At the end of the 1970s, the group invented a melodic rock with catchy refrains, a musical UFO in England shaken by the punk explosion. The documentary “The Pretenders – Chrissie Hynde or life in rock” looks back on four decades of hits and drama.
The Pretenders have been making worldwide hits for four decades and their singer and guitarist Chrissie Hynde commands the respect of many rock fans. Whether with her group, accompanying dozens of artists or now in her solo career, the itinerary of this free and committed American rocker is marked by passion.
The documentary “The Pretenders – Chrissie Hynde or life in rock” looks back on a unique journey that began in London at the end of the 1970s, that of a fan of punk and rock who will meet her heroes, and end up sharing her living with Ray Davies of the Kinks and marrying Jim Kerr of the Simple Minds.
Caught up in punk in London
After a childhood and adolescence spent in Ohio, in the United States, Chrissie Hynde decided to settle in London in 1973, at the age of 22, following studying at the Beaux-Arts. Infatuated with British groups (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks) and the American Iggy Pop, musician and composer since she was 14, she will above all witness from her squat in the Chelsea district the explosion of the punk movement in mid-1970s, when a number of female groups also emerged.
She also met Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. Among her many food jobs, Chrissie Hynde will also work at Sex, the sulphurous boutique of clothing and accessories of the latter, while wearing condoms as an earring. She will also write for a year for the New Musical Express, where she sharpens her critical pen by demolishing almost everything that comes out. “The worse and badly written my articles, the more the magazine loved it,” recalls Chrissie Hynde.
>> To see: the clip of “Brass in Pocket”, the first hit of the Pretenders
“For me rock, it helps to feel alive”
At the end of a parenthesis of a year spent in France, where she plays in her boyfriend’s rock band, which is called Frenchies, she briefly returns to the United States before leaving for London. After seven years of wandering and passages in different formations for recordings or concerts, everything is finally linked for Chrissie Hynde who ends up finding a rock group corresponding to her musical aspirations as a singer and guitarist with an androgynous look but with a sensual and determined.
The birth certificate of the quartet The Pretenders was made official in January 1980 with the publication of a first album with worldwide success carried by the song “Brass in Pocket”, which perfectly characterizes the melodic rock that the group and its gang leader won’t stop practicing. “For me rock, it helps to feel alive”, believes in the documentary Chrissie Hynde who, for forty years, will know as much glory as human tragedies, notably losing two musicians of overdose in less than a year. . Like a summary of the history of rock’n’roll.
Olivier Horner
