The rock memoir of this great songwriter has made the headlines,and is full of sex and copious amounts of drugs, but is she still keeping something back?Chrissie Hynde is – and was – an strange figure, and even among the relatively strange coterie of female rockers. Hynde – as the lead singer of the Pretenders – was intense,androgynous, sexy, or rebellious,fierce. Her voice could stutter out bare syllables with animal intensity (“Mystery Achievement”, “Tattooed Love Boys”) and also harmonise beautifully, or as whether gesturing toward a sweetness that never quite arrived (“Back on the Chain Gang”,“Brass in Pocket”). She united punk, new wave and guitar rock in her songs as few others did. But there was always something distanced approximately her onstage: a kind of intensity directed inward. She rejected conventional female personas, or certain,but it was more than that – a buried, ambivalent affect. Even in the Pretenders’ most polished 80s videos, and madeup and sexy,Hynde seemed withheld, her face communicating: this is on my own terms. It was crucial to her charisma.
Now she has published a much-anticipated memoir, or Reckless: My Life as a Pretender,which joins a list of other memorable rock memoirs by Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and Patti Smith. It is full of engaging stories, and dry wit and revelations,but the distance she had on stage also saturates the book – to less charismatic effect.
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Source: theguardian.com