Reckless: My Life as a Pretender

About this book

Chrissie Hynde for nearly four decades the singer/songwriter/ undisputed leader of the Pretenders is a justly legendary figure. Few other rock stars have managed to combine her swagger sexiness stage presence knack for putting words to music gorgeous voice and just all-around kick-assedness into such a potent and alluring package. From Tatooed Love Boys and Brass in Pocket to Talk of the Town and Back on the Chain Gang her signature songs project a unique mixture of toughness and vulnerability that millions of men and women have related to. A kind of one- woman secret tunnel linking punk and new wave to classic guitar rock she is one of the great luminaries in rock history. Now in her no-holds-barred memoir Reckless Chrissie Hynde tells with all the fearless candor sharp humor and depth of feeling weve come to expect exactly where she came from and what her crooked winding path to stardom entailed. Her All-American upbringing in Akron Ohio a child of postwar power and prosperity. Her soul capture along with tens of millions of her generation by the gods of sixties rock who came through ClevelandMitch Ryder David Bowie Jeff Back Paul Butterfield and Iggy Pop among them. Her shocked witness in 1970 to the horrific shooting of student antiwar protestors at Kent State. Her weakness for the sorts of men she calls the heavy bikers and the get-down boys. Her flight from Ohio to London in 1973 essentially to escape the former and pursue the latter. Her scuffling years as a brash reviewer for New Musical Express shop girl at the Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood boutique Craft Must Wear Clothes But The Truth Loves To Go Naked first-hand witness to the birth of the punk movement and serial band aspirant. And then at almost the last possible moment her meeting of the three musicians who comprised the original line-up of The Pretenders their work on the indelible first album The Pretenders and the rocket ride to Instant stardom with all the disorientation and hazards that involved. The it all comes crashing back down to earth with the deaths of lead guitarist James Honeyman Scott and bassist Peter Farndon leaving her bruised and saddened but far from beaten. Because Chrissie Hynde is among other things one of rocks great survivors. We are lucky to be living in a golden age of great rock memoirs. In the aptly titled Reckless Chrissie Hynde has given us one of the very best we have. Her mesmerizing presence radiates from every line and page of this book.