Hynde-Sight Is 20/20

06/28/1999 4:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Sylvie Simmons

"I think anger is a very unattractive thing in a woman," says the woman sporting kohl-black eyes, pinstriped suit, and sharp white shirt. "It just seems like a whole lot of women on their period or something. Anger is so unfeminine, isn't it?" And if there'd been a feather anywhere on the premises (a posh London private members' club filled with oil paintings and butlers and rich old men looking like Hugh Grant's granddad), you could have knocked me down with it.

Because this, for cryin' out loud, is Chrissie Hynde, the artist formerly known as the angry young woman's angry young woman--might we mention the McDonald's firebombing incident? Or the night in a Memphis jail after clobbering a Memphis bouncer? Or getting sent home on her wedding day with prospective husband Ray Davies of the Kinks when the man who was to marry them couldn't handle their nonstop fighting? When Chrissie's boy band the Pretenders made their chart debut 20 years ago with a cover of Davies's "Stop Your Sobbing," her tough sneer, low-slung guitar, and don't-mess-with-me attitude inspired a whole new generation of pissed-off women rock musicians. Shirley Manson of Garbage, for one, claimed that when she was a depressed teenager, it was Chrissie that saved her from suicide.

"Hey, I'd love to take the credit," Chrissie shrugs, "but I just don't think that's accurate. I know Shirley told me that I saved her life, but if I hadn't been out there nothing would have stopped Shirley from her destiny. If it's your calling that you've got to play guitar in a rock band, you're unstoppable. I certainly was."

As a 14-year-old in Akron, Ohio ("a real weird place--a lot of serial killers"), Chrissie went to a Stones concert and decided right then to form a rock band. The fact that in 1965 women didn't form rock bands was no deterrent. "It was a man's world, sure, but I was happy with that situation. I didn't need a woman to guide me." At 21 she left Akron for London, selling hippie handbags in a street market and modeling at an art college to keep herself alive, but before too long she'd talked herself into a job on the hip rock mag NME and at the hipper-still Vivienne Westwood/ Malcolm McLaren shop Sex, the birthplace of punk. London is still her home today. "I don't miss America as such, though I do feel a connection. But when I lived there I felt like a stranger, and it's not nice to feel like a stranger in your hometown."

She shares her house in North West London (Noel Gallagher of Oasis's 'hood) with her daughters, 16-year-old Natalie (by Ray Davies) and 12-year-old Yasmin (by Jim Kerr of Simple Minds), plus new husband Lucho, a sculptor from South America. He's the image of Che Guevara, she says--and nearly 15 years younger than her.

"Most of my partners have been younger. My husband looks much younger than me too, but so what? Mohammed the great prophet's wife was 15 years older than him, and if it's good enough for Mohammed, it's got to be good enough for my husband! Anyway, I think if I was a young man I'd much rather be with an older woman who knew what she was all about. Who would want to be with some flaky chick who was all over the place and freaking out all the time?"

Hmm...your average male rock star? "That's true," Chrissie laughs. "But my husband has nothing to do with the music business. Which is refreshing, that's for sure. Marriage isn't necessarily so you can share your hobby. If I need to talk to someone about rock music, I can just call up someone else."

The new Pretenders album, Viva El Amor!, may appear from its title to have been inspired by Lucho, but it's not quite the collection of love songs you might expect. Love here is an imperfect thing that ends in sex if you're lucky, heartbreak if you're not. ("I think I had actually written all the songs before I met Lucho, so the next album will probably be really soppy and boring," Chrissie smiles.) Check out the opening track "Popstar," for instance--it's about an aging woman rock musician who's traded in by her man for a cute young girl, and it's based on a true premarital dumping. "They don't make them like they used to," Chrissie sings, and she means it.

"These young girls with their fake tits--they won't last. Men have always traded in their older wives, but I think that now a lot of women are trading in older husbands for younger ones, too." Mid-life crisis? "I haven't got to my mid-life crisis yet. In fact, I'm just starting to think that getting old is really, really fun--or maybe that's me just trying to be obnoxious," she grins, "because women are supposed to hate getting older and I love it!

"I know Cher said that 50 sucks--well, I'm not quite 50 but I'm pretty close, and it's a blast. I'm enjoying myself a lot more now. I rabble-roused for years, but now I'm passing on the baton--sort of like a volunteer fireman's job that you do for a few years while you can then let someone else have a go. I've burned out a lot of the anxieties and things and I know I'm gonna die, but so what? I'm just so glad I'm still around."

Chrissie and drummer Martin Chambers are, of course, the only original members of the Pretenders still around. Drugs killed James Honeyman-Scott in 1982 and Pete Farndon a year later. "Why did I survive? I don't know. Luck, maybe. Maybe I've only got a couple of years left. But I never allowed the drugs to become that important; Jimmy was a burnt-out speedfreak when I met him, even as a kid. Plus I'm pretty healthy, a vegetarian, and I refuse to focus on misery--I think there's something immoral about that."

Chrissie is planning to go out on the road again--including an appearance at the Lilith Fair festival. "Planet Lilith, the final frontier! You think of Lilith and you think of flowing dresses and folk guitars and stuff--but I like that. As you get older, if you're like me and you thrive on change and you've already done all the things you wanted to do, you're starting to run out of new things, so the only ones left are things you always said you'd never do. But don't worry," she smiles. "I'm not going to wear a flowing dress!"