It never fails to amaze how many renowned artists trace their beginnings back to the first wave of punk. Whether it be Siouxsie Sioux or Mick Hucknall, this period – the musical equivalent of the Reformation – gave rise to a remarkable variety of artists whose work spans an almost implausibly broad range of sounds. One of them is New Wave icon Chrissie Hynde, best known as the leader and voice of The Pretenders, the Anglo-American outfit who helped soundtrack the 1980s with hits like ‘Brass in Pocket’.
Despite being born in Akron, Ohio, in 1951, Hynde set her sights further afield and moved to London in 1973. She had studied art at Kent State University – playing in a pre-Devo band with Mark Mothersbaugh while there – and after graduating took a job at an architectural firm in the capital. She lasted eight months before moving on.
It was an era of great happenstance. She met journalist Nick Kent, who helped her land a writing job at the NME, where she would pen what she later described as “half-baked philosophical drivel and nonsensical tirades”.
“I knew nobody when I got here. It was real good for my own personal discovery,” Hynde told the Daily Telegraph in 2009. “I didn’t have anyone saying to me, ‘Oh, my God, you’re wearing hot pants. I can’t believe you’re wearing hot pants.’ Because nobody knew me. I could do and say and think anything I wanted.”
Despite writing for the coolest publication of the era and rubbing shoulders with London’s in-crowd, Hynde’s early years in the city were turbulent. By 1976 she faced deportation for not having a visa. She admitted to doing a lot of “dumb shit to get by” and came close to getting tangled in a scam before thinking better of it. Desperate to stay in England, she asked her friend Johnny Rotten – frontman of the Sex Pistols – to marry her so she could secure the elusive visa.
The plan hit an immediate snag. Rotten was fast becoming the most talked-about man in the country and had little appetite for a marriage of convenience. Into the space stepped Sid Vicious, the new Sex Pistols bassist who had replaced Glen Matlock, who declared with characteristic bluntness that Hynde was a gold-digger – insisting she only wanted to marry Rotten “’cause now he’s a rock star you can have his baby and get his money.”
Strangely, the same man who had just accused her of opportunism then offered to marry her himself. She accepted. But the pair hadn’t thought to check whether the register office was open. It wasn’t. “The next day wouldn’t work,” Hynde recalled, “as Sid had to go to court for putting someone’s eye out with a glass.”
She left for France soon after, where an attempt to start a band came to nothing. She eventually returned to Cleveland – still down, but not out. Her determination to make music eventually pulled her back to London in 1976, by which point punk had truly ignited.
The city’s febrile creative environment provided the incubator she had been looking for. After an abortive attempt to form a band with The Clash’s Joe Strummer, she founded The Pretenders in 1978, and they quickly found their footing. As it turned out, the chaos that surrounded her visa crisis was not the end of the story – it was merely the beginning.
