Chrissie Hynde left Akron, Ohio, because the Midwest could not hold her. Born Christine Ellen Hynde on September 7, 1951, she grew up on 1960s radio, Kinks records, and the idea that real life happened on a stage somewhere else. After a stretch at Kent State’s art school and a few dead-end bands around Cleveland, she packed up in 1973 and moved to London. She was twenty-one. She wanted a band.
London and the Punk Scene
London in the mid-70s gave her the scene she had been hunting. She wrote for NME, worked at Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s SEX shop on King’s Road, and drifted through the early punk circle around the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and what would become the Damned. She taught Sid Vicious a few guitar chords. She tried to form groups that never quite stuck. Managers poached her players. She kept writing.
The Band Locks In
In the spring of 1978 the pieces finally locked. Bassist Pete Farndon came first. He brought in guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, a 21-year-old from Hereford with a gift for chiming, melodic lines that cut through punk’s noise without sounding polite. Drummer Martin Chambers completed the original four. Hynde named them the Pretenders after Sam Cooke’s version of the Platters’ “The Great Pretender,” a song a former boyfriend used to play when the rest of the world was not supposed to hear it.
Number One: The Debut
Their first single was a cover: the Kinks’ obscure 1964 track “Stop Your Sobbing,” produced by Nick Lowe and released in January 1979. It cracked the UK chart. “Kid” followed. Then came “Brass in Pocket,” a song Hynde co-wrote with Honeyman-Scott after he played her a riff she taped and took home. She did not want it released. Producer Chris Thomas overruled her. In January 1980 it became the first new UK number one of the decade. The self-titled debut album, released the same month, went to number one in Britain and into the U.S. Top 10. It mixed punk snap, pop hooks, and Hynde’s dry, unsentimental voice on songs like “Precious,” “Tattooed Love Boys,” and “Mystery Achievement.” Critics still call it one of the great debut albums in rock.
Success, Then Tragedy
Pretenders II arrived in 1981 with “Talk of the Town” and “Message of Love.” The band was big, touring hard, and already cracking. Farndon’s heroin use made him impossible to work with. On June 14, 1982, the band fired him. Two days later Honeyman-Scott was dead at 25 of heart failure after a cocaine binge. Farndon drowned in his bathtub after a heroin overdose in April 1983. He was 30.
Learning to Crawl
Hynde and Chambers kept the name. They rebuilt around guitarist Robbie McIntosh and released Learning to Crawl in 1984. “Back on the Chain Gang” was written in the wreckage, a memorial that became their biggest American hit. “Middle of the Road” and the Christmas standard “2000 Miles” followed. The band that should have ended did not.
Live Aid
On July 12, 1985, they played a last-minute warmup at Philadelphia’s Chestnut Cabaret. The next afternoon they took the Live Aid stage at JFK Stadium and played “Stop Your Sobbing,” “Back on the Chain Gang,” and “Middle of the Road.” Grace Slick introduced them. It was a city that already knew how to hold a big outdoor rock show, and the Pretenders fit the bill: survivors, not relics.
Legacy
They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005 with the original four. Hynde has remained the only constant member through decades of lineup changes, later albums, and tours that still pull rooms. The sound that started in a London rehearsal room in 1978—jangly guitar, tough rhythm section, a singer who refused to soften her edges—still reads as the moment punk learned melody without losing its nerve.
That is the Pretenders story in outline: an Ohio kid who crossed the ocean, assembled three English players, hit number one, buried two of them, and kept the band alive anyway. The records from 1979 to 1984 are the ones that still get played when someone wants to hear how the 70s turned into the 80s without asking permission.
