Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders - new memoir due Sept 8, 2015

The modern way seems to be to squeeze at least two volumes out of your life story, so finishing there seems to leave it open for a sequel at some point.

 

Heavy Bikers....cool.

Reading the book now, it's okay.

 

I kinda did too but as well as adding many details, she recontextualises everything in a way which replaces that kind of journo-hack version of history with one that closely resembles how things still go down in say Camden and Brixton scenes. Names mentioned are not 'names being mentioned' but actual people seen in the rooms in which events occur. Hynde's account is an account of rooms and people in them.
I think her style in this book is going to be influential. It's curiously, succinctly original

 

A great autobiography--extremely direct with some uproariously funny one-liners. I can hardly think of another musician that has given as much credit to another bandmember as she has. In the 23 years since Jimmy died, that hasn't diminished in the slightest:

"James Honeymam-Scott is the reason you're even reading this because, without him, I'm sure I would have made only the smallest splash with my talents--probably nothing very memorable."

 

Actually, 33 years... God, that's sad. And I feel old.

 

So in short: for someone who digs early Pretenders, is always interested in a fresh take on the UK punk scene and associated milieus, and for whom Chrissie Hynde could've been run over by a bus in 1984 for all he cares about her post-Learning to Crawl exploits, this would be a worthwhile purchase?

 

The book ends before Learning To Crawl, so . . .

 

Sounds like a good read. I wonder if she explains what she really did in "Tattooed Love Boys", changing tires and all.

 

I just finished the book and it was a lot different than I expected. The bulk of the book is Chrissie's teenage and young adult years pre-Pretenders moving around trying to find a place in the world. The band doesn't form until the last few chapters and it ends with the death of Jimmy and Pete. A good read, but glad I didn't buy it, the library got it in and I was first on the list.

 

Actually the band got their name at the last minute from hearing that song!

 

Was hoping to read her time with Linda McCartney at the end....They were apparently close. Bummer that it'll end before that. Still a day one purchase!

 

I'm going to buy it but wish she had taken the story through Learning To Crawl. I think that album is a great recovery from a tragic situation.

 

Well, the way she left it hanging there might be a follow-up, probably depends on how this one goes over?

As she says at the very end, this book is a story about the destructive powers of drugs, including alcohol and tobacco.

 

Excellent memoir.

 

Don't sleep on Break Up The Concrete. Great album.

 

Her solo album Stockholm is pretty great too. There's worthwhile music on all Pretenders albums, sometimes there's just a few too many fillers.

 

http://www.npr.org/2015/10/06/446083413/chrissie-hynde-im-just-telling-my-story

The new Simmons/Gross.

 

super awkward interview

 

If not nothing else, she is incredibly hard on herself. She seemed to have little self worth, not the picture she paints in her songs for the most part. Overall, I found it depressing.

 

Good for her - I don't blame her for being tired of everyone misunderstanding what she wrote. People have such thin skins and I'm glad Chrissie stood up for herself.
Not an awkward interview - an inept and dumb interviewer, imho, and she let him have it!

 

I just took out this book from the library. It is really great, I'm halfway thru. Maybe best book I've ever read. Course I said that about the Carole King book but the last quarter of that sort of faded.

 

Good read but a shame she tosses off most of the Pretenders after 1980 or so. There are some GREAT moments on every one of the post Learning to Crawl LPs with Viva el Amor and Loose Screw being near flawless.

 

Actually she didn't even really get to the Pretenders until the end of the book. She really needs to write a follow-up book about the band, imho. This book is about mostly about her early life growing up pre-Pretenders.

 

I enjoyed the childhood, Akron, and Kent State, and formative friends and family stories, but to me the book pretty much unraveled after that, and I lost interest. Pretenders only gets a glance in this tome - very little about the songs/music and the band dynamics. It was a disappointment overall.

 

Well, that's ridiculous. People make stupid choices that put them in bad situations sometimes-how are they blameless? I am not in any way exonerating perpetrator's actions (if there ARE any perpetrators*) or suggesting that victim's culpability reduces the perpetrators' but if we get back to Chrissie Hynde then girls who get out of control drunk at frat parties, or or tourists waving their wallet around in high crime areas, or etc etc DO have some amount of blame for what happens. Anyone who is not a ***** knows what can happen in those situations knows what can happen so proceeding regardless means in some sense accepting the possibility of a bad outcome. Sounds like blame to me.

*Natural disasters, for example, have no "perpetrator." The Donner party were not blameless? The other party trying to "shortcut" though Death Valley? People who live in a flood plain or worse-think Hurricane Katrina- BELOW SEA LEVEL and get wiped out are blameless? That's like the folks out here in Pacific Palisades/Malibu/so on who have houses perched on the edge of a cliff and complain when a mudslide &/or earthquake damages their house. Well heck, don't buy/build the house right on the freaking edge!!! And if you live up towards the mountains and don't clear brush from around your house and it burns to the ground, you're a victim but hardly blameless.