.png)
At this late date, what the Pretenders accomplished is no mystery achievement. But it’s also a story that has never been extensively chronicled on film until “The Pretenders,” a Joss Crowley-directed doc that premieres Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival. The band released what might rightly be considered the best rock ‘n’ roll debut album of all time in Janauary 1980, and Crowley’s film covers the lead-up to that — Chrissie Hynde looking and acting like a biker chick in late ’70s Akron before moving to and finding her real gang in the U.K. — and the tumultuous few years that followed, with further masterpieces arriving alongside band dismisals and deaths. Although the focus is on the original lineup and the first five years, it brings us into the present day of Hynde, still one of the greatest to ever pick up a guitar.
As delightfully plain-spoken as Hynde is when you get her to sit down and talk, she can be to get into that chair, as a naturally camera-shy personality, so Crowley’s film is particularly useful in further immortalizing a subject who never wanted to be anything more than an ordinary musician, whether “rock goddess” was quickly and eternally thrust upon her or not.
Variety spoke with Crowley and the delightfully tart-as-ever Hynde in advance of the Toronto premiere.
Most of the time with modern music documentaries, it’s the artist or their company instigating the doc, and usually co-producing it. But it sounds like that’s not necessarily what happened this time because, Joss, you’ve talked about the difficulty in talking Chrissie into it.
Joss Crowley: I’ve been trying to work with Chrissie and tell the Pretenders’ story for over 10 years, and kept knocking at the door; didn’t get an answer. It was just a question of right time, right place, and Chrissie came round to the idea of meeting me. We sat down and talked about some of the docs I’ve made, and about other things, trying to find some mutual interests. I wasn’t really sure when I left that meeting how it had gone, but within about a week, we sat down and recorded our first interview, at the end of 2023.
Chrissie, you needed less than a week to think about it and get underway after that first meeting?
Chrissie Hynde: Well, we had to have a go and see how it would go, and I think I must have laid down some sort of ground rules, so I was willing to go into it — that it would be (visually focused on) archive footage, and really talk about the band and not focus too much on me, and it wouldn’t be about “women in rock” or any of that kind of thing. It would just be a story of the band. I was kind of keen to have it done because, as we all know, there’s documentaries on everything and everyone now. And in fact, someone else had already made a documentary on the Pretenders, which had nothing to do with me or my entire organization. I was starting to get calls from some of my old friends saying, “Oh, I’m gonna do your documentary on Tuesday.” And I’d be like, “We’re not doing a documentary!” This other team had gone in to people I know and made it sound like it was an official documentary. So I thought, “Well, if that’s happened once, that’s gonna happen again.” Either you want to do it and you want your story out, or you don’t, which I didn’t particularly, but if it’s going to be out, I’d rather know that it’s true.
At the very end of the film, you’re heard talking a little bit about why you did it and you mention that you especially wanted to do it for James Honeyman-Scott [who suddenly died at the height of the band’s success in 1981], in some way.
Hynde: For me, a rock band is all about electric guitar, and I think he was one of the great guitar heroes. Over the years when I see lists of the greatest 100 rock guitar players, I never see Jimmy’s name. That’s all he was interested in, music and playing the guitar, and I thought he didn’t get his due and that would be important for him. He’s not here, so I thought I could do it for him.
It feels like the way the documentary turned out was kind a nice compromise in the end, since you didn’t want to be on-camera at all, but you were talked into being seen for the very last interview, so there’s a little bit but not a lot. You acquiesced a little bit.
Hynde: Yeah. I haven’t seen it, and I probably won’t. Someone said, “Oh, don’t say that! That sounds negative.” But I think a lot of people don’t like watching themself or listening to themself talk, and I don’t have to watch it, and there you go. It’s not negative. I mean, I’ve already lived through it, so I don’t think I wanna go through it all again.
I think so many people feel this way, and most people that I’ve ever had a conversation about it with do: they don’t like the sound of their speaking voice. I mean, I’ve had to get used to my singing voice because, you know, that’s kind of my shtick. But my speaking voice, when I hear it back, I’m always pretty horrified. And everyone I talk to feels the same way… People expect if you do it for a living, that you must like it, but that’s not necessarily true.
One of your quotes in here is, “I like being in a band, I just don’t like being observed. It’s a real problem.” A lot of people will relate to that, wanting to have a voice — figuratively — while not liking the attention that comes with it.
Hynde: I think so, because I think I represent just ordinary people, and that’s how I feel and that’s how I go through my life. You know, I get the public transport. I don’t live in a gated community. I’m just exactly the same way I always was, and I don’t want that taken away from me. I like hanging out. I’d rather sit on a doorstep and eat a slice of pizza than go to a fancy restaurant. I’ve always been like that, but I think most people are.
It has become more common in documentaries to have the subjects entirely off-screen. I was recently watching Paul McCartney’s Wings documentary, and his interviews in it are all audio-only, which is great most of the time. But at the same time you’re kind of like, “Well, just show him to me for 10 seconds.”
Hynde: Are you talking about “Man on the Run”? I loved that. In fact, I watched it sitting next to Paul when it was screening. He was singing along! I guess he’s so used to seeing himself. It was very moving for me to see Linda in the early days, even before I met her, and how cool and how beautiful she was… We’ve seen so many documentaries, it’s a matter of kind of getting away from the format. But, certainly, archive footage — we were lucky to have any for ours, because this was way before people had camera phones or were thinking much about taking photos.
Crowley: There was a big archive breakthrough when we found this cameraman, Andy Watt, who’s from Hereford, like the band really, and he joined the original band on tour about three months before Pete left and Jimmy died. [Bassist Pete Farndon was dismissed in1982 and died the following year; Honeyman-Scott died two days after Frandon’s firing.] He was able to document two weeks on the road in North America with the band, and that footage has never been seen. We found all 20 tapes of it, and they were in very poor condition and pretty much unusable, but fortunately we found a retired engineer who was able to bring them back to life. Another thing that really helped the device was doing the interviews with Stan, the old tour manager, who read his diaries aloud, and we could suddenly see Jimmy and Pete in and around the band in the period where we focused the story, which is those five years between the end of the ’70s and the early ’80s.
You start the movie with Stan Tippins, now an elder gent, reading these diaries for the camera. It seems like his participatino was really, no pun intended, a tipping point.
Hynde: I’d love to see that stuff, with the Stan diaries. All the time that we were with Stan, he often mentioned, “Now I’m gonna go write my diary,” but no one ever saw them. Joss and I had dinner with Stan and Lynne Honeyman-Scott, Jimmy’s sister, and (original drummer) Martin Chambers, and it never even occurred to me that Stan would be willing to be actually filmed, reading his diaries. I’m dying to see all that part, so maybe I will have to watch it at some point. Stan was so important in the early band. He was our scout leader or something. We were new at this, and he had been a singer in Mott the Hoople [prior to Ian Hunter]. We loved him, because was like having a farmer in a band. He would say things like, “I don’t know why you would wanna take drugs when you could have a nice, juicy pear.” I suppose you could say we were laughing behind his back, but he was the wise man of the operation.
When it came to your interviews, Chrissie, there ae some topics that are tricky or touchy, inevitably. It’s clear on camera when you are willing to get into something and when you aren’t. Joss asks you about Ray Davies, and you say, “I’d rather not get into it. There’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.” But it’s cool that we at least see you address not wanting to discuss something, whereas a lot of docs would just leave that out. And then, of course, you do get into a lot of tough stuff with the early ’80s with everything that happened with the band. Was it cathartic in any way to talk about the hard times of the band, or is it always just difficult?
Hynde: First of all, talking about, for example, Ray Davies — I mean, anything with him or with anyone in my family — I don’t think it’s right to talk about other people because it’s an invasion of their privacy. I’ve never done that, and I don’t think that’s a very dignified thing to do. If people ask me, “Oh, are your kids musical?” I say, “Well, if you ever meet them, you ask them. I don’t wanna talk about it.” Not because I don’t love them, but because this is kind of an invasion of their privacy. And I’ve never talked to any journalist and given a list of things that they’re not allowed to ask. Because if I don’t wanna talk about it, then I can say, “Let’s not talk about it.” But not for any other reason than that. Because certainly as a Kinks fan, I mean, who doesn’t wanna talk about Ray Davies? He’s fucking amazing. But I just don’t do that.
I can’t remember what Joss asked me about the grisly stuff in the ’80s, because I haven’t revisited that. But the other thing is, when you have a story that’s in public or when you become famous or whatever, your story isn’t that much more interesting than just an ordinary person’s. I mean, nobody hasn’t had bereavements and fuck-ups and disappointments and victories, and all these things that happen in a person’s life. I think there’s too much emphasis on the extraordinary life of celebrities.
You’ve been clear from the beginning of your career up till now that you never wanted to be a poster girl or an emblem or spokesperson for anything.
Hynde: Being in a rock band… I mean, who didn’t wanna be in a rock band? Did you wanna be in a rock band?
Of course.
Hynde: Are you now?
No, sadly.
Hynde: But you wanted to be. So, I’ve offered some music, and that’s all I’m offering. Everyone that I grew up with wanted to be in a rock band. That was my generation. We were all very ordinary kids. People didn’t get into bands to become celebrities. They just wanted to be in a band. I’ve never graduated beyond that initial interest in it.
Surely you’ve grown in a thousand ways since the band’s early days, but the film kind of presents you as somebody who sort of had either a certain idealism or just a basic attitude about certain things and stuck to it.
Hynde: I also had some great people that I’ve met in my life who were inspirational. Lemmy never changed. Lemmy was always the same. and that’s kind of been my motto. That’s why I don’t do fashion magazines. Well, there’s many reasons I don’t! But I always think, “Well, if you wouldn’t ask Lemmy to do it, don’t ask me.” Because he’s kind of, I suppose you could say, my style icon, if there is such a thing in the case of someone who was in Motörhead.
Neil Young’s another. He’s never changed. You might not have ever met him, but anyone who’s listened to his music, you have met him. He’s exactly what you think he’s going to be. Bob Dylan, I mean, ia obviously more of an enigma, because he’s a little bit more of a trickster and a comedian. But he offered the world all that music and I’m not sure that he got into it to be the spokesman of his generation, which was the mantle that he had to carry. And in the case of Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Bob… First name basis, did you get that? [Laughs.] Paul McCartney’s the best example because he was in the fucking Beatles, and yet he’s still doing exactly what he was doing. If his band hadn’t made it that big, I reckon if he was still in Liverpool and he got married and had some kids, he’d probably still be playing in a band in a local bar somewhere, because that’s what he likes.
Joss, is there any way to put in a nutshell what you wanted to capture about Chrissie in this film? And did it change at all as you spent so many hours with her?
Crowley: To answer the first question, it’s the story of the Pretenders, which I know is obviously very much about Chrissie, but also about the rest of the band. But with Chrissie, I because I spent so many hours with her, I just wanted to make sure her personality came across in the film. Because I think that’s what documentary does perhaps better than any other medium, is that it brings personality to the screen. And so if it felt awkward at times, that’s OK. When it was successful, great. When the band was successful, great. And everything in between, and when it was emotional and sad, it had to be there. We were talking about voices earlier on, and I’ve had to get used to hearing my voice a bit because it was important to hear questions that I put to Chrissie that she didn’t want to answer, or at least didn’t want to answer initially and then came round to answering later on. Because that, I think, tells you as much about Chrissie as a perfectly articulated answer. So that was something I guess I warmed up to, the idea of keeping my questions in, which I haven’t done in previous documentaries. That was a good way to unlocking a bit more about who Chrissie is.
The other question: in terms of hours, we would meet monthly, for a few hours…
Hynde: Seems like most of my life. No, Joss did prompt me, but mainly I just imagined a certain time, an event that happened, and I would just talk about it for an hour, and then have a few cups of tea and leave. And then he’d have to figure it out. Definitely the early sessions were much more like that, and as it evolved, it became a bit more interview-based, I suppose, and it had a different rhythm to it.
I didn’t want to ask my mates to sit down in front of a camera, because I find it uncomfortable, so I thought, “Well, why would I expect them to do it?” So I made a real point of just having talk over {i.e., audio-only interview]. But then you have to think about, if you’re on stage, what are you prepared to do? But then you also have to think about the audience: What do they want? And I’ve been in the audience as much as I’ve been on stage, if not more. I know the audience wants a certain thing. And [for a documentary] I know the audience wants to see people sitting down talking to camera. I know I want to see that.
Crowley: There were two things that Chrissie said to me early on in the process. She said, “Make it good, and make it different.” And I think we’ve achieved that. But you can’t make something different for the sake of it being different. It has to work for the story that the film tells. And Chrissie doesn’t like cameras. Chrissie doesn’t like having her photograph taken. It was really hard to find archive as well because lots of times cameramen or camera crews weren’t allowed access to the band. It was hard on a lot of levels. So the fact that I managed to to convince Chrissie to go on camera for the final interview, it just sort of works. I think it’s an achievement of the film and also a reflection of how much she doesn’t want to be on camera all the time.
You probably did get much more intimate stuff by allowing her to just speak into a microphone. And we get to luxuriate in the sound of her voice as she’s digging deep on some of that stuff…
Hynde: Oh, God, when you said “luxuriate in the sound of her voice,” I’m cringing.
You often say you don’t like to be a symbol of anything, but is anything you represent to the public that you kind of allow for yourself as being OK?
Hynde: Well, of course I like being a sex symbol, but…
Glad you brought that up, because that was something that struck me watching the movie — that to some people you were and are a sex symbol, and at the same time, there is Shirley Manson talking about how what you got out of it was loving seeing you be androgynous, so…
Hynde: I was being facetious! [About being a sex symbol.] I’m just, you know… I’m a man of the people.
One thing that hasn’t changed that you represent: being against rock turning completely consumerist. Every time I see a music star doing a product commercial, I think of your song “How Much Did You Get for Your Soul?”
Hynde: Yeah. They’re all at it, aren’t they? Well, you know, fuck ’em.
Joss, do you have a favorite moment in the movie?
Crowley: Favorite part of the production of making the film, I guess, was when Stan opened his diaries for the first time, and he found the first time he met Chrissie in rehearsals, because it was such a breakthrough for me. I think he summed up quite a lot about, about Chrissie and the band in a few words. Do you know the bit I’m talking about? I can’t remember exactly what he says, but it’s something like, “She has quite a lot of fun, but underneath she might be a bit nervous.”
Hynde: Oh, God, I hate to think what’s in those diaries. Fuck me. But we love Stan, so there you go.
Chrissie, we can’t ask you if you have a favorite moment in the movie…
Hynde: I saw my manager, Ian Grenfell, yesterday and I said, “Hey, is this gonna come across really negative if I say I haven’t watched it?” And he goes, “Don’t worry about it, because that horse has bolted. People already know [to expect] you haven’t watched it. And a lot of people do not watch their documentaries.” So I was relieved that I don’t have to tough it out… I’ve been very inspired in the last couple of days, seeing Noel and Liam (Gallagher, from Oasis) out there. They’ve got a documentary out and they’re on the front line going for it. But I just don’t have that kind of drive.
I’m sure you’ll be in Toronto, Joss. Are you going, Chrissie, or will you be avoiding the premiere?
Hynde: Yeah, I am going. And then Martin’s going. It’s gonna be me and Martin there on the red carpet, so that should be… Well, it won’t be a beauty contest.
English (US) ·