Chrissie Hynde

The PROVOKR icon has a new album, video and tour with the Pretenders

Video: "Holy Commotion," performed by the Pretenders, from Alone (2016).

BY: Michael Perris

“I saw her in Central Park,” said Madonna of Chrissie Hynde, playing with her band, the Pretenders. “She was amazing—the only woman I’d seen in performance where I thought, Yeah, she’s got balls, she’s awesome! It gave me courage, inspiration, to see a woman with that kind of confidence in a man’s world.”

Legendary vocalist, songwriter and rhythm guitarist, Hynde was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1951—she’s 65 today. Her band, the Pretenders, which she formed with three British musicians in 1978, was one of the creative highlights of the punk scene of the 1980s. She’s been recording and touring as the Pretenders ever since, though she produced her first solo album, Stockholm, in 2014. Her autobiography, Reckless: My Life as a Pretender, was published last year, and now she’s about to release a new Pretenders album, Alone, on October 21, and go on tour with Stevie Nicks. The just-released first single from Alone, “Holy Commotion!,” can be viewed as a music video above.

“What characterized the whole punk scene for me in 1977 was that there was no racism or sexism,” Hynde has said. “It was an anarchy of -isms, and a matter of abolishing it all.” Arising out of that anarchy, Hynde’s sound was unique, and she’s never stopped refining and redefining who she was. She’s been a single mom, having had a daughter with Ray Davies of the Kinks and a second daughter with Jim Kerr of Simple Minds. She’s a vegetarian and animal-rights activist and a practicing Hindu. She’s an American who doesn’t feel at home in the United States and spends most of her days in London. She was an art student at Kent State University in 1970 when the Ohio National Guard infamously shot and killed four unarmed students demonstrating against the Vietnam War. She watched two seminal members of the Pretenders, lead guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon, die in their twenties of drug abuse. And through it all, she’s produced some of the most thrilling and iconic rock songs ever recorded, four of which PROVOKR is offering up below.
“Brass in Pocket” from Pretenders (1980)