Chrissie Hynde: A Musical Biography

Adam Sobsey

Published by University of Texas Press 2017

Chrissie Hynde

A Musical Biography

Adam Sobsey

In the series American Music Series

https://doi.org/10.7560/310397

Overview
Contents

About this book

A musical force across four decades, a voice for the ages, and a great songwriter, Chrissie Hynde is one of America’s foremost rockers. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005, she and her band The Pretenders have released ten albums since 1980. The Pretenders’ debut LP has been acclaimed as one of the best albums of all time by VH1 and Rolling Stone. In a business filled with “pretenders” and posers, Hynde remains unassailably authentic. Although she blazed the trail for countless female musicians, Hynde has never embraced the role of rock-feminist and once remarked, “It’s never been my intention to change the world or set an example for others to follow.” Instead, she pursued her own vision of rock—a band of “motorcycles with guitars.”

Chrissie Hynde: A Musical Biography traces this legend’s journey from teenage encounters with rock royalty to the publication of her controversial memoir Reckless in 2015. Adam Sobsey digs deep into Hynde’s catalog, extolling her underrated songwriting gifts and the greatness of The Pretenders’ early classics and revealing how her more recent but lesser-known records are not only underappreciated but actually key to understanding her earlier work, as well as her evolving persona. Sobsey hears Hynde’s music as a way into her life outside the studio, including her feminism, signature style, vegetarianism, and Hinduism. She is “a self-possessed, self-exiled idol with no real forbears and no true musical descendants: a complete original.”

Author / Editor information

Adam Sobsey is coauthor of Bull City Summer: A Season at the Ballpark, a book about minor league baseball, and has written about music and culture for the Paris Review and other publications.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Talk of the Town: Beginnings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	6
2 Up the Neck: Pretenders Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
3 Birds of Paradise: Extended Play and Pretenders II Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	54
4 Time the Avenger: Learning to Crawl Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	72
5 Don’t Get Me Wrong: Get Close and Packed! Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
6 Legalise Me: Last of the Independents and ¡Viva El Amor! Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
7 Complex Person: Loose Screw and Break Up the Concrete Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	134
8 You or No One: Fidelity!, Stockholm, and Reckless Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
Sources and Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Selected Discography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 200

eBook

Published: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 9781477313312