After Patti Smith hit the jackpot with hers, I have no complaints that Chrissie is taking a swing a the plate. A compete badass with talent to burn.
I found the article on the NYTimes website - here’s a bit:
Thank you thank you thank you for sharing this!
I will look forward to this, being from the Akron, Ohio area.
Very cool. I hope she discusses inviting the Violent Femmes off the street in Milwaukee to play a set at the Pretenders concert back in 1981!
I’m looking forward to this one.
Cool. I’m not even a big fan of hers (I like the radio songs, that’s as deep as I get) but being a female rock fan from the Akron area (as well as a Femmes fan!) and a fan of biographies - well I can’t wait to read it! 
She was on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in the past couple of months. Listening to her reminisce for an hour made me wish for just such a book. Great news!
I wonder how kind/unkind she’ll be to Ray Davies. (Having read his memoirs, he just doesn’t seem to be psychologically suited for any kind of romantic long term relationship)
TYVM for mentioning this! I had a couple of their albums back in the day, and they were the type where the songs I heard on the radio were good and the rest was kind of just there.
She’s an amazing singer and an interesting person, and while I’ll admit that she’s probably not someone I would like all that much if I knew her personally, I look forward to reading this book.
Interesting interview this a.m. on NPR.
I’ve been a big fan since their 1st album came out my sophomore year. Since then I’ve respected her willingness to follow her own path.
Apparently she took some heat over the last couple of months for comments related to rape. (Search only turned up one reference in a date rape thread.)
Don’t know if I’ve ever heard an interview quite like this one. In most interviews, the interviewer will ask the subject to recount portions of the book. CH flat out refused to do so. Said she wrote it, doesn’t need to repeat it now. At first I thought she was being a jerk, but on reflection I think I respect it. Was surprised that the interviewer was so resistant to taking a different approach. I also respected when she said that she chose to write songs that said certain things about her that are out there, and now she’s written a book which puts other things about her out there - but that doesn’t mean that EVERYTHING about her is fair game.
Anyone else hear this interview? Refreshing to hear someone who appears to be an individual, rather than a product of PR.
A friend of mine who had to deal with her personally told me she is indeed a very nasty, horrid person and called her “The Biggest Cunt in the Music Industry”. :eek:
Oh, is this out? As much as I am a huge fan of the first two Pretenders albums (the first is one of my top ten rock albums of all time), I actually know very little about the personalities involved. (I tend not to delve in too much into the biographies of musicians for whatever reason.) But this is something I definitely would like to read.
ETA: I see it is. Bought and sent to my iPad. I’m ashamed to admit it, but it’s been a long time since I’ve actually read an entire book.
Well, I would say that, if she doesn’t want to talk about the book, then maybe she should just not do the book tour circuit.
Yeah, probably a valid comment. I guess I mainly was surprised because this interview caused me to think about the whole book interview process, instead of just going in one ear and out the other. Would think it possible to talk about the book without simply recounting portions of the book. Of course, if she wishes to say that the rest of her life is out-of-bounds, that would make that a difficult interview.
Maybe she is just continuing to prove that she remains a punk, as distinguished from a bunch of folk who simply played punk music. (Yes, having been hugely into music through the whole “what is New Wave?” confusion, I acknowledge that The Pretenders’ music is not punk. But I maintain that Chrissie Hynde herself most definitely IS a punk.)
Her unwillingness to talk about the book at this point is likely because about a month ago, when it was first released, she received a firestorm of criticism because she wouldn’t (and still won’t) directly address a question about the implication in the book that victims of sexual assault are sometimes at fault. She says she was culpable in an incident she described which was definitely an assault by definition (though she doesn’t seem to identify it as such for herself) but won’t speak about the broader issue. Interviewers keep pressing her, and she absolutely. Will. Not. Talk. About. It.
It actually makes me wonder how much of the book was personally written and how much of the prose was stitched together by a ghost writer from anecdotes she shared.
Anyone else read this book? I finally got around to finishing it on the plane today and was, well, disappointed. Just kind of rambling and emotionless to me. I’ll stick to the music.
Argh - frustrating to hear but in line with reviews. Perhaps I will put Carrie Brownstein’s book higher on my list…after I finish the new book on Sam Phillips of Sun Records.
Most of the reviews I’ve seen rate the memoir positively. Perhaps I expected more; I just didn’t find much deep introspection in it and I found the storytelling rambling and uninteresting. It felt cold to me, and I didn’t really feel like I learned that much more about Chrissie or The Pretenders (who are only about 1/4 of the book, if that), and I didn’t know much about either of them beforehand. (I’m not really one to read up on my favorite bands.) I guess it contains a good number of cool anecdotes, but most of it just felt disconnected to me. I’d still give it a read if I were you; mine seems to be a minority opinion.