on this, but i never meant it. After saying that for about six months, ithought, actually, i could get neil young to play on this. That explains. I called him up, and he said yes. That explains neil young. Youve got to explain to me john mcenroe. People watching this will know john mcenroe as a wimbledon champion and top tennis player, and here he is rocking up on your album playing guitar. Well, john has always played guitar, and hes always been really interested in rock guitar. Hesjohn mcenroe, so he has this kind of adolescent, in my view, no offence to him. Ancient adolescent, i guess wed say. Now, yeah. But he loves playing rock guitar, and so whenever i played with the pretenders in new york, id always invite him on stage, and hes fearless. Hell get on stage with anyone and play if hes called upon. For years, ive tried to encourage him to stop doing the other things he does, charity matches and things like that, where he gets together with some other tennis players, and play guitar. I say, why dont you just actually get in a band . In all honesty, is he any good . Yeah, he is good. Hes as good as me. But its a question of taste, i suppose. If he was focused and he was playing in a band, hes got it. To do the kind of thing he wants to do, which would be sort of heavy metal come punk a little bit, i guess i would describe. Let me, if i may, go back to the beginning with you. Youre from ohio, from the midwest of the United States. Its not a place i associate with a big music scene. I dont know if there was when you were growing up in akron, but you obviously made a conscious decision pretty early on in your life that you didnt want to stay in akron. Is that because there was some fundamental rebellious streak in you, and is that connected to your music as well . Well, i like cities, and the city of akron pretty much had collapsed by the time i was a teenager, you know with the mall culture, the car culture. American cities, from coast to coast, really, except for the obvious big ones that everyone knows about here chicago, new york, even philadelphia most of the cities lost their downtown and lost their urban feel and became more like what you could call a metroplex, a very suburban sprawl, where everyone would have to spend most of the day in a car, really, to get anywhere. Thats what i was leaving. And how did you get into music . Just listening to radio. I grew up when all the best stuff happened as far as rock and roll. You still feel that today . Youve lived through various eras of rock and roll. Are you kidding . The first album i had was the first beatles album. I was right there. I had the firstjimi hendrix album, led zeppelin, all the greats. You could name 25 amazing bands, moby grape, buffalo springfield, all those bands out on the west coast. There was tonnes. Spooky tooth. All these amazing english bands. Every day was christmas if you were a rock and roll fan and you liked bands, because everywhere you looked there were amazing bands. I think its over, to be honest. Theres still bands and they are still out there touring, and, especially in america, they love guitar based rock and roll, so. I toured with 22 top and the stray cats a few years ago, and that was my audience. I love that, because it was all these sort of bikers and waitress types, who loved guitar based rock. Its sort of pared down, Pretty Simple rock and roll. It couldnt be more simple than what i like. Thats about as simple as you go in this game. Two guitars, bass and drums, maybe some keyboards, and some songs. Your sense that that america, the america of i guess the ea rly to mid 70s, was going in the wrong direction. Was that a big part of your decision to head to the uk . I dont know if i was that aware of what was going on. I knew i wanted to see the world, and i liked english music, and i wanted to get out of cars. I could see the way the car culture was going. That i could see. You were sort of out of love with your own country, really . I what . You were out of love with your own country. Yeah, but i was in love with england. I was always in love with england, even as a child, because i thought everyone rode horses here. I grew up thinking england must be the greatest place, and then all those english bands came along, and i was absolutely in love with england, and always have been. And youve pretty much stayed based here ever since . Yeah. Because you ended up forming a band. Again, its fascinating to think about what it must have been like. You formed a band with three guys who actually were from a very rural part of england. Hereford, yeah. Hereford, which, for those who dont know it, is a pretty small, rural, isolated town. And here were you, rocking up from the United States with a very particular love of rock and roll music. How did you all gel together and come to be the pretenders . This is really a long story. Give me the shortest version you can. Ill give you the short version. I went to lemmy and i said, look, man, im getting this band together. Id been in england for about five, seven years. Id travelled around a lot once i wanted to get my band together. I lived through the punk thing. I knew everybody. But i still didnt have my band together, so i went to lemmy, and i said, you know. When you say lemmy, you mean lemmy from motorhead . Yeah, lemmy. I was kind of feeling sorry for myself, and he said, well, no one said it was going to be easy. And he wasnt really as sympathetic as i thought he might be, but he said, theres one drummer kid in town that you might want to check out. So, anyway, i found this guy in street. I saw him one day, and i said, hey, is your name gas . And he went, yeah. So i said, be in a band with me. And he was from hereford, so he didnt really last, but through him i met pete farndon. Through pete farndon, another long story, we found James Honeyman scott, who i think is one of the last great guitar heroes. Im sorry that he went so early, and at the time when he died, i didnt publicly make much of it, as people would these days, maybe, but i dont think thats right. He really never got his due for the contribution he made as a rock guitar player. That i regret. Thats one of the reasons i still do this, actually, because i want them to have their place in history, because thats what was important to them. That is very interesting. Its actually very poignant, because within years of having your big success with the pretenders, when everything really took off in 1980, 81, 82, within a couple of years of that, two of the original band members had died. Yeah. Both drugs related. That must have been, for you personally, extraordinarily hard. Well, yeah, of course it was, but im not trying to make it seem like it was less of a bummer than it was, but everyone goes through stuff in their lives, and i think to look at someone and say, wow, shes had a hard. Frankly, who hasnt . Everyone loses family and friends. You go through this stuff in your life. Yeah, i could have. Without going into too much detail. It was so traumatic, it probably didnt bother me as much at the time, and i was pregnant for the first time and i didnt know how i was going to deal with that. I had to find some other guys to play with and get back on stage and keep my thing alive, because i didnt have anything else. You know, it was that or i dont know what. My aspirations werent much higher than maybe i could be a waitress. I didnt have a lot to fall back on. Was there ever a time, in that period of Great Success but real tragedy as well, where you fell close to the edge yourself . Well, yeah. A lot. Of course. Because of drugs . All sorts of things, you know. Guys i was going outwith, they were all wrong, and drugs. Stuff that everyone does, everyone goes through. I dont think my story. The only thing unique about my story is ive had this like amazing band bands, now. And thats what im good at, finding good bands and making sure the guys sound great. You smile about it now, and youve sort of left it behind in a way, but is there any part of that Chrissie Hynde back then that is still with you today . Do you ever get bleak and black times today that remind you of some of the times you had then . Er. I have maybe bleak and black times that remind me of the times im having now, and, you know, i miss them. I miss those guys. Theres a lot about it. But what can i do about it . Ive tried to keep the music alive to keep their memory going. I could have said, right, thats it, its over, and ill do Something Else now, i wont play those songs again. But that didnt seem right, because wed put a lot of work into that. And they had a real, unique sound. It wasnt my sound. It was not the Chrissie Hynde sound. The sound of the pretenders really didnt have a sound. It was more, i would say, equally with my songs and my voice, but it was mainly inspired by the sound ofJames Honeyman scott, and the other guys, pete farndon and martin chambers, you know. Let me ask you a little bit about the voice, because a lot of people watching this will have such a clear sort of sound in their head of a Chrissie Hynde voice, because it is a very distinctive. Do you recognise it . Do you know there is something very special about your voice . Well, i guess thats subjective. If you think there is, then there is for you. For me, i found it very difficult to listen back to for many years, and if anyone was even in the control room and they. You know, a lot of singers are like this. If they soloed the voice, i would just die of embarrassment, and i didnt want to be watched while i was singing. I dont like people around when im trying. I was like that painting too. I dont want people around when im doing my thing. Really . Of course, you have to get on stage. Youve got to do the live gigs, and then theres no hiding place. No, but thats different, because youre with the band. Youre up there with your little gang. Its a weird one, because theres a lot about it that doesnt feel very good. It was probably after about 200 shows that i didnt hate the idea of going onstage. You seriously had stage fright . Yeah, of course. Everyone does. Dont think that this confidence thing, that there a few chosen few people that are confident. None of us are, especially people in bands. Were the dropouts that didnt have much confidence and werent very good at anything, and are blagging it, and probably werent very good at things. For you in particular, you always had such a strong image onstage. Hey, im six feet above you. Im on the stage. I can do what i want up there. So what am i going to do . Every day you have to make a decision about everything. You make a good decision or a bad one. Im going to be onstage. Do i want to look like i have no confidence and im afraid . Because thats not what people want to see. Im there for them. You see one guy in the audience that you kind of think, ill play to him. If theres a guy like that there. If there is, that helps, or theyll be one kind of crazy dancer in a balcony, and the whole band will fixate on that, and that carries you through the whole show. Any bit of madness can get you through it. Let me ask you about being a successful woman in rock and roll. I know youve always said, look, it really hasnt made a difference to me being a man or a woman, its rock and roll. But it is a business that, to an outsider, often looks very sexist. Have you never felt that in your own career and what happened to you . Iwas. It took me a long time to. I didnt want to pull out my guitar and play in front of guys because i knew i wasnt very good and it was mainly guys, and i was shy to do that in front of the guys. You know, so. That part of it, and i didnt think it was. Did you never have people, like promoters, agents, managers, telling you how to look . Oh, no. Thats a myth. No. You know, ive never met any musicians where, if a girl walked in the room, i dont care if itsjeff beck or any of the greats, it could be billy gibbons, anyone, any Record Company guy. A girl walks in the room, picks up a guitar and plays great, theyre all going to go, i want to play with her. You know, because they want to be around them. Men want to be with women. Sure, but isnt there some sleazebag whos going to say, i want to play with her, but i want her to look like this. I want her to wear that. And i want the image to be just so. If there is, ive never met him. Heres something you wrote. I think you had your tongue firmly in your cheek at the time, but when you launched an album, i think it was last of the independents. You also published some notes, you said, for any prospective. Idid that. This girlfriend of mine, angela harrington, she was starting a magazine, and she kept on to me. You know what im talking about . Yes, something for her magazine. Well, let me quote you one line, just see how you feel about it now. 0k. Ijust did it to get her off my back. These were notes to any prospective rock chick. You said, look, dont moan about being a chick. Dont refer to feminism or complain about discrimination. Weve all been thrown down stairs and screwed around, but no one wants to hear a whining female. Just write a loosely disguised song about it and clean up. Well, thats certainly good advice, isnt it . Well, feminists listening and watching this might think, why not introduce some feminist protest . What about me . Im almost like the poster girl for feminism. You know, everything about me says feminism. So i dont think. Isnt it better to walk it than talk it, given a choice . Right. Ijust wonder, again reflecting on your own life, i mean, youve raised kids as well as having a career in rock and roll, but that, i guess, is not easy. Again, one more thought on this, and its quite an amusing one, in a way, because you, i think, once got a note from a band. I dont think you knew them, but they liked your music. But they then sent you a note saying, you know what, your records used to be great before you got domesticated. Something like that, yeah. And that, i know it was meant to be amusing, but also. No, it wasnt meant to be amusing. They were serious, and its true. I mean, domesticity kills off this stuff, definitely. So, what, you dont think its really possible for a woman whos just had kids to be in the music business, to make rock and roll . No, i never said that. I said domesticity, for any artist, you know, if youre comfortable and youre getting on with domestic life, its not going to be cutting edge rock and roll. Youre just going to have to lay out for a few years. Did you . Yeah, i didnt tour for eight years. And my kids never saw me on stage until they were 14. It was past their bedtime. I was never photographed with them or talked about them either, so, you know, ijust kind of stayed out of it. Elvis costello is my age. Hes probably made four times more. Hes probably done a0 records to my ten records, probably. Let me talk about politics in a different way, and that is the way that you, throughout your life, professional life, have always made a point of being a campaigner, particularly for Animal Rights. I guess its fair to say that has been central to your outlook on life. Why Animal Rights . Why did you get so passionately involved with them . Thats just something that youre born with. Some people are and some people arent. Its not something you learn. Probably like most of human behaviour. Some people have one thing that youre good at or youre interested in. And with me ijust dont like to see animals mistreated, and i was one of those little girls that loved animals, horses and things. So as i got older, and, of course, the whole vegetarian thing goes into the environmental picture, and its all related. I havent campaigned that much. Ive been vocal about it. Definitely, promoting vegetarianism is my thing. I dont like meat eaters. You know, i dont like it. Its indefensible. Why would you kill an animal if you didnt have to . You say you dont like meat eaters. Have you, in your life, basically made a point of being close to and being friends with people who are either vegetarian or vegans . Yeah, i dont like them either. Meat eaters, its just wrong. If you have to kill, do it. You know, sometimes there is a time and a place for everything. Im not necessarily a pacifist. Im definitely a warrior. Ill go out on the front line every time. Hey, well, you did. Im ready to go at all times. You pushed it pretty far. A dozen years or so ago, in new york city, you were involved in a very direct action. Yeah, i didnt push it very far. Ive been in some protests with pete and gone to jail. But pushing it far. Its pretty far. When you go into a store, like the gap store in new york, and. Not as far as someone who goes in undercover working in a slaughterhouse. Thats going far. When you really get in there, and you dig in, and youre watching animals