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Pretenders' Hynde visits SXSW to promote 'Pirate Radio'
BY L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / Lincoln Journal Star
Friday, Mar 24, 2006 - 12:01:28 am CST

AUSTIN, Texas — It took Chrissie Hynde all of 10 seconds before she stirred up trouble at her South By Southwest Music Conference interview. Walking onto the stage, Hynde, an outspoken member of PETA, quipped “We’re in cattle country now. I think we can all go to the slaughterhouse now.”

Having broken the ice with that remark and her refusal to sit in a leather-covered armchair, the cantankerous Hynde went on to deliver plenty of acerbic remarks as she recounted her career and hyped, as much as she will hype anything, “Pirate Radio,” a just-released four-CD boxed set of her band, The Pretenders.

Here are some of her observations:

On being a famous rocker:

“The thing I’m uncomfortable about is that it’s made such a big deal of,” she said. “It’s a gig. I actually got in a band so I wouldn’t have to have a career or work. It was a secret thing. It wasn’t a celebrity thing. I’m very uncomfortable (being a celebrity) and don’t like it. Like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I was very uncomfortable about that. I got in a band, so I wouldn’t be in a hall of fame.”

On what she thought when, while living in London in the 1970s, her friends formed The Clash and a bunch of guys who hung around the clothes shop where she worked became the Sex Pistols:

“I was thinking, ‘How am I going to get my band together?’ I didn’t feel like a loser or anything. I didn’t really fit in so much. I was way too musical for the punk scene. That was the history of the punk scene. It sounded deconstructed, but it hadn’t been constructed yet. After six months, they learned to play and it wasn’t punk anymore.”

On her feelings after “Brass in Pocket” became a huge hit:

“It was a matter of I’m not waiting tables, I don’t have to get a job, I’ve got my own guitar,” she said. “That’s all it was meant to be. I saw us as a motorcycle club — us against the world. But it wasn’t about getting bigger. Today they’ve turned being in a band into a sport. In my day, sports and music didn’t exist comfortably at all.”

On why she hasn’t gone solo or changed the name of the ever-changing group to Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders:

“I like bands. I’m not that interested in being on my own. It’s interesting when I’m next to my guitar player. It’s like a marriage. I like that. I’m not marriage material in any other way. To me, it’s sacred. The four-piece rock band is really something special to me.”

On taking an eight-year touring layoff while she was raising her children:

“I have a life. You can’t always do the rock thing. Eight years is not that long, not when you’re getting close to 60 years old. Mozart died when he was 32. Then, he was young people’s music. It’s not what we think of it at all. The Stones are in their 60s now.”

On “Pirate Radio” and its representation of the Pretenders’ career:

“The boxed set would have come out with or without me. If it was going to happen, I wanted it to represent 25 years the way I wanted to present it. Believe me, it’s not that accurate.”

On making a new record:

“I don’t need the money. I’m not trying to brag. I would do it if I want to make an album. If I want to I’ll do it. If I don’t, I won’t.”

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.